# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_December 1857_S384
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

384 Church-Historical Notes of the Present.

Extemporizing without serious preparation. At the Berlin pastoral conference Superintendent Dr. Sander of Wittenberg described the situation of a preacher who extemporizes without serious preparation, aptly, as follows: „He mounts the pulpit in a state of expectation as to how and by what thoughts he is to reach the goal that hovers indefinitely before him. When then confused notions run through his head, and the accusing conscience and the sense of shame join themselves to these, a morbid tension will take possession of his spirit, in which, when the thread breaks, he snatches after new thoughts. The opposite sets in with the hearer: boredom and vexation, mitigated only by pity. Thus the speaker forfeits his mastery over the assembly, and instead of the congregation calling up to him and joining with him in the praise of God, he calls out to them from the depth of his misery an Ayez pitié (have mercy!), and I will never do it again.“

Dr. Besser intended, as the „Pilger aus Sachsen“ reports, to withdraw again at Michaelmas of this year from the service of the mission house, in order to enter the preaching office at Waldenburg in Silesia.

Requisites of the deaconess students at Neuendettelsau. Under this heading it is said, among other things, in an announcement found in the „Freimund“: „Since all the students wear the same dress, a newly entering one has only to provide herself with clothes for her six-week probationary period; after that, if she wishes to become a deaconess, she wears a black dress made after the common pattern, and on Sundays the white apron, on weekdays the blue one. If she is there only for her own training, she must indeed keep to the black color, but need not keep to the cut of the dress. Silk dresses, even if black, may not be brought along. Those students who attend the institution solely for their own training wear a green band or neckerchief; if they belong to the little school, a red one; the actual deaconess students, a blue one. All will receive a uniform head covering, as well as a warm wrap for the winter, whereby hats, cloaks, and shawls become superfluous.“

„Churchliness.“ The following is written by Dr. Luthardt on the occasion of an assessment of the Evangelical Alliance: „The royal invitation of the Alliance to Berlin may be taken as a sign that the churchly direction and movement in Prussia is no longer official — if it ever was. The general superintendent of the Kurmark, castle preacher etc., Dr. Hoffmann, that man of the Union, recommends the Alliance in a circular to the clergy of Berlin and forbids pulpit polemic against it, with express and emphatic reference to the „„most exalted invitation““. And the sun of royal favor lures the fashionable, religiously disposed world of Berlin to the meetings of the Berlin branch society. Formerly poor and forsaken, they have become ever more brilliant: lackeys and carriages wait before their doors. And Krummacher, whose word is weighty „„because of the position he holds near the king,““ threatens those clergymen who call themselves Christian but are of Cephas or of Apollos, who „„set the formula of faith above the power of faith““, with „„unpleasant consequences““.

But we thank God that He is beginning to let churchliness go out of fashion. So much the more will it have a future. For God will not at any time choose many mighty, and so forth, after the flesh. But may He bless that small and poor congregation in Berlin which is gathered closest around the banner of Lutheran faith and confession as its guardian!“

Correction to the previous number.

Page 327, line 17 from the bottom reads: „But who do not belong to the flock which is committed to them“ — it should read: But who belong to a flock which is not committed to them.