# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_April 1858_S120
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

120 Bavaria.

...which in the recent past were inflicted upon our church, partly through the great misunderstanding of many, partly through the evil will of a few, are already everywhere beginning to heal again — the news that you had here been present at a general synod which, in all its members, was animated by a spirit of the deepest reverence and most sincere attachment toward our beloved sovereign and his whole illustrious house, of the most heartfelt devotion toward the church government appointed by him, of the most conscientious fidelity toward our evangelical confession of faith and toward the constitution of the state, as well as by the most honest zeal for promoting the highest interests of our church.

Then the speaker turned to the presiding officer in the following words:

Most Reverend, most nobly born Mr. President
of the Royal Oberkonsistorium!

It scarcely needs express testimony with what joy and hope, for the happy course and success of this time's especially important synodal proceedings, the news filled us all, that Your Reverend Excellency would once again take the direction of them personally into your blessed hands. Your name seemed to us, rightly, one of the surest guarantees for the success of the good cause. The more painful the share was that all well-disposed members of our national church had to take in the heavy cares under whose pressure our highest church superiors had found themselves since the last general synod, the more lively was, in all confessionally faithful clergy and laity alike, the wish to be able to give our dear church government the most unambiguous public proof that the purest esteem and the full confidence of all believing confessors of the Gospel stood at its side, and that they were all ready to support, to the best of their knowledge and ability, its wise, entirely lawful, and beneficial efforts toward the improvement of our ecclesiastical conditions.

The general synod has offered us the longed-for opportunity to be able to lay open our disposition before the highly honored and beloved head of the church government. Praise be to the Lord, by whose grace we may boast: it has become clear through this synod, before the eyes of all the world, that the ugly storm which had arisen against the excellent proposals of the last general synod, and against those who carried them out, could not penetrate into this sanctuary; that the eyes of the church's representatives have not been darkened, by all the poisonous mists that arose, against the light of divine truth; that right must after all remain right, and that all pious hearts will fall in with it.

In expressing to Your Reverend Excellency our warmest, most reverent thanks for your so highly insightful, benevolent, and influential guidance of our deliberations, we may indulge the joyful hope that your noble heart has found, in our midst, compensation and satisfaction for so much that lately disturbed and troubled it, and that your high Collegium — that His Majesty the King — will find nothing, in all the requests and proposals we have allowed ourselves to make, that could even remotely recall those regrettable manifestations. The lawful spiritual and secular representatives of our church have proven, in the name of their constituents, their untroubled agreement with its high moderators; the honor of the Evan—