# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_December 1858_S382
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

382 Church-Contemporary Affairs.

wegian population is not very dense and is surrounded by an English one,
the young people quickly adopt English and just as quickly forget
Norwegian or Swedish. It is also noteworthy that Norwegians acquire the
English language, on account of the close kinship of the two languages,
quickly — far more quickly, we are inclined to believe, than the Germans
do. Have our Norwegian friends thought of these things? Have they weighed
the matter as its importance deserves, and have they weighed the fitness
of Concordia College for the purposes for which they would place their
professorship and their young men under its influence and guidance? Or do
any insuperable obstacles (objections) stand in the way of their working
together with the University here? — In other words: is it not possible
that all Norwegians might unite in their churchly relations, and work
together for the spiritual, moral, and religious advancement, education,
and edification of their people, and for the building up and founding of
the kingdom of Christ and of the Lutheran church among them?" G. Schick.

Church-Contemporary Affairs.

I. America.

Literary activity within the General Synod. We learn from the
"Observer" that Mr. Anspach has presented his General Synod with a
translation of a work by Schwenkfeld (Luther mostly writes Stenkfeld)!
The "Missionary," after an excellent characterization of Schwenkfeld,
makes the following remark on this in its number of November 4th:
"Perhaps the mere fact of the translation of a book by Schwenkfeld is not
in itself very remarkable, since there exists somewhere (in
Pennsylvania?) a sect bearing his name, which is gradually becoming
Americanized, and to which it may happen that at some point a quite
natural curiosity awakens in it, to know why it bears that name. But
that outside this small community anyone should take the trouble to
translate what is so little worth translating — that is a wonder. But
that the translator should be found in our own church, in one confession
of which this poor theological bungler is embalmed like a fly in amber —
if one considers his insignificance against the richness of the material
that surrounds him; or like an elephant on Siberian ice, if one considers
his weight against the durability of that which preserves him — that is
the very summit of the wonderful. But beyond this there is yet another
element of the unexpected: namely, that so gifted a writer as Dr.
Anspach should perform this labor and squander his fine style on a book
by Schwenkfeld, who did not know how to think and consequently did not
know how to write....... If he had a mind, for a while, to turn to the
more modest task of translator, how could he help but pluck, for the
church of our land, some of the lovely and refreshing flowers that grow
in immeasurable abundance in the meadow-grounds of his mother's manor! ..
We regret all the more that the silver serving-platter on which the
result of his labor is presented to us — and whose beauty might awaken
attention to, and inspire confidence in, what it carries — contains not
some golden apples from our Lutheran Hesperides, but rather the
distasteful sweepings of the Augean stable of Schwenkfeldian fanaticism."—