# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Februar 1860_S64
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

64 Church and Contemporary Notices.

of his life. It cannot be said: ""whose end consider, and follow their faith."" Why united churches should wish to celebrate this day of death lies plain to see: Melanchthon is the father of the Union; in place of a settled faith and a settled doctrine he put ambiguous formulas; it will not be able to fail, given the state of the times, that the whole matter will be exploited by the Union and by Liberalism for all sorts of demonstrations against the Lutheran church. Occasion for this ought indeed to be avoided; but if it happens and must happen, then the matter also carries a blessing within it, which, to be sure, is the opposite of what the Union intends: the eventual observance will lead to a deepening into history, and whoever deepens himself into history deepens himself into the life and being of our, the Lutheran, church, and will come ever more to the truth."

Naiveté or Mockery? The following words from the letter of a "foreign" pastor to Ehlers we take from the church paper edited by the latter, of November 15 of last year: "Your remark in No. 17 of the Kirchenblatt about the relationship of the Chiliasts and Anti-Chiliasts to one another did me a great deal of good, to which I say Yes and Amen with my whole heart. For I too am a Chiliast, but so to speak against my own will. I would most prefer that, immediately after the raging of the Antichrist, the LORD JESUS should appear at once with His final coming and the kingdom of His glory, and that there should not first come, in between, a thousand-year period that is, after all, not free from the misery of sin and moves toward a still greater struggle than that with the Antichrist — namely, with Satan himself. But I cannot make it out otherwise from Revelation chapter 20, and so I comfort myself, on the one hand, that if it really does turn out that way, this will certainly be good and worthy of eternal praise, and on the other hand, that for my own part I shall not have to live through those 1000 years myself after all. You may perhaps shake your head at my lack of clarity in this matter, but since you once earlier asked me about my thoughts regarding Chiliasm, I do not wish to withhold them from you either, unclear as they themselves are."

Mecklenburg. After the church government there confessed publicly, with Christian sincerity, the wretched state of the territorial church, this confession has now made the rounds in all the papers hostile to the Lutheran church; it is found, even belatedly, in the Tiffin Reformed Evangelist of December 21 of last year. In doing so it is given to be understood, not at all obscurely, that this wretched state shows the fruits borne by strict Lutheranism. In this a great injustice is committed; for Mecklenburg Lutheranism (setting aside that it is not even pure) did not produce this condition, but inherited it from Rationalism, which had likewise penetrated there.

The Darmstadt Allgemeine Kirchen-Zeitung loses, with the new year, one of its editors, Kirchenrat Schenkel of Heidelberg, who now wishes to publish a new periodical after his own mind. The cause of his withdrawal appears to have been a falling-out between Schenkel and his co-editor, Palmer, in their judgment on the matter of the Agenda, in that the former took a more radical view of this affair.


A Chance Thought. Why do so many preachers wish to be regarded, not indeed as better, but certainly as higher, than the so-called laity? — Because: were they to be regarded as better, they would also have to be better — that is, holier, humbler, gentler, more unselfish, and so forth; but if they are to be regarded merely as higher, they are relieved of the necessity of actually being better.


A bishop, if he does not heed the Word, even were he ever so holy, is a wolf and an apostle of Satan. He is no different from a wolf who does not keep watch for the sheep against the wolf. Luther, XVIII, 1314.