# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_M rz 1860_S91
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Church and Contemporary Notes.    91

(p. 127), under which in particular Paul could just as little have thought of anything, as under a dead soul. Huther's conciliatory opinion — that δικαιοῦσθαι [to be justified] means, in Paul, "the justifying act of God, by which the merit of Christ is imputed to the believer," and in James, the acquittal of believers at the last judgment — may rest on its own merits. In any case the Epistle of James is far too weak to shake the Pauline doctrine, even if it stood in intentional contradiction to it.

III. In a review of two lovely tracts — first, the 4th edition of Löhe's little work, "On the Divine Word, as the Light which Leads to Peace," and second, the little work, "On Sentimental Christianity. By Fr. Brunn, Lutheran pastor" (price 3 groschen) — Ströbel writes: I am no great friend of little tracts, but these two I should like to see in everyone's hands. They deal with the ever more pressing question: "How does it come about that, among so many powerful preachers whom God has given his people in recent years, a fair number of awakened souls are indeed found, but so few people who press through to the peace of justification?" To this both give — Löhe in a forceful, sweeping brevity, Brunn in a plain, thorough discussion — the unanimous, irrefutable answer: true peace of man with God is not found in Zinzendorf's knee-shuffling sentimental piety (as it is practiced in Herrnhut, Gnadau, Neudietendorf, and their larger and smaller colonies), which is after all only a self-chosen path to life, a Pelagian holiness of works and self-righteousness, but solely in Christianity, in the unshakable faith in the immovable prophetic-apostolic Word of God, in the evangelical "Protestantism" of the Reformers. — Whoever is assailed by hypocrisy, sham piety, spiritual pride, and vain conceit of virtue, and would gladly be thoroughly cured, should by no means scorn Löhe's and Brunn's remedies, especially since they are so cheap as dirt and, bought in larger numbers, even cheaper still.

Church and Contemporary Notes.

I. America.

New Synods. The Lutheran Standard of Feb. 3 brings the official communication that on Nov. 5, 1859, seven ministers and delegates of twelve congregations assembled in Whitestown, Boone Co., Ind., for the purpose of forming a new Lutheran synod in that state. This synod is to bear the name: United Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church. As the basis of the union the following resolution was adopted: "This synod accepts the Bible as its sole rule of faith, of union, and of church discipline; the Apostles' Creed as the sum of Christian doctrine, which must necessarily be believed and held fast as the basis of Christian fellowship; and the unaltered Augsburg Confession, together with Luther's Small Catechism, as the explanation and expression of this synod's position in the biblical doctrines of which they treat." John Good was elected president and E. Rudisill