# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_M rz 1860_S96
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

96    Church and Contemporary Notes.

as also on the Lutheran side, is the proof that the words of Scripture, "given for us unto death," do not mean: given as a substitution in our place, into death; but rather that Jesus, in obedience to the divine will, which is directed toward the realization of the good, gave himself into death for us — that is, for our benefit, so that through laying hold of the new life we might have redemption and reconciliation. The notion that Christ gave himself vicariously, in our place, into death to satisfy divine retributive justice had its support only in the opinion of the earliest Christian era, that the last judgment was quite near and that Christ, by his death, had abolished the death that would then threaten. When that expectation went unfulfilled, one should rightly have abandoned that notion. That this did not happen, but that impossible notion was retained instead, while the view that grasps the death of Christ merely from the standpoint of a moral impulse was never fully developed — this is one of the chief causes why the falling-away from Christianity has become so exceedingly great. — So writes an anonymous author in the "Reformed Explanation of the Lord's Supper" published at Gießen by Heinemann in 1858. The proceeds of the little book are earmarked for the benefit of the rescue home at Klein-Rechtenbach in the district of Wetzlar. Should its spiritual yield also be the means of rescue in that house, then things must indeed stand badly with it. For the one means of rescue, the Word of God's revelation, is thrown away here; the holy apostles appear as men who form their views out of their own perception of things and circumstances, and of course err in doing so. That the author does not err in his view of the tendencies of "gifted theological teachers" is, sadly, a sorrowful truth. .... At the close of the little work the Hardenberg anecdote about Luther is served up again — that shortly before his journey to Mansfeld, in the year of his death, he retracted his doctrine of the Lord's Supper against Melanchthon. The constant renewal of this fabrication is itself an eloquent testimony that even on the reluctant side one recognizes in Luther the true center and anchor-point of the Reformation, even while one seeks one's comfort in men rather than in God in his Word."

"But let that be; it still weighs heavily on our soul that things stand very badly indeed with a great part of our faculty theologians, that between them and Scripture, and the church that once taught and confessed and still teaches and confesses, a grave conflict exists. In the face of the Word of God, which is read aloud before the people and, when not obscured and twisted by what is merely human, clearly says what its sense and will is, their speculative and dialectical prior assumptions, out of which they then develop against Scripture, cannot hold their ground. One may perhaps hold one's own against them in the study and in the lecture hall; but in the bright, open space, in the presence of the Scripture that has just been read aloud, the mist of shame overwhelms one, and one sinks down. The professors' detachment from practical churchly activity exposes them to trials which only a few are humble enough to overcome." (Braunschweigisches Kirchenblatt.)

Free Congregations. Uhlich, the foremost "spokesman" of the free congregations in Prussia, has listed the following as the positive principles of this fellowship: "1. I am a human being, and my striving is directed toward becoming ever more human. 2. I recognize that there are also human beings besides myself, whom I must accordingly respect as such. 3. I confess and do not deny that there were human beings before me as well, to whom I owe various things. 4. The world is my dear home, and my whole striving is directed toward becoming truly glad of my life upon it. 5. We human beings are all brothers and are to form one great family. 6. That this may come about — that indeed is the coming of the Kingdom of God, which Jesus himself already proclaimed."

"A Peculiar Way of Building Graves for the Prophets. On Reformation Day (!) the Werner play 'Martin Luther,' in the arrangement by Franz Dingelstedt, was performed in Weimar for the benefit of the Luther monument in Worms." (Pilger aus Sachsen.)

The Principality of Waldeck. "This little land," writes Münkel in the Neues Zeitblatt, "has now for some years likewise entered into the struggles that have for so long torn Prussia apart. Union and Lutheranism stand opposed to one another and have already been swept almost to the utmost heat of the conflict, where it is a matter of being or not being."