# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juni 1860_S174
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

174 From the Ecclesiastical Present.

ground. And we should indeed be tempted to overturn Macarius's and Löhe's conclusion, were it not in itself already far too flimsy. So the cross of Christ had to work a miracle, because it had pleased the Lord, by Elisha's bones, once to raise a dead man, and by Peter's shadow and Paul's sweat-cloth and cloak to heal the sick? Perhaps one may then also go on to say: if Elisha's bones did this, and Paul's cloak, why not the relics of the apostles, of the saints in general? But it seems to us that, for a plain evangelical judgment, apart from the lack of historical attestation, another conclusion lies nearer at hand — namely this, that the Lord, whose chastising words against the wonder-craving people we know, will not have confirmed and furthered by a miracle of his own the church's aberration in this particular.

With this we may close — not because we lack further material, but because what has been discussed suffices to establish our earlier judgment. The last saint of the "Rose Months" is the "deaconess Olympias," who died as a martyr of the pastoral office in grief over the banishment of her bishop Chrysostom, and who "stands like a pointing finger toward our own circumstances." Of her — who, on account of her attachment to John Chrysostom, was counted by his enemies among the "Johannites" — "a disciple of our own day can learn, and take a lesson from her, how one need not shy from being called a Johannite; but also how, for all one's womanliness and dependency, one can nonetheless be and become more than a mere adherent of pastors and teachers, namely a follower of the Lamb of God" (p. 383). At this close of the book we could not help but recall the preface, according to which the "Rose Months" was written in the interest of the deaconess house at Neuendettelsau and dedicated wholly to the female sex (p. VII). And we agree with that judgment of Löhe's — provided only that the pastors, after whose names the women disciples call themselves, take it to heart to lead them away from all human byways of preference, to the Lamb. We are certain that Löhe wills this; nor do we belong to those who fear that he is on the road to Rome.*) Löhe has, as we saw above, proved that he knows how to change course: he has already done so on the one side; we may hope that he will also do so on the other side. But one thing we will not conceal. The disciples outrun their master in drawing out the consequences, even against his will. And since we have found the dogmatic foundation on which Löhe now

*) When a servant of the Lutheran church incites unsuspecting evangelical "women disciples" to take part in the Roman-heathen veneration of the mere "strength of soul" where it shows itself in self-seeking, self-chosen, supposed perfection, and this incitement occurs in conscious opposition to the knowledge of the divine will newly regained through the Reformation, the warding-off of that fear appears to us here of little account.    L. and W.