# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juni 1860_S178
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

178 Correspondence from Germany.

words reveal. Unfortunately Löhe has many kindred spirits also in the Prussian Lutheran church; even Ehlers, in his church paper, who otherwise always faithfully championed the right doctrine of the church, has in an inconceivable manner declared himself for the Löhe direction and takes the chiliasts (perhaps the majority of the Prussian Lutheran pastors?) under his protection. Still more decisively threatening, however, is the question of church government becoming, in which the parties for and against the Breslau synodical resolutions, and the state-church-bureaucratic manner of governing the church grounded in them, have already emerged quite sharply. What is still to come of all this can scarcely be foreseen. If one adds how confusedly things go and stand almost everywhere in our Lutheran territorial churches — as, for instance, that the Leipzig Mission House itself has taken so halved a stance against the Union — and much else besides, one might, humanly speaking, prophesy a coming general falling-apart of everything that has hitherto been held together in Germany as "Lutheran." A sifting must indeed come, and is always salutary, but this is the unspeakable misery: that the number of those who have found their way to the full purity and simplicity of the Lutheran confession is so very small, almost to the point of vanishing. — May the Lord, then, bring all the struggles awaiting us to a good end according to His counsel! Grant us, for our part, in every case, to abide in true faithfulness by His pure Word, that no one may rob us of our crown.*) —

So I have, by God's grace, now arrived at the point at which, some years ago, our brotherly correspondence took its occasion, in order now, in a wholly different manner than then, to take it up again — namely, at the request addressed to me by your synod, or rather by my old friends and brothers in your synod, to cooperate in gaining and educating students for your ecclesiastical institutions. With all my heart and with full joyfulness I can and will now also go hand in hand with you in this work, and help you in it with brotherly faithfulness, as far as lies within my small part. First of all, we hope to be able to assign you a faithful and excellent future worker, the teacher of the deaf and dumb, Spekhardt, of Friedberg in Hesse, who through connection with us has come to Lutheran resoluteness, and who has now withdrawn from the Hessian Union (which is founded especially on the purely unionist church government of Darmstadt

*) The dear brothers see here how wonderfully God has indeed ordained it, that he leads our dear Walther to Germany at just such an important time — even if by the rough way of the cross. Surely his presence there, under God's grace, will be of great, richly blessed significance for the circumstances of the church there, as of the church here. One can also sense this in the bitter gall which the arch-enemy, the devil, is just now, through the mouth of our Buffalo opponents, so abundantly spewing out over the dear man of God in his absence. Well, they thereby spare us the trouble of showing people of what spirit's children they are. This they do, as always, most excellently now, in the most senseless and immoderate manner — to their own harm rather. Let them go their way; they are self-condemned.
The Sender.