# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juli 1860_S221
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Church Chronicle. 221

-dained administration of the means of grace, but rather on behalf of
the administrators; not for Word and Sacrament, on which alone
everything depends, but for the poor persons — for us poor persons who
dispense them, on whom so little depends; not for the large-hearted and
grandly conceived organism, ordered in all its members — that is, the
congregation, according to offices, estates, and callings — of a genuinely
Protestant hierarchia triplex in its status ecclesiasticus, politicus, and
oeconomicus, but rather for the reservation, and the crippling, of only
the first of these, the ministerium verbi — no, of the whole evangelical
jewel of justifying faith, or in other words, of the general priesthood of
all believers itself — into the mediating privilege of what is at bottom a
crypto-papist corporation, set over against the rudis indigestaque moles
of an almost Christ-forsaken congregation — this has supported and
refreshed me. If the earlier form of the book has already met with the
favor of not a few well-disposed and indulgent friends, then I may surely
hope and ask for the like — indeed with even greater confidence — for the
present one, which, thanks to the new publisher's care, has in any case
become obtainable in a considerably more compact yet at once handsomer
and clearer print."

— —
Church Chronicle.

I. America.

From the Pennsylvania Synod. From a report of the one hundred and
thirteenth annual convention of the Pennsylvania Lutheran Synod in the
"Missionary" we take the following passage: "A discussion arose over the
act of baptism, namely over the validity of the act with respect to those
who had been baptized by impostors who passed themselves off as
Lutheran ministers. It was decided that in such cases the act of baptism
is invalid, but must nevertheless be recognized when it was performed
by ordained ministers of any Christian communion." From this it appears
that the Pennsylvania Synod believes that something essential to baptism
is lacking when the baptizer is not ordained. But wherever everything
that belongs to the essence of baptism is carried out, the baptism itself
cannot be invalid.

The General Conference of the Methodists, in its session at Buffalo
on May 31, adopted the following resolution on slavery as a "chapter,"
or churchly decision and rule: "We declare that we are as thoroughly
convinced as ever of the great evil of slavery. We believe that the
buying, selling, or holding of human beings, to be used as property, is
contrary to the Golden Rule and to the rule in our Discipline, which
requires of all who wish to remain among us that they do no harm or
injury to their neighbor and avoid all evil. We therefore most kindly
exhort all our ministers and congregations to keep themselves free of
this great evil, and to seek its eradication by all lawful and Christian
means."

A German University. In an English newspaper we find the following:
A gathering of German citizens was recently held in Chicago, Ills., to
consider the plan of founding a German university in America. After
the importance and necessity of such an institution had been set forth,
steps were taken to call such an institution into being. A committee