# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juli 1860_S223
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Church Chronicle. 223

a synodal and presbyterial constitution corresponding to the original, Christian-
apostolic constitution of the congregation and resting on the New Testament principle
of the general priesthood, could meet the wishes and needs of the evangelical Church
in the non-Hungarian lands, and they set forth the express demand that the provisional
church order — issued in execution of the imperial patent of September 1 of last
year by the Minister of Worship's decree of September 2 of last year for the
Evangelicals in Hungary and the associated lands — should, with whatever modifications
may be needed, also find application in the German-Slavic crown lands. (A. K. Z.)

Brunswick. "As regards the condition of the congregations," reports the
Brunswick Church Gazette, "it is, in many places, especially in the towns, deeply
distressing: whole strata of the population turn away from the Church and are wholly
estranged from the Word of God and hostile to the Church; the sacrament is not
sought; there are congregations where scarcely a tenth of the people take Communion
in the course of the year. It cannot be otherwise: the fruits of the long-standing
rationalist preaching must ripen. In many other congregations, and in some districts,
things stand better again, where the morning and afternoon services are well
attended, where the hearers are not lacking even at the weekday service, where a
twofold, indeed in several congregations even a threefold, celebration of the Lord's
Supper in the year is the rule, where church life, despite various disturbing
influences, has as it were held its ground endemically (that is, grown into the
people and become infectious) — but even in such congregations there is generally
a lack of sound, vigorous knowledge of salvation.

If we look further into the circles of those who wish to be living Christians, here
too there is all manner of weakness: a great want, often, of well-formed spiritual
understanding and of real conviction; a predominant Christianity of feeling, far
removed from the faith and confidence that rest on God's Word alone and on the
promises given to the sinner; a spiritual excitement (or overheating) and a pure
life of enjoyment that is not satisfied unless the nerves are given their due
stimulation; a murky mixture of Christian and worldly nature — Christian thoughts
that harbor worldly aims, and worldly aims that seize upon Christian motives and
Christian words, so that one can no longer tell truth from lie; God's Word is
mixed with worldly wisdom in order to make it more conformable to the world and
more palatable; Christian words, works, and feelings are used to adorn and show
oneself off, and the Christian nature stands in the service of vanity. Genuine,
truly Lutheran Christianity is childlike, simple, modest, maidenly, and beautiful,
but it does not know that it is beautiful; it goes about its way in simplicity and
real fear of God and makes no great talk of itself; it neither is nor wishes to be
anything special, but shows itself only as the wholly serving faithfulness in the
carrying out of every earthly calling. Signs of renewal and of the reviving of the
Church, the possibility of a wholesome regeneration (or rebirth) on an untouched
confessional foundation, but alongside it also decay — in part a deep decay in every
sphere of church life — that is our churchly situation."

On the attempts at conversion in a gathering of grisettes in London, one reads,
as the A. K. Z. (March 28) reports from London papers, the following: On February 8,
at midnight, the great hall of the restaurateur in St. James's Hall, Regent Street,
opened for a gathering the like of which no one has doubtless ever seen. Invitation
cards had been distributed in the streets and in certain coffee-houses and public
places to the fallen girls who at that hour are accustomed to ply their shameful
trade, inviting them to a midnight tea at the restaurant named. Toward twelve o'clock
a great number of them, most of them elegantly got up, were seen arriving. They were
served with tea, coffee, and cake, and partook agreeably of this hospitality, forming
chatty circles and asking one another in astonishment what the purpose of this
mysterious summons might be. Before long the gentlemen appeared