# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_September 1860_S285
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Church and Contemporary Affairs. 285

-node has a right either to depose him (!) or to strike his name from the roll, and since at one and the same time he can stand in membership connection with only One synod, the action of the synod thereby excludes him from the church (cuts him off from the church) (!!). If he is thus, in a rightful manner, removed from his preaching office, he ceases at the same time to be a member of the church, for the lesser is contained in the greater (!!!), until a congregation or another synod sees fit to restore to him his lost privileges or offices." — May God have mercy on a fellowship that chooses for itself as leaders and counselors men who handle the sanctities of the church with such unwashed hands, and who deal not only with the office, but also with the church membership — which encompasses the Holy Spirit, the forgiveness of sins, the holy sacraments, eternal life, in short the possession of all the heavenly goods of the church — the way only an enraged street urchin can deal with a coin he has given away, snatching it back again from the other.

"The Lutheran and Home Journal." Under this title the first number of a metamorphosis of the former monthly "The Home Journal" has reached us. The paper promises to place itself in the service of the General Synod, professes the "doctrines taught in Holy Scripture and known to the Evangelical Lutheran Church," and makes its entrance into the church with a very jovial "Defense of Our Existence."

II. Abroad.

How matters stand in the united Rhenish Palatinate is reported by the "Freimund," from the Kirchenbote, as follows: We last reported on the fanaticism with which the enlightened Union people there oppose the introduction of the new hymnal, while on the other hand the royal Consistory in Speyer, together with almost the entire clergy — 227 pastors, so that scarcely 50 are lacking from the whole body — insist just as inexorably on its introduction. Children who did not procure the hymnal were removed from religious instruction, from school and church, and confirmation was denied them. At this many parents, though with reluctance, did come around to procuring the hymnal; others, however, remained unmoved. So it came about that in some congregations no children at all were confirmed, in others only a few. One party set itself indifferently against it; another sought a way out in the neighboring lands, Hesse and Baden. This route, however, was soon cut off; only the town pastor Schellenberg in Karlsruhe was able to obtain from his church authority permission to confirm Palatine children.

Even more than this obstinacy of the Consistory, however, the Palatines have been embittered by that declaration which was issued at the clerical assembly on February 29 and forwarded to the high and highest offices. In this declaration it was stated that the resistance to the hymnal arose only from "conscious hostility to evangelical truth, or from a deficient and prejudiced examination"; that all the attacks were wholly groundless; and that a decidedly favorable judgment in favor of the book had been established among all members of the united church devoted to positive Christianity and evangelical doctrine." —

Such accusations the opponents of the hymnal believed they could not let rest upon them, and so it came to the well-known assembly held on April 22 at Kaiserslautern, which was attended by 5000 men from all districts of the Palatinate, for which even special trains of the railway were needed. The address to His Majesty, which was signed by this assembly, now declares the entire official conduct of the Consistory and all the ecclesiastical arrangements made by it since 1853 to be unlawful, and demands a return to the state of the year 1848. Namely, that the church electoral order for the congregations, diocesan and general synods, which came about in that year and was confirmed by the King, was altered in 1853 by a resolution of the General Synod, without this resolution having received the supreme confirmation; it therefore lacks all legal validity. One sees that the Pala-