# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_October 1860_S316
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

316 From the Kingdom of Poland.

to bring it into the hands of the very awakened and thoughtful Christian
people. May the holy, true Savior Jesus, as head of the church, also
stand by our Norwegian brethren in their struggle against such
mighty and wild waves of error, and grant them joyful, free courage of
victory, as Luther sings: "God's Word they shall not overthrow, and
gain thereby no thanks." So may God rule.

From the Kingdom of Poland.

In Dr. Hengstenberg's Evangelical Church Gazette of July 14 of
this year, "a member of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of the
Kingdom of Poland" lets us take a look at the ecclesiastical conditions
of that country, reporting as follows:

"In the April number of this year, the Evangelical Church Gazette
carried a critique of the sermons of Dr. C. Schwarz, chief court preacher
in Gotha. Evangelical Poland is visited by the no less ruinous activity
of a deformer of its own. This is Pastor Ludwig, Evangelical Lutheran
superintendent in Warsaw, and as such general superintendent of the
whole Evangelical Lutheran Church of the Kingdom of Poland.

Pastor Ludwig, of Jewish origin, an eager admirer of Hegelian
philosophy already from his student days in Berlin, seems — whether
from the very outset or, if not, then certainly quite early on — to have
allowed it a decided and determining influence upon his theological
outlook, and in the course of time, in transferring his philosophical
ideas to the theological field, gradually to have sacrificed one article of
the church's faith after another to the logic of his principle; only thus
can one understand the claim voiced by his own hearers concerning his
ever-growing estrangement from Christianity. Having, through a
favorable turn of circumstances, reached the Warsaw superintendency
early, he has now for more than twenty years exercised in that position
an ever more decidedly anti-Christian influence upon all affairs. Thus
he works systematically at converting the entire body of the country's
clergy to his rational religion of the spirit, in that he on the one hand
overwhelms the older generation of pastors — those who studied abroad,
the so-called Pietists and Orthodox (terms he always uses
interchangeably) — with the ample means of bureaucratic harassment
and spirit-killing labors, so as to crush every stirring of spirit that might
become dangerous to him, such as pastoral conferences and the like;
while on the other hand he largely, and unfortunately with some
success, wins over to his side the younger generation, who studied at
Dorpat and returned having been touched in varying degrees by the
breath of the Spirit of God — partly through mockery and derision of
rigid literalist belief, partly through eloquent proclamation of a new,
higher, speculative conception of Christianity that flatters the flesh.
This, however, does not in the least prevent him from continually
binding the ordinands to the Holy Scripture and the confessional
writings of the Evangelical Lutheran Church with the scornful
qualification: insofar as they agree with Holy Scripture — nor from
himself remaining, quite undisturbed, in his office as a Christian and
specifically Evangelical Lutheran general superintendent. In keeping
with the above proceedings, the result too is, alas, what one would
expect: the more or less unspiritual conduct of life of many pastors, and
the neglected condition of many congregations, which for the most part,
under the negligent care of their pastors and the ever more —