# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_October 1860_S318
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

318 Church-Historical Miscellany.

is. Not only the Church Postil, but also the Table Talk — harder still
to obtain in a good edition — are a true ornament for every pastor's
library, and are also, in many respects, instructive and edifying for the
layman as well.

Church-Historical Miscellany.

I. America.

Georgia. A number of members of the Evangelical Lutheran Synod of South
Carolina who live in Georgia have resolved to withdraw from that synod and to form a
synod of Georgia.

The "Lutheran Board of Publication," accused of serving one party within
the American Lutheran church in the selection of its publications, has made public the
following resolution of its own: "Resolved, that the Lutheran Board of Publication, while
acknowledging the existence of various tendencies within the church, recognizes no party
and will not identify itself with any party movement, but rather intends, as soon as the
funds on hand justify it, to publish any book or tract, without regard to party, provided
that such book or tract contains nothing of a polemical character with respect to the
doctrines and practices of our church, and provided that such book or tract possesses
sufficient Lutheran worth." (Lutheran Observer of Aug. 24.)

Their "Lutheran." This newly appeared paper is, as we gather from the
issue of Aug. 24, already being welcomed in the Lutheran Observer as an organ that goes
"heart and soul for the unaltered Augsburg Confession, for the clerical gown, wax
candles, and crucifixes." The Observer opines that if the Lutheran were to gain all the
subscribers of the Missionary, the Standard, and the Herald, nothing would be lost or
gained thereby beyond a little more concentration; the one real gain for the cause of the
Lutheran would be to win over the subscribers of the Observer, which has hitherto
contributed no little toward transforming the Lutheran church from a cold, lifeless mass
of German orthodoxy into a living branch of the church of Christ. "May, then," cries the
writer in the Observer, "those who are opposed to backward progress — to liturgies, to
clerical gowns, to bands, to wax candles, to crucifixes, to baptismal regeneration, to the
real presence, to priestly confession and absolution, and to all the other phases of
semi-popery — stand firm with the old Observer."

Growth of the nominal membership of the denominations in the United
States. The Episcopal Recorder gives the following figures:

                            Ministers   Min's    Rates of
                            1800        1850     increase.
Protestant Episcopal ····· 264         1,326    6 to 1
Presb., old and new school  300         4,196    14 " 1
Meth., old and new side ··  287         5,646    19¼ " 1
Ev. Luth. ················  50          800      16 " 1

                            Members     Members  Rates of
                            1800        1850     increase.
Protestant Episcopal ····· 11,978      72,000   6 to 1
Presb., old and new school  40,000      337,839  8¼ " 1
Meth., old and new side ··  64,894      160,380  17¾ " 1
Ev. Luth. ················  20,000      200,000  10 " 1

Antichrist. In the August number of the "Signs of the Times" we read: "Was
that first Napoleon perhaps his (the Antichrist's) forerunner, his herald, as John the
Baptist was for the Savior, for the Christ or Anointed of God? Is the present Emperor of
the French perhaps now the Antichrist to be expected, the anointed of hell? It almost
seems so. All the circumstances and conditions now present lead one to suspect it, or at
least to sense it. His whole character and conduct are unique of their kind."

Marriage among Blood Relations. Governor Magoffin of Kentucky
proposed, in his message of last December, the enactment of a law forbidding marriage
between blood relations, on the ground that a large proportion of the children sprung
from such marriages are feeble-minded, deaf-mute, blind, consumptive, or scrofulous, and
become a burden upon the state.

Mennonites. At the conference of the General Mennonite Community recently held
at West Point, Lee Co., Iowa, it was resolved, among other things: "That a theological