# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_November 1860_S344
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

344 Clöter, One Flock under One Shepherd, etc.

realities of life. That in the many negotiations of the 4th, 5th, and 6th decades it was especially Melanchthon who spoke the decisive word is a circumstance of the highest importance for the historical standing of Protestantism. Had it been Luther, or one of the Lutheran controversial theologians, one would now say: with such mediators the outcome could only have been rupture. That it did not succeed even with the mildest interlocutors on both sides is in fact a clear indication that this outcome was historically necessary. But is the harm really so great, that through the Reformation the Western Church broke apart into three separate churches? For since the eleventh century the Western Church had no longer been the Church, but only a fragment of the Church, severed from the Church of the East. And the Reformation was, after all, only the outlet of a current that had been running through the whole Middle Ages and growing ever mightier since the middle of the thirteenth century. The historical necessity that the stream of the Western Church had to break apart into separated branches was something Melanchthon did not recognize. He could not part with the thought that the unity of the children of God on earth required the unity of the ecclesiastical organism. As Melanchthon's father had begged his own to remain in unity with the Church, so the dying Melanchthon too was moved by the Lord's prayer that his disciples might be one. After three hundred years, neither through struggles nor through efforts at union has the ecclesiastical unity of the three separate churches of the West been achieved. And only one who, without looking at past or present, chases after abstract ideals of peace, can hope that the day will soon come when the divided churches will unite into one great Church.

(From the Erlangen Journal.)

Clöter, One Flock under One Shepherd in the Kingdom of Jesus on Earth before the Last Day.

Under this title a little book has already appeared in its third edition, expounding a series of biblical prophecies — being, specifically, churchly reflections which an evangelical pastor-administrator delivered, Sunday for Sunday, in his congregation from the Reformation Festival of 1858 to the second Sunday after Epiphany of 1859; and since those reflections are said to have been heard with no less diligence than the little book is now eagerly read, it seems well worth the trouble to take a closer look at its contents and bring them up for discussion in this place as well.

As the title of the work already indicates, what is at issue here is the peaceable kingdom of Jesus on earth, or what is otherwise called the thousand-year kingdom, or, as the author takes it to mean exactly the same thing,