# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_November 1860_S351
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Church-Contemporary Affairs. 351

instruction, so that the old Baden [catechism] would thus be abolished entirely.
Hereby, for the first time in a long while, the Lutheran congregations have
been formally granted, in distinction from the Reformed and the United, the
right to religious instruction conforming to the Lutheran confession, on the
part of the church authority. How little one was actually inclined to
acknowledge this unreservedly appears from the fact that, only a few months
later, the restriction was made that the old Baden catechism, where it has not
yet been removed, is nevertheless to be retained provisionally as a text-book.

Obituaries. On April 26 there died F. W. K. Umbreit, for 40 years
professor at Heidelberg. In his last illness he had declared "that he must now
himself experience the Job whom he had so often expounded, and that he now
understood it better, when the pain there is portrayed as satanic." — On May
18 there died, at the age of 81, Ch. H. Zeller, inspector of the poor-school
teachers' institute at Bruggen on the Rhine near Basel, a rescue institution
well known for being combined with a teachers' seminary. He is the author of
the well-known book "Lessons of Experience." In the last 40 years Zeller
instructed 250 schoolteachers. — On August 2 there died at Coswig near
Meißen, in his 66th year, Pastor Otto Fr. Wehrhan (sen.), formerly pastor at
Kunitz near Liegnitz in Silesia, but suspended on December 20, 1834, because
he had refused the use of the Prussian Union agenda.

Oath. In Baden, as we read, the government goes so far as to respect the
unconditional oath which the clergy have sworn to their ecclesiastical
superiors even when the former, in obedience to their ecclesiastical
superiors' command, follow the government's orders, and that it will
therefore direct its punishment only against those who give the orders.

Belgrade. On July 22 the first Protestant church in Serbia was dedicated
here.

Prof. Dr. Delitzsch's commentary on Genesis has appeared in its 3rd edition.
A review of it is found in Kliefoth's theological journal. It says there,
among other things: "As especially significant we note that Delitzsch, in his
understanding of the Hexaemeron, has now come over to the restitution
hypothesis he formerly contested — namely, the historical explanation
according to which the tohu wa bohu ("waste and void," Gen. 1:2) is
understood in connection with the fall of Satan and his angels. The
tohu-wa-bohu is, according to Delitzsch, the glowing material mass into
which God's wrath-power melted down the original world corrupted by the
fall of the spirits. In the history of the Fall, the earlier view — that the
corruption which had entered the plant world was, in the tree of knowledge,
shut up by God and again unfettered and brought to power by man's guilt — is
defended against objections raised, and confirmed by reference to the
age-old popular belief according to which one can conjure the plague and
other ills into trees. It is further emphasized, with evident partiality, that
man became the one seduced by an animal — an accommodation to the animal
principle currently in vogue, which we regret to meet also in the author's
commentary on the Psalms. With the decided denial of the corporeality of
angels we can only agree. So much the less can he succeed in proving the
possibility of the alleged marriages of angels (Gen. 6)."

Prussian-United Church. From Greifswald (Pomerania) it is written under
date of July 25 of this year: The Ephoral office is to be taken from Pastor
Pippow in Anclam, the present superintendency-administrator, because his love
for the Lutheran confession comes out too strongly. Euen in Troptow is
likewise refused confirmation. It is reported on reliable authority that the
principle prevails in the leading circles: in the elections of superintendents
it is, in the first place, compliant inclination toward the Union that counts,
and only in the second and last place can spiritual competence and
professional qualification come into consideration. (N. Pr. Z.)

Rostock. The call of Prof. Dieckhoff of Göttingen to the vacant theological
professorship at Rostock has now been carried into effect. Michaelmas of this
year was the date he took up the post.