# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_December 1860_S370
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

370 The Lutheran Church in Hungary.

...contented itself with legality. We were given the heathen poets and rhetoricians as our ideals, while Christ our Lord, with his divine being and his doctrine of salvation, counted for scarcely more with us than what the customary "Christmas remembrance" left behind from him as a pious heirloom. The hymns of the church were banished from the schools; prayers, too, were abolished as no longer suited to the times — no one ever reminded us of them..... We were ashamed even to fold our own hands in prayer, once we saw that our superiors did not think it necessary. Fellow students, you who now look back from the height of your forties upon your student years, remember whether it was not so, and even worse?"

Rightly does the same author say that in this period the starkest subjectivism ruled on the loosest ground of a fragmentary knowledge. "Everyone fancies himself enough of a theologian to sit in judgment on the fundamental articles of the evangelical faith, and to condemn them."

At this time Magyarism sought to assert itself in the Lutheran Church as well. Hence the Lutheran general inspector Count von Zay, who remained in his office until the year 1849, dared in the year 1840 to declare that Protestantism went hand in hand with Magyarism. And so, by virtue of his office, he banished the Latin, German, and Slavic languages from the gymnasia and theological institutions, and had the Magyar language introduced instead, with the intention of Magyarizing everything in time. Among the unbelieving and characterless clergy and teachers, however, he found great support in carrying out this plan of his. This count, mad for Magyarization, then, trusting in the great extent of his official influence, sought to force through a union between the Lutherans and the Reformed in Hungary — that is to say, that everything should become Magyar. Agitation was carried on on all sides and in every possible way; indeed, some Lutheran professors of theology at our theological institutions in Hungary demonstrated to the students and to the people, both orally and in writing, that there was no difference between these two churches as regards their essential nature. The danger was all the greater because the powerful landed proprietors among the Lutheran Slovaks and Germans, denying the essential nature of the Lutheran Church, were enthusiastic, on church ground, for Magyarization. A savage terrorism and brutal cruelty were their weapons. But so that we may be free of all suspicion of partisanship, we appeal here to the historical account of the honest Catholic Count von Majláth (who is himself a Magyar): "Newer History of the Magyars, Regensburg 1853," 2 volumes, vol. 1, p. 254 ff.: "The agitation for the Magyarization of the Slavs in the Carpathians moved chiefly on the ground of Protestantism ... Zay, a zealous man of the opposition, was entirely devoted to the Magyar agitation ... He pressed with all his might