# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_December 1860_S377
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Preliminary Report on the General Synod of the Prussian Lutheran Church. 377

...ground of their political machinations. But God be praised, that we have men, especially among our clergy, who, with a clear consciousness of their office and their service in the church of our Lord Jesus Christ, have taken up the necessary word with all resoluteness, living in the firm conviction that a general synod can take place only once our church has first organized itself according to the September laws — a synod from which it may then be expected that its resolutions will be framed in keeping with the nature of our Lutheran church. And so the energetic imperial-royal minister of worship, Count von Thun, appealing to his decree of 10 January of this year, declared in his ministerial decree of 3 March of this year that the definitive settlement of the evangelical church affairs in Hungary can be carried out only on the basis of the imperial patent of 1 September 1859.

Perhaps never has our Hungarian-Lutheran church stood in need of so much intercession and so warm a sympathy as now, when the danger threatens it not from without but from within. Therefore, dear German brothers in the faith, pray you too for her, and let us all pray most fervently to the triune, living God: that by his grace the Lutheran Church of Hungary may become both a living member of the church of our Lord Jesus Christ, to her own salvation, and also an outward organism to the joy of the whole Lutheran church. Yes, so may God grant it!

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(From the Pilger.)

Preliminary Report on the General Synod of the
Prussian Lutheran Church
from 13 September to 11 October 1860.
By the Reverend Pastor Eichhorn in Durlach.

If we are first to give an overall picture of the synod, we can do so best with the words (on which the closing sermon of Consistorial Councilor Nagel was also based): Thou, Lord, hast humbled us — and thou dost help us. The first two weeks of our time together were humbling in every way; a deep rift ran through the assembly and laid bare almost irreconcilable oppositions; general mistrust and an ever-widening fragmentation were the result of this. Grave, indeed unworthy, attacks were hurled against our dear Supreme Church Council and against our whole Lutheran church, in part from without, and in part, alas, from its own midst; and these had called forth, on the one hand, ill humor and bitterness, on the other, faintheartedness, as though the affliction of Joseph could no longer be healed at all. — But after we had not only been humbled, but had also humbled ourselves, the second part was all the more glorious, for then help broke in with power; at the close of the synod there was a glorious unanimity. — Within this frame we now wish to mark out a few features of the picture.