# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Januar 1861_S16
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

16 On the Union.

should learn of it, etc. Both venerable old men are now already at rest.
I opened the year of grace with divine service and Communion, for which
I brought the bread with me, and the congregations likewise already knew
beforehand how it would be done.

Thus the new rite has been introduced in the 23 churches of this Synod,
and never and nowhere has an unfavorable word been spoken about it,
nor has a sour face ever, anywhere, been made over it, because the
preachers themselves gave no occasion for it! To this end, however, we
preachers have gathered once, sometimes even twice, a year, and have
besides constantly kept up communications with one another by circular
letter, have taken counsel together, admonished, encouraged one another
to the good work, and rejoiced over the happy results of our undertakings.
— It is worth much, and everything depends upon it, that the brethren of
a synod should be of one mind, love one another as true brothers, and
place the fullest confidence in the primus inter pares! This confidence,
which I enjoy (since, as senior of the Synod, I myself installed all my
synodical brethren but one, and in part also ordained them), this
confidence brings it about that my synodical brethren in all official
matters wish only as I wish, and unconditionally accept and follow my
counsel. Far be it from me, my dear brother, to boast of this before you.
No, I write this with true emotion, which I always feel when I think of
my younger brethren in the Synod, who all recognize how greatly I love
and esteem them, how entirely I live for them, and who know how to repay
me so richly for it. — It is likewise to our unity of spirit that we owe
it that we introduced the new liturgy in all the churches as if at a
single stroke; likewise without question and without disturbance, yet
with the necessary caution of having a public notice read out from all
the pulpits, which I enclose for your kind judgment. — Not a single voice
has risen up against it. Everyone submits with wise discretion to the
will of the King; everyone feels within himself the sacred obligation, as
proof of his fear of God, rather to concede the jus liturgicum to the
King than to dispute it with him! (by which latter course nothing was
ever gained on this earth! —)

I confess it myself, that the introduction of all these innovations,
from now on and increasingly, becomes ever more difficult, since from
above one is beginning to instill the wholly false principle that the
congregations must be consulted and give their consent! No, say I, and
so say my synodical brethren: it is enough if the congregations silently
acquiesce in what their pastors choose for them in their ecclesiastical
affairs; and all justice is satisfied if every member of the congregation
has free access to his preacher, to be instructed by him privately as to
the reason for such changes! — It would indeed never occur to the
evangelical congregations to arrogate to themselves a right of
contradiction against the ordinances of the