# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Januar 1861_S17
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

On the Union. 17

of the State and of the Church, or to feel oppressed by the hand of their
loving and enlightened confessor, when he breaks the bread for them and
hands it to them broken, etc., etc. — if only the clergy themselves were
not disinclined toward it, and knew how to instill in their congregations
the timidity of refusing these timely innovations. — All the tensions
and divisions in the Church have, after all, always and ever proceeded
from the clergy and not from the congregations. It is only fair,
therefore, that the reunification of the churches in the una forma et
norma [one form and rule] should likewise be brought about and expected
from the clergy alone. — But hinc illae lacrymae [hence those tears].

I have gone further in communicating my views than you asked of me, but
I count on your kind indulgence. The bread we have used from the
beginning of the new rite, which I have baked in Regenwalde by a certain
baker, and which our preachers from other synods also obtain from him,
consists of quite thin, mangled sheets, in eight, ten to twelve such
square pieces, of which I enclose one. These pieces hang together, but
are so divided by the baker's knife that the seams break easily. —

Such sheets we have lying on the paten and break them as we are about
to distribute them: formerly speaking at the same time the words, "Our
Lord Christ took the bread," etc., etc. At the first introduction of the
new rite these words were very fitting, because they set the
bread-breaking Christ so truly before the eyes and reminded, or made
everyone feel, that this must be right! — Now, since the introduction of
the new agenda, we follow entirely its prescription, break the bread
silently and distribute it from the paten, and shall, in this manner,
remain with this bread as well, so long as until something general on
this matter is ever determined. The Silesian Consistory proposes for
the Communion bread wafers of the same substance from which the hosts
are made. The proposal is certainly good! The ordinary roll does not
please me.

As it appears, my most highly esteemed brother in the Lord, your
synodical brethren are all inclined toward the new rite in the Lord's
Supper, or at least certainly easy to persuade to it. If that is the
case, I would advise that you all commune publicly in church at your
convention according to the new rite, without saying a public word
about it, as though it could not possibly be otherwise. If you are,
among yourselves, confessors to one another, I would further propose
that each of you soon afterward, with his congregation and with his
family, receive the Holy Supper in the new form from his confessor,
likewise with the demeanor of indifference toward the bread itself,
whether it be shaped this way or that, and as though the matter were
not even worth speaking of, before or after. — The greatest coolness
and indifference in answering those among the laity who ask or protest
I would especially and urgently recommend to every preacher. "The matter