# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Januar 1861_S29
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Ecclesiastical and Contemporary Notes. 29

And should this small number of volumes no longer go to press, and the
whole work thereby remain unfinished? When we weigh the merits of the
edition; when we consider how the Walch edition is beginning to grow scarce,
and when we consider, finally, how after this experience another publisher
would not so readily find the courage to attempt a new edition, we would
have every reason to lament this in the extreme.

We would like, with these lines, to revive interest in this edition; we
would like to urge upon the public that it support the publisher, but also
to encourage him not to withdraw his hand from the work now — in his own
interest, for the work, should it remain unfinished, would compensate that
much less for the many sacrifices of effort and money that have been made
for it. Should the publisher consider how many subscribers to the work,
given its slow appearance since 1826, have withdrawn sooner or later, he
might perhaps make them proposals enabling them to obtain, more cheaply,
the writings still lacking to them. Or he might also open, to begin with, a
new subscription specifically for the Latin writings on the history of the
Reformation — which, because they contain such important documents for the
developmental history of the Reformation, are perhaps most sorely missed by
the owners of the works already published — whereby at least the publication
of this series of writings would be made possible.

Matters stand such that we would be heartily content if only the
completion of this edition of Luther's works were achieved. We therefore
have not the courage to do more than merely hint how it has long been our
cherished wish that a complete edition of Luther's works might be joined by
a collection of Reformation-era documents, somewhat as was done in the Walch
edition and by Löscher.

Ecclesiastical and Contemporary Notes.

I. America.

The Evangelical Lutheran Synod of Illinois had appointed a committee to
negotiate a contract with the publishers of the Lutheran Kirchenbote (now
appearing in Selinsgrove, edited by Mr. Anstädt), of the Lutheran Herold
(edited by Dr. Stohlmann in New York), and of the Lutheran Zeitschrift
(edited by Pastor Brobst in Allentown, Pa.), by which the Synod might
publish its affairs in these papers or in one of them, in return for which
the Synod would obligate itself to introduce the chosen paper among the
Germans of the West and to increase its circulation. The committee has
given preference to the Kirchenbote, whose editor, among other things, has
accepted the condition imposed on him, to conduct the paper "in cordial
agreement with the position of the General Synod and of the Synod of
Illinois," which belongs to the former. Of late the Kirchenbote has
sometimes seemed, in a good sense, to go beyond the position of the General
Synod. The new place of publication and that contract are not exactly well
suited to strengthen the hope placed in the Kirchenbote.

The "Reformed" of this country have 391 ministers for their 1,045
congregations, and these consist of 92,684 members; the Episcopalians
number 135,767; the Congregationalists, who are found almost exclusively in
the New England states, number 240,000 members.

The German Reformed had, as the "Evangelist" reports (the organ, so to
speak, of those of American-Reformed persuasion), until a few years ago a
close connection with the Presbyterians and the Dutch Reformed. "It has
been broken off, on account of the new doctrines concerning the church and
the sacraments publicly advanced within our German Reformed Church — new,
that is, for us Reformed in America — and on account of the liturgical
changes recently proposed by men of this persuasion. This has estranged
from our church the sympathies of the Reformed churches of the