# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Januar 1861_S30
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

30 Ecclesiastical and Contemporary Notes.

lands of English descent estranged and withdrawn from it. In recent
years it has stood almost alone. The prejudices that prevail against our
church are such as if it were dead in spirit, powerless in its mission
efforts, negligent in its discipline, and unreformed in its doctrine."

The "Observer." — This paper, which before all others in the General
Synod opposes decisiveness in confession and speaks up for a doctrinally
indifferent Methodistic pietism, must now experience being disavowed by its
own party. According to the Missionary, the Susquehanna Conference, which
belongs to the Eastern Pennsylvania Synod, has resolved "that the
Evangelical Lutheran Church of this country needs and must have a church
paper corresponding to the requirements of the ""American"" Lutheran
Church," and "that the time has now come when those to whom living piety
and a sound life of faith are dear" should work together like one man
toward founding a new paper. Connected with this, no doubt, is the fact
that the previous owner of the Observer has sold his interest in that
journal to Pastors Stork and Diehl. The Observer certainly never imagined
that the very same outcry of "living piety," with which it sought to shout
down others, would one day be raised against it as well — and by its own
party at that!  S.

From the South. The Reformed Kirchenzeitung of Chambersburg, Pa.,
reports in its number of December 15 of last year: "The Presbyterian Synod
of South Carolina (Old School), at its recently held assembly, declared
itself on the question of the state's separation to the effect that no
reason existed why the Synod should separate from the General Assembly.
This resolution was adopted unanimously." As for that Synod's judgment on
the political separation (already declared) of South Carolina from the
United States, it stated, according to a report of the Missionary of
December 20: "What is at issue here is a duty toward God, who gave us our
rights — a duty toward our forefathers, whose blood and suffering procured
these rights for us — a duty toward our children, whose precious
inheritance we may not squander or dishonor — and a duty even toward our
slaves, whom we would be taking from under our protection to people who
neither know them nor would care for them as we do. The Synod therefore
does not hesitate to express its belief that the people of South Carolina
are now solemnly called to emulate their forefathers of the Revolutionary
era and to stand upon their rights. We live in the humble and confident
hope that God, whose truths we represent in this conflict, will be with us,
and, while we exhort our churches and our people to place their confidence
in God and to go forward on the earnest path of duty which His providence
opens before them, we — ministers and elders of the Presbyterian Church in
South Carolina, assembled as a Synod — wish to give them our blessing and
the assurance that we will fervently and unceasingly implore the care and
protection of Almighty God for them."

Concerning Dr. Schaff's hymnal — so the Reformed Kirchenzeitung reports
— a committee appointed by the Lancaster (Ohio) Classis expressed itself on
the whole favorably, "but felt nevertheless that the selection of hymns was
not as varied as might be wished, and bore no especially Reformed character.
While it nonetheless heartily recommends it to the Classis, it expresses the
wish that it might at least carry the correct ecclesiastical title on its
face." (The title is namely: "German Hymnal." We think that is the most
correct title it could bear; for a hymnal it is, German too; but neither
Reformed, nor Lutheran, and so forth. Or would the hymnal, through a
Reformed title, suddenly become Reformed?)

II. Abroad.

Signs of the Times. The Dresden Journal of November 6 of last year
writes: The assembly of Catholics and Protestants held in Erfurt on August
20 and 22 of last year, under the auspices of Count von Stolberg and
Professor Dr. Leo, is still much talked of here, and has entered a new and
interesting stage through an article in the official journal of the Roman
See. That papal government paper, which carries the official articles and
is printed in the press of the "Right Reverend Apostolic Chamber," reported
on that gathering in its number of October 20 of last year. It states
therein: A great number of Protestant and Catholic theologians and laymen
gathered at Erfurt in August of that year to prepare a mass conversion to
Catholicism from among Protestants who still held to some thread of faith
and who found Christian principles only in the Roman Catholic religion. —
Especially laudatory mention is made there of Prof. Dr. Leo, of whom it is
said that readers would know this famous man through the excellent article
he wrote in favor of the Pope. Meanwhile — that paper goes on to say — the
Protestant press, and those belonging to so-called positive Protestantism,
who have not yet thrown themselves into skepticism and who still