# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Februar 1861_S62
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

62 Church and Contemporary Notes.

also — which God in His grace prevent — the work of our Church might be disturbed. On this point the Observer says first, with reference to the General Synod: "What effect this agitation will have on the Lutheran Church of the South we cannot yet determine. The State of South Carolina has withdrawn from the Union, and we fear that this, if not immediately, will nevertheless before long bring about a division of the Church. So far our Church has remained free of confusion, since the slavery question has with proper tact been excluded from our ecclesiastical proceedings; but whether this will be possible in the future is highly doubtful." May God grant all the Christians of this land, through His Holy Spirit, right fear before His richly deserved wrath, and sincere repentance and humbling before Him, so that for Christ's sake He may look upon us in grace and spare us and our land! S.

The Christliche Botschafter of Cleveland, O., organ of the Albright People, or Evangelicals, writes under January 5: "It happens here and there that preachers preach from the pulpit against infant baptism. I should think, indeed, that a preacher of the Evangelical Association ought to know better than to let himself be guilty of such a thing, since our Association as such acknowledges infant baptism and has formally introduced it in its rituals. Should a brother here or there be of a different opinion, he ought not to seek to burden others with it, but should rather consider that he, as a preacher of the Evangelical Association, has bound himself to its doctrine and church order, and should at least not protest against it, whether in public or in private. A house divided against itself cannot stand. The Evangelical Association otherwise distinguishes itself favorably by its unity in doctrine, and we hope that it will remain at least consistent on this point. If we wish to preach against infant baptism and reject it as a Roman error, then let us go over to the Baptists all at once — then we are being consistent. But if infant baptism has grounds in the teaching of Jesus, as the Evangelical Association acknowledges it does, then let us act in accordance with our confession." — In this outburst there is admittedly expressed a fair amount of unclarity about the true reasons why unity of doctrine or purity of doctrine (for the two amount to the same thing) is to be earnestly maintained; yet the zeal expressed here nevertheless puts to shame all too many so-called Lutheran preachers who are not only indifferent to purity and unity of doctrine, but who, when others are zealous for it, promptly denounce them as Lutheran popes.

The Christliche Apologete, organ of the German Methodists, expects, according to the report of the Christliche Botschafter, 13,000 subscribers in the new year. The influence of Methodism on the local German population must therefore, despite the fact that the sun of Methodism is setting among the local Germans, still be quite considerable. In any case, the new states are its most fruitful field.

Newspaper Literature. According to the Christliche Botschafter, there are printed in the United States 254 daily, 115 tri-weekly, 31 semi-weekly, 1,902 weekly, 95 semi-monthly, 100 monthly, and 19 quarterly periodicals, in all 496,409,978 newspaper sheets. From this one may form some idea of the power that the newspaper press represents here.

II. Abroad.

Concerning Pastor Löhe's suspension and restitution, the Erlangen periodical for the month of November of last year gives, "on the basis of exact knowledge of the facts," disclosures which put it beyond all doubt that the rumors — as though the consistory had first demanded something unjust and only afterward relented, while Pastor Löhe had emerged from the matter vindicated — rest partly on misunderstandings, partly on misrepresentations, and are wholly without foundation. Löhe had refused to acknowledge malicious desertion, contrary to the general doctrine and practice of the whole Lutheran Church, as grounds for a marriage having been dissolved. In order not to press his conscience, he had for a time been suspended, so that the legally permitted remarriage of a maliciously deserted husband could be performed within Löhe's parish; once this had been done, the suspension was lifted. Löhe had, to be sure, before his reentry into office, requested a declaration vindicating him, but received an acknowledgment of his activity only in general terms, while an approval of his conduct with regard to the case in question was refused him.

Prof. Dr. Hengstenberg was charged before the Royal City Court in Berlin with having edited, in his preface to the previous volume of his Evangelische Kirchenzeitung, "without excluding political and social questions contrary to its designation as being for purely scholarly subjects," free of the bond required of the press, since political papers are not permitted to do this. In vain he appealed to the fact that he judged political and social conditions from a purely theological standpoint, and had in this a Luther and a Gerhard as predecessors. Judgment was rendered;