# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_M rz 1861_S94
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

94 Church Contemporary History.

of this Bible is nevertheless very reasonable. It costs, in a single
volume paperbound, 6 Thaler. Copies bound in genuine morocco leather
with gilt edges and rich stamped ornamentation after a design by J.
Schnorr, 3½ Thaler more."

Hengstenberg, Prof. Dr. E. W., Freemasonry and the Evangelical
Pastoral Office. 3 parts. Berlin, G. Schlawitz. 10 sheets, large
octavo. 22½ Groschen.

Reader in World History, in 3 parts, by Wilhelm Redenbacher.
Stuttgart, Steinkopf. 10 Neugroschen.

"Thus far the first volume has appeared, which reaches up to the
Emperor Augustus. The author is already known as a good
storyteller."

L.

Church Contemporary History.

I. America.

The number of Catholics in the United States amounts, according to
the Catholic newspaper in Boston, at present to three and a half
million, children included. Europe counts (among its 275 million
inhabitants) 146 million Catholics.

General Synod. After the proposal had been made that a religious
periodical should be founded which would be the official organ of the
General Synod, the Lutheran Observer of January 18 shows, in a lively
account, that this is quite impossible, since in that case so many
differences of doctrine and directions would have to be represented
that no living person would be able to accomplish this task. So the
gentlemen of the General Synod themselves know quite well what a
Babel their structure is, which they call the "General Synod of the
Evangelical Lutheran Church in the United States."

The American Tract Society. The American Messenger informs its
friends, in its February number, that in the last two or three years its
income from voluntary gifts has fallen more than $50,000 short of its
expenditures; that if the gifts do not increase, the Committee will have
no other choice than likewise to reduce its gifts of books and tracts for
the needy at home and abroad and to dismiss its colporteurs. Although
we cannot agree with the principle on which the Tract Society
operates, it is nevertheless nothing less than joy that moves us at this
report. This decline of participation in that work is scarcely a sign
that the assertion of the full truth has increased in our America; it
is probably rather a sign of growing religious indifference.

The (papist) Wahrheitsfreund glories greatly that "under the White
Mountain near Prague, where Elector Maximilian of Bavaria defeated
the army of the Protestants in 1620," last August the Sisters of Mercy
solemnly dedicated a great house for the reception of foundlings. At
once 200 foundlings were brought in! By this account, papist Prague
must be a horrible, unchaste nest.

The Lutheran Observer has lately adopted a rather warlike attitude. In
its number of February 1, a correspondent who calls himself "an old
Observer man" writes: "Let the old editor not be afraid of
controversies; the Church of Christ never won an inch of ground
without controversies — she is a militant Church, and she must fight
her way through error and sin." In the same number the editor gives a
lengthy apology for controversies, without excluding personal attacks,
and demonstrates the necessity of these from the duties of a true
editor, who, like a pastor, ought to be a watchman, appealing here to
the example of a Huss, a Luther, the prophets and apostles, and Christ
Himself. He de-