# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_M rz 1861_S95
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Church Contemporary History. 95

even declares: "Nevertheless we ought to contend for the truth in love toward it, and in the Spirit of Christ and in reverent and worthy language. Although there are occasions where jest, wit, irony, satire and sarcasm are not only justified, but are also the most effective weapons and by no means unbecoming to the earnest Christian." — When we uttered and practiced such principles, people cried out and still cry out today: Oh, the fanatic! Oh, the pope!

The Old School Presbyterians in the South are not inclined to consent to a separation of the southern synods from the northern ones, however much the separation of the states now going forward seems to press toward it. The Synod of South Carolina declared at its last session that it desires no division of the church. The "North Carolina Presbyterian" fully approves this resolution, and the two oldest Presbyterian papers in the North, "The Banner" in Pittsburg and "The Presbyterian" in Philadelphia, express the same sentiment. (D. C. B.)

"The Missourian Spirit and the Doctrine of the Lutheran Church." Under this title Pastor Grabau has issued a pamphlet in which he sets the alleged "Missourian spirit" over against the alleged "doctrine of the church." It is meant to be an imitation of the "tabular survey of certain manifest errors of Pastor Grabau," which we gave in the 9th volume of the "Lutheraner." But in that survey we made three columns; in the first we set the doctrines of Pastor Grabau in his own words, in the second the doctrine of the Roman church likewise in the Romanists' own words, and in the third the doctrine of the Lutheran church likewise in the own words of our Symbols or of recognized Lutheran teachers, placing them over against one another and always indicating exactly where what was cited is to be found. In doing so we demonstrated incontrovertibly, and to the eye, that all the doctrines peculiar to Pastor Grabau resemble the Roman ones as one egg does another, and that these same doctrines have long since been expressly rejected, opposed and condemned by the Lutheran church. Pastor Grabau has never attempted to refute this survey of ours, and he cannot refute it. He hoped that in time the grass would grow over the matter, that the proof advanced would fall into oblivion, that it would thus gradually lose its effect again, and that the impression made would be effaced. But now Pastor Hugo Hanser has had the survey printed again. At this Pastor Grabau grew uneasy. What was he to do? The survey was irrefutable. Stop, he thought, I will help myself by having something printed that has the same shape as that fatal survey. No sooner thought than done. But the affair naturally had to turn out badly. The doctrine we had set forth he naturally could not reproduce as we had actually stated it, for then everyone would have seen that it is the purely Lutheran doctrine; especially if in the second column he had supplied the doctrine of the Lutheran church on the particular points in literal citations; to find a refutation out of the Symbols and recognized Lutheran theologians would have been still less possible. So he helped himself by entitling his first column "Missourian Spirit," and subsuming under it whatever he chooses to have taken for such; and by heading his second column "Doctrine of the Church," prudently not: Of the Lutheran Church, and letting his Buffalo theology figure under it. In this way it was of course easy to make us teach anything he pleased and to make the "church" set anything against us. It is only a pity that nothing is thereby proved except Pastor Grabau's desperate position, in which he had to grasp at this expedient if he wished at least to give the appearance of having taken his revenge. What follows is amusing. Pastor Grabau has sent his pamphlet to many people in Germany, even to those who did not ask for it, and has thereby put himself on a level with the tract peddlers, of whom he is otherwise no friend; for he knows very well that when one hawks the truth about like sour beer, one does not commend it, but only renders it suspect. Among others he also sent his pamphlet to a theologian who is a friend of ours, probably in order to convert him from his "Missourian" ideas. But this man writes to us that we had probably sent him the pamphlet, for indeed there is nothing by which one can better come to know the unlutheran doctrine and the unlutheran spirit of the Buffalo Synod than by this wretched pamphlet! Pastor Grabau ought therefore in future to proceed more cautiously in dispatching the products of his mind, and send them only to those of like mind, with whom they will doubtless attain their intended purpose, since they find their own views in them. But to expose his products to sensible Lutherans is very imprudent. They ought to know of them only by hearsay, as of genuinely Lutheran pronouncements. In this way the Buffalo Synod might best preserve a Lutheran reputation for itself.