# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Mai 1861_S153
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Church and Contemporary Affairs. 153

warding a bill to a subscriber in South Carolina, some remarks which were regarded as a gross insult to the people of that state and which found their way into the public papers, to the great detriment of the good name of the Observer and of its subscription list. In the Charleston Courier of March 7 we find an apology from the individual who appended the offensive remarks, accompanied by a letter from Dr. Bachman of Charleston, who calls upon the subscribers to continue their support of the paper (the Luth. Observer), bringing to their notice: 'The editors are southern men, and the chief editor a considerable slaveholder; hence all our southern interests are his as well.'" What interest has the Lutheran in communicating this to its readers?

The General Synod. In this body more and more persons are making themselves heard who maintain that the General Synod rests not upon a modified but upon an absolute confession of the churchly Confessions. This happens, among other places, in the "Lutheran" of Philadelphia in almost every number. In an article of April 5, Dr. Schmucker is reminded that he himself in the year 1824 gave the Tennessee Conference, under the authority of the synods of Maryland and Virginia, the following declaration for their reassurance: "As regards the power of the General Synod to introduce new doctrines into the church, we would not consent if the General Synod wished to exercise such a power, and we believe that no such power is given it in the constitution. The unaltered Augsburg Confession is the only confession that this synod accepts, or that has been accepted by our church in this land; and the very Plan Entwurf expressly laid down, p. 5, Sect. 4, that the General Synod has no power to make any changes in the doctrines that have hitherto been accepted in our church." — At the same time the writer who recalls this expresses his regret that the General Synod formerly annexed one synod after another, whereas in more recent times its enlargement proceeds much more slowly, and that now "scarcely half of the Lutheran church of the United States is represented in the General Synod," although it calls itself the General Synod of the Lutheran Church of North America.

The General Synod will not hold the convention announced for May 16 and the following days, on account of the political turmoil that has arisen. President C. W. Schäffer gives notice that the convention must be postponed until further notice.

The Historisches Zeitblatt for the month of April contains the following notice: "After the editor set forth in the last number, No. 11, of the Histor. Zeitblatt a plan according to which he intended to take over the Histor. Zeitblatt himself in future, though with a considerable price increase, which in that case would have had to take effect, he now finds it better to give up the said plan and to return the editorship to the former publisher and earlier editor, Herr (bookseller) Conr. Bär. The latter will again devote his industry more to historical narratives, while the undersigned (Deacon Hochstetter) wished above all to serve the churchly interest that is stirring the synodical relations here and in Prussia. It remains true withal (!) that our synod already has its doctrinal paper in the Informatorium, to which our synodical church is chiefly directed. We do indeed also have friends outside the synod, some of whom recently encouraged us again, as for example in Michigan and other places; but one may well compare friends to sugar: when one adds a few drops of water, it melts away." (They must be a strange class of Buffalo friends.) "Since such unsettled readers also find the price increase questionable" (which of course presupposes very unsettled hearts), "I am glad to hear from Mr. C. Bär that he is willing to risk a loss once more."

Religious Journals and Politics. That the reception of the material of political newspapers into religious papers, like every coupling of religion with politics, of the church with the empire of Caesar, of the spiritual with the worldly, is an evil, becomes quite manifest especially in times like the present. For one now reads