# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Mai 1861_S159
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Church and Contemporary News. 159

Fürstenwalde. Of this theological monthly of the Prussian Lutheran church, as we learn from the Pilger, three numbers have already appeared. Among other things it contains an article by Pastor Brunn: God's Word and Luther's Teaching, in vindication of the Missourians' theory of the ministry, directed especially against Pastor Löhe and others. Unfortunately the periodical has not yet reached us.

Rostock, Feb. 26. The Weser-Zeitung reports on this: Baumgarten had, through a pamphlet, "A Way to Peace," called upon the members of the Rostock congregation to admonish Consistorial Councilor Krabbe to withdraw the charge he had brought against Baumgarten of a knowing and shameless breach of his oath of office. Six hundred of the most respected inhabitants of Rostock met this call with an address to Krabbe, who thereupon brought suit. The court opened an investigation against B. and the fifteen chief promoters of the address, and against these alone. Since the court could not agree on a verdict, one was obtained from the Justice Chancellery at Güstrow. The judgment sentenced Baumgarten to a fine of 30 thalers, seven of the other accused to 20 thalers each, and discharged the rest from the proceedings. All the accused have appealed against this judgment.

Hanover. There was an intention here to establish a superior consistory; but, as is written to the Neue Pr. Z., so many difficulties are said to stand in the way that the plan is for now being abandoned, and only the change is to be introduced whereby the smaller Lutheran consistories of the country are subordinated to the consistory at Hanover, which already comprises the greater part of the Lutheran congregations.

Dirschau, March 1. The town council is patron of the evangelical church; now, however, a Jew has become a member of the council, and the pastor felt scruples about continuing to hold the customary intercession for the patron in the church prayer. He first asked the council to waive it; the council declined, and so the matter came before the consistory, which decided in favor of retaining the previous form.

Württemberg. After great unrest had arisen throughout the country on the evangelical side over the Concordat to be concluded with the Pope, the King had an address, intended to calm the people, read out from all the pulpits, in which the King, speaking of himself, expresses himself among other things thus: "I, as evangelical prince and head (!) of My territorial church."

A Review of a Testimony from Our Synod. As is well known, Pastor Fick, while he was staying in Germany, published the following pamphlet: "Testimony from the Evangelical Lutheran Church of North America. Hildesheim, published by Gerstenberg. 1859." 45 pp., octavo. This pamphlet is reviewed by Licentiate Ströbel in Zeitz, in the second quarterly number of the Rudelbach-Guericke periodical, as follows: "On a friend's advice, Mr. Fick, pastor of the Evangelical Lutheran congregation in Detroit, Michigan, communicates to us, after a commendable preliminary report of his own composition on the state of the Lutheran church in North America, the 'Preface of the Editors to the fifteenth volume of the Lutheraner,' which consists in answering the question, 'Why do we cling so firmly to the Lutheran Church?' and forms the main part of the pamphlet before us. The author of the preface is Professor Walther, one of the precious few who in our time really know where the reins of evangelical Lutheranism hang, and who also know how to cut a pen that writes correctly-Lutheran, for the sake of an adequate expression of their conviction. It is a true refreshment to read these few pages. One finds in them nothing of mediation-theology's scientizing pretense, nothing of any "sisterly" longing for the dear papacy and its hundred-headed sacrament-dispensing priesthood, and in particular not a breath of the "spirit of gentleness and moderation" (on the contrary, it says outright, p. 18: "We do not name the Rationalists, Unitarians, and Swedenborgians here, for since they deny the Holy Trinity, these people are not to be reckoned among Christians but among the heathen") — but for that very reason also not a trace of hypocrisy and flattery, of dishonorable lying and deceit, of the fog and brimstone of the ear-mongers, but