# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juli 1861_S206
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

206 Some Matters Concerning the Division within the Leipzig Mission.

make experiments with it on the Church, as the many and daily newly
sprouting sects show. And once we come to have entirely free rein among us in
such things, the fanatical spirit will see to it that we do not lag behind
America.


Some Matters Concerning the Division within the Leipzig Mission.

The conflict still burns which Missionary Ochs first stirred up over the
handling of caste relations in East India, which Pastor Moraht in Mölln in
the Lauenburg territory furthered, and which the teacher Schüß in Dresden
transplanted to Saxony. In the Leipzig Ev.-Luth. Missionsblatt of April 1 we
find the following "Declaration" of the Collegium of the Ev.-Luth. Mission,
signed by Dr. A. von Harless on March 18:

"Lest our silence toward the agitations which here and there are still rife
within our mission, and which of late have risen to the utmost pitch, be
misconstrued from any quarter, we believe we must not omit the declaration
that the manner of warfare adopted by our opponents, and emerging the more
repellently the longer it lasts, prevents us from entering into a public
negotiation with them. For not only does that party seek, by distortions, by
the spreading of groundless rumors, by false catchwords and slogans coined in
the party interest (such as, e.g., mission 'with' and 'without' caste; union
between heathenism and Christianity; orthodoxy without godliness, etc.), and
by similar means much used in the world at present, to displace the real
state of the case entirely; but it also in part does not shrink from
pursuing, in documents circulated publicly and secretly, by manifest untruths
and base slanders, the intention of tearing our mission apart, an intention
made known from one quarter some time ago. We are ready, wherever it is
possible, to assume a blindness caused by an extreme degree of party passion;
but this much is certain, that such an undisciplined course of action has
hitherto been without example in the history of the mission.

"Although we could well put up with these continued revilings so far as our
own persons are concerned, yet — compelled by the nature of the office
entrusted to us, which rests essentially upon confidence — we shall hand the
whole matter over to the next general assembly (May 22), as the organ of the
collective representation of all the societies associated with us. To the
declaration of that assembly, shortly to come, we must therefore refer, if
perchance the effrontery of an opponent's lie, after the sad manner of our
time, should be in a position to impose upon anyone, especially where it
adorns itself with a pious appearance.

"Hard as are the storms that at present pass over us, we yet hope in God that
they will work purifyingly and strengtheningly upon our mission and so at
last redound to its welfare. God grant it!"