# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juli 1861_S213
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

The German Lutherans in America, etc. 213

in Pennsylvania. With a preface by Dr. J. L. Schulze. Halle, 1787." From
this we communicate the following:

Thus it reads in a letter of Pastor Dr. J. H. Ch. Helmuth, then in Lancaster
(later he became pastor in Philadelphia), to Freylinghausen, dated August 25,
1775:

"Great preparations are being made throughout the whole land, and almost
everyone is under arms. The zeal that shows itself in these distressing
circumstances is not to be described. Where a hundred men are called for,
many more than the number at once present themselves, who, however, since
they are not all needed, are turned away to their no small dissatisfaction.
My slight acquaintance with history knows of no similar state of things.
Regions of which one would have had to believe that years would pass before
the people would voluntarily take up arms have, as soon as the news of the
first affair at Lexington in New England became known, become wholly warlike
within a few weeks. Quakers, Mennonites, etc., drill along with the rest and
in great numbers thereby deny their otherwise held religious principles. The
harsh din of war is heard hourly in the streets.

The All-knowing One alone knows what the end of this distressing course of
events will be. England has indeed deserved it with its sins if God should
permit a rupture; but this land has just as well deserved it, if God were
emphatically to visit it. The sighing and heart's wish of all upright men is
that the LORD might turn the heart of our most precious king back to us,
leave us in the liberties once granted, and so join us again in peace with
the crown under which this land has been so happily governed. The present
disturbances do no small harm to Christianity. Everyone is eager, like the
Athenians of old, always to hear something new, and because of the many
novelties the way to the heart is, alas, quite barred to the good old Word of
God. The LORD smites men, but they do not feel it. Those from whom the danger
still seems remote are secure, and those whom the misery has already struck
are embittered and think only of revenge. In the American army there are many
preachers who hold the function of a teacher and of a war officer at the same
time. I myself know two, of whom the one is a colonel and the other a
captain. It is nothing rare to hear many a preacher publicly extol as martyrs
those who are shot on the American side. The people are for the most part all
in a complete enthusiasm as regards liberty. The whole land, from New England
to Georgia, is of one mind to risk body and life in maintaining their
liberty. Those few who think otherwise nevertheless may not speak otherwise.
If some are indeed so incautious, they fare so badly that others lose all
desire to let the least thing be noticed against the courses once entered
upon. In Philadelphia the English and also the German schoolboys are formed
into soldiers'