# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juli 1861_S214
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

214 The German Lutherans in America, etc.

companies, wear their livery and are drilled like regular troops. What the
father does, the child imitates. Would to God that men might once become as
zealous and unanimous in maintaining their spiritual liberty as they are now
here in America with a view to the bodily one!

In the present circumstances there have often come to my mind the Jews in the
times of Zedekiah and in the times of Vespasian and Titus, but also the
revolution in the times of Rehoboam. But the LORD alone knows whether one of
these, or none at all of the three comparisons, is applicable to the present
disturbances. The outcome alone will teach it.

I hold that a preacher in this land does best when he preaches repentance and
faith all the more earnestly the less men now wish to hear of it. To speak
against the cause would be unwise and without the slightest success; to speak
for the cause is dangerous, because at least on my small part I cannot
determine whether America is doing right or not right. May the reverend
fathers meanwhile remember us in prayer before the LORD, that among us above
all things the building of the kingdom of God may be furthered. Amid all the
disturbances the work of the LORD does at least go forward among the children
of God among us; may the LORD in grace increase their small number!"

J. Ch. Kunze further writes, under the date of July 18 of the same year:

"Your Reverence's fatherly sympathy with our weal and woe will now find
nourishment enough in all the public papers. Prudence forbids me any further
mention of what we feel and probably may yet feel. Political judgments about
it I gladly leave to others, though I heartily wish that the LORD may so
direct the heart of our sovereign, from whom the colonies really do not wish
to be separated, that He grant us the liberties with which we were formerly
favored. My own judgment of the matter, however, is theological. I know of no
land in the world which has not become famous in history for certain great
visitations of punishment. British America now seems to have come so far of
age that it too might be entered under such prophetic headings as stand in
Jeremiah 46-52 and Ezekiel 25-32. But the LORD still has mercy for the sake
of 40, of 50. Many a faithful soul still prays in America, and many a Moses
still lifts up praying hands in Europe."

The conduct of the aforementioned preachers in that time of political
agitation, so far as it may be inferred from the excerpted utterances given
above, is judged by Freylinghausen as follows:

"One may confidently reckon that hardly anyone will censure the behavior of
the preachers who considers how unseemly it is for a teacher of the Gospel,
who is to be a follower of the innocent Jesus, and how detrimental to the
religion of Jesus, when its witnesses mix themselves in worldly quarrels, or
even seek to make confusion in the state. As far as Jesus was from mixing
Himself in earthly