# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juli 1861_S222
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

222 Churchly-Contemporary Notes.

Prayer for the President. The Kirchenbote reports: "In Georgetown, D. C., the minister of
the Episcopal Christ Church, Dr. Norwood, refused to comply with the order of Bishop
Whittingham to insert the prayer 'for the President of the United States,' and has offered
the congregation his resignation in case it does not approve of this."

Chiliasm. From a letter of the late Pastor Gruber to the editor, published in Löhe's
"Mittheilungen" for May of this year, we see that the writer of the letter makes the
following admission in it: "Accordingly we do not conceal from ourselves that we stand in
contradiction to the expectation — beginning, probably, as early as Constantine — of the
whole of Christendom for a final end of the world and last judgment; that the sentence in
the explanation of the Third Article, 'and at the last day will raise up me and all the
dead,' calls for an alteration or supplementation out of the light of the prophetic word,
as do some sentences in the Athanasian Creed, although the doctrines themselves of the
resurrection and the last judgment are by no means denied."

The Synod of the Reformed Presbyterians (the old Scottish Covenanters). The "Evangelist"
of June 15 writes: "At many assemblies of church bodies held in these days the present
political situation of our land came up for discussion." The synod named likewise passed
resolutions relating to it in favor of the Union. Yet the "Evangelist" remarks: "This last
denomination refuses to acknowledge the binding authority of the United States
Constitution, because it holds it to be immoral, chiefly on account of its toleration of
slavery. During this year's assembly a debate arose over the question whether it is right
for a Covenanter to fight for the government of the Union. The synod finally adopted a
motion that this matter should be left to the conscience of each individual member."

Good Advice. The Luth. Herold reports, under date of June 15, as a rumor the suspension of
instruction at Concordia College and the sending home of the students in consequence of the
warlike disturbances in St. Louis and now throughout the State of Missouri, and in
connection with this offers a piece of good advice in the following words: "How now, if
those three institutions (at St. Louis, Buffalo and Columbus) were to become one! If the
Lutherans of Missouri and of Buffalo would join hands at Columbus, and Columbus would
stretch out its hands in friendship toward both!" — Certainly a fine thought. How gladly
would all true Lutherans agree to it, if it could be done on the basis of the truth!

II. Abroad.

Concerning the Lutheran Reformation of the Church, ever more treacherous voices are being
raised in our days, when so many so-called Protestants have again taken all sorts of Roman
views into their faith. Thus last year a Dr. H. Vorreiter wrote a work, published at Halle,
"Luther's Struggle with the Antichristian Principles of Revolution," in which he, the
author, comes to the result that Luther fell away from his reformatory calling as early as
October 1518. As Luther's chief error Mr. Vorreiter presents his doctrine of the invisible
Church, and then goes on: "The three things — the primacy, whether of Jerusalem or of
Rome; the significance of the general councils; and the force of tradition — flow so
entirely from the authority of the Church, these things are so entirely bound up with the
development of the Church, which was still proceeding in the spirit of love, that we must
charge a reformation which proceeds against them in principle with revolutionary conduct in
the churchly domain." Following out consistently his doctrine of the true visible Church,
outside of which there is no salvation, the author still sees in the Roman church the true
one, from which therefore Luther should not have separated in spite of its errors. Dreadful
as it is to hear a "Protestant" speak so, it remains all the same a question which is the
more dangerous: to declare the Lutheran Reformation a revolution on account of its
theoretical and practical rejection of Roman principles, or to declare such principles to be
genuinely Lutheran and to seek to bring them into force again.

"Paul the Chiliast." Under this heading there is found in the Erlangen