# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_August 1861_S247
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Literary Intelligence. 247

offend against the confession of the church. For on the other side
the imperial government has thought it necessary to throw a cavesson over the liberal-minded constitution,
since it feared that the horse might grow wild
and bolt with the revolution. At the head it has placed, for each
confession, an upper church council — the former consistory — which,
appointed by the government alone and responsible to it alone, exercises supervision, administration
and jurisdiction at the highest level, and which in quiet times
must exert a deeply penetrating influence if it is staffed with the right
men. Yet it is laid down that only Evangelicals may hold this office,
just as in the ministry only evangelical councilors are to
attend to evangelical affairs. Everything now depends
on the circumstances under which and the spirit in which the general synod
assembles, whose task it is "to bring forward such proposals as are deemed suitable for the establishing, completing,
further development and perfecting of the evangelical church."
Care has indeed been taken that
it should be composed as aristocratically as possible, but democracy can
break in from below and perfect the constitution after the Hungarian model.
Let time teach that; for us it is enough here to
observe that in the field of the constitution the imperial government still seeks
to give with the one hand and to take with the other.

Nevertheless, just as the conclusion of the concordat was in its day of great consequence
and gave the Catholic movement outside Austria a mighty
impulse, so conversely this new church law will act upon
the other evangelical territorial churches and cause the pure consistorial constitution
to give way. Oldenburg, Prussia, Baden, Bavaria and
other lands are already steering about on the uncertain sea with this warm wind
and have already sprung more than one leak. Saxony shows an inclination
to let itself once too be shaken and rocked in company, in order to purchase, at the price of a few
digs in the ribs and bruises, the glory of liberal progress in the
whirlpool. Little by little everything will wind itself into one tangle,
which in its middle crumples and crushes the old consistorial constitution;
and then evangelical Germany will be free — namely free
from the church. (Dr. Münkel's Zeitblatt.)

Literary Intelligence.

Word and Sacraments the Means of Grace of the Church, together with an examination
of the theological principles of Dr. E. Huschke, by L. Könnemann,
Lutheran pastor in Rogasen. Neu-Ruppin, A. Oehmigke 1861.

Dr. F. W. Besser, St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans, expounded for the congregation in
Bible hours. First half, chapters 1—8. Halle. Rich. Mühlmann
1861. 731 pp.