# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_August 1861_S249
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

249

Churchly-Contemporary Notes.

I. America.

A remarkable way of establishing church unity we meet with in the
recently adopted resolution of the "United Brethren in Christ": "Whereas there has always been and still is a difference
of opinions concerning the manner and mode of baptizing and the proper subjects
thereof, therefore resolved, that none of our preachers or members
be permitted to judge and speak contemptuously or lightly on this matter, and that those
who make themselves guilty of such things shall be called to account for it."

Slaves. The Luth. Herold in its issue of July 1 raises the question:
"What is to be done with the slaves taken as prisoners of war?" It says: "The question lies before the
Union: what is to be done with the hundreds, indeed thousands (?), of runaway or captured
slaves? The following counsels should at any rate not be rejected untested: Let the state — that is, our United States — declare them its property. Let it sell
them, as soon as may be, to loyal citizens of the state to which the slaves belonged.
The money realized, however, is to be kept for the benefit of the slaves, either to
further their training and education or to serve toward a vigorous emancipation,
and so forth. If one does not want the selling, then let them be hired out or bound out,
likewise to loyal citizens of the state to which the slaves belonged. But, so cry
the hotheads, then they still remain what they were! We say no! for that could
happen only under the following serious conditions, 'which would have to be honestly' (much to ask in America!) 'supervised in every county' (the conditions?) — "1. Marriage
held sacred. 2. No family separated. Where the buyer or hirer should suffer loss through this
condition, the above fund would have to come to his help. 3. Where possible" (a
fine form of legislation!) "those thus bound should remain on the same plantation. 4. Christian
instruction, reading and writing, a special newspaper for the servants,
and so on, should be promoted. 5. The hirers, however, are then in any case to be
protected in their possession. My conscience tells me, and I know that many better men than I agree, that
the Lord has come to seek, to emancipate and to save
the 'Niggers' in the South also." — It is a pity that Dr. Stohlmann did not write this before the last
election to Congress. He has thereby displayed such great statesmanlike and political-economic
wisdom that he would surely then have been elected senator, perhaps even as the right
man for president. New York seems, above other cities,
to have a fair stock of great politicians. Another specimen of the kind is
evidently Mr. Maximilian Oertel of the Kath. Kirchenzeitung. In the
issue of July 4 he has published an article under the heading "Together and
Apart." After recalling the division of the Jewish people after Solomon's death into
Judah and Israel, he continues: "David's descendants now ruled only
over the fourth part of Solomon's kingdom, which was called the kingdom of Judah. Their first
king, Rehoboam, indeed wanted to heal the apart again and, like our President
Lincoln, to bring the seceders back with the sword (there were no cannon in those days) to their
former life together; but it did not succeed, and God Himself intervened
and had the prophet Shemaiah say to the ruler of Judah: Stop a
little, you shall not compel the seceding tribes to return against their will.
And Rehoboam obeyed the word of the LORD (1 Kings 12; 2 Chronicles 10). —
Our Abraham in Washington, together with his company — among whom, as is well known, there are also many
Bible readers — might, I think, take something to heart
from these cited passages. Is there then nobody there to translate the article
for them?" — These last words do indeed indicate a deep personal feeling for the
statecraft that Mr. Oertel carries within him; but, frankly confessed, we still like his
counsel better than that of Dr. Stohlmann, although the former is a papist
and the latter a Protestant — particularly because our papist here borrows his wisdom for once
from the Bible, whereas our Protestant reasons ex propriis.