# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_August 1861_S250
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

250 Churchly-Contemporary Notes.

The politics of the Kath. Kirchenzeitung of New York are expressed fairly
plainly in an article of July 4 headed "The Little Chat Room." Since the
paper doubtless exerts no small influence upon the German Catholics here,
it may not be uninteresting to some of our readers to hear a little more of it.
We therefore communicate the following further from the article named:

"Andres (quite absorbed in Bible reading, then pausing a little): A glorious book,
full of knowledge and wisdom in things divine and human!

Christian: Yes, so it is.

Andres: I know no book that contains such glorious hints for civil government too,
as we read for example in Moses.

Christian: The theocratic is indeed the chief kernel in every government. But
do you know a rule for governing citizens?

Andres:

Here below
In peace;
Let each sweep before his own door:
Warred upon,
Vanquished,
Let one put up with the quartering of troops.

Christian: Where did you get that from?

Andres: When I read in the Old Testament, be it in Moses, or in the Proverbs,
in Ecclesiastes, in Sirach or anywhere else, there I find the above maxim, though in other
words.

Christian: One must of course have the right understanding for it.

Andres: I am not much studied, but I just bring my old-fashioned common sense along with me.
Even a blind hen finds a grain of corn sometimes; why then should not
man, who is after all more than a hen, find a pearl in the treasury of the divine
Word?

Christian: Stay with that, you are right.

Andres: But apropos! That Solomonic word, "Here below in peace," our
administration in Washington does not seem to consider.

Christian: I will tell you something: the gentlemen will make peace yet. Mr.
Lincoln sees as well as we do that peace is necessary for our America; but he
neither will nor can, just like that, come out to the Southerners at once with the olive branch.
What would the northern people and soldiers think of him then?

Andres: I see that too; but the Southerners should not have flown off so quickly
when Lincoln became president, they should have waited a little bit longer until the government
and Congress had really employed hostile measures. But since the thing
has now once broken out, the question is whether the hurt of Joseph can be made good again
by force. I do not believe it.

Christian: The gentlemen in Washington do indeed seem to think otherwise for now;
and our brilliant friend Dr. Brownson too defends our administration in a longer essay
entitled "the great rebellion." Just read the July number of his
Quaterly Review, just out, pp. 378—402. The chief point from which Brownson
starts is this, that our government, like every other, has above all the right of
self-preservation, and that its power constitutes the supreme power of the whole land,
etc.; and that our government is entitled and obligated to defend that power.

Andres: According to this line of argument, then, the southern states are entirely in the
wrong and, as being in rebellion, are to be subdued by force.

Christian: Certainly. What is your opinion on this?

Andres: Above all, what then becomes of the freedom and sovereignty of the individual
states, which for better or worse simply no longer wish to be with us, if one