# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_August 1861_S253
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Church and Contemporary Affairs. 253

He does not, of course, conceal from himself that some Christians, by their temperament, are closed to the sealing, and thereby indicates that such overflowing feelings presuppose a certain natural disposition found only in few people. He must therefore also concede that the certainty of the forgiveness of sins is not everywhere and entirely bound to one's sealing, and will have to grant that it applies only to the state of the perfect. But he himself makes this doubtful when he answers the question of whether that assurance of feeling gives certainty by itself. Only in his answer he has left out a very important lesson of experience: that a person can have the feelings in full measure and yet, as Wesley himself admits, live in pride and other sins. I myself know of such a case, that a man who stood at this height of perfection and preached of it everywhere fell into sodomy. Steinmetz therefore confesses, as Wesley too confessed after him, that Christian love together with other marks of the new life must necessarily be added to the assurance of feeling if the sealing is to be genuine and true. With this admission the whole doctrine naturally collapses; for a sealing that must first be sealed again in order to be credible seals nothing at all. So much the worse for Pietism, which has derived the divine certainty from its true ground in unfeelable faith in the work of God, and has founded it instead on feelings and works. But the poor simple souls who, being of a dry or sober nature, can neither pump such feelings into themselves nor out of themselves — what are they to do? Some of them are plunged into the greatest confusion, if, as experience shows, something still worse does not follow. The most sensitive point of doctrine and of life is the certainty of faith, from which the parting of the ways among churches, sects, and parties runs at the deepest level. Here the very greatest care is needed, if grave harm is not to occur.

Through the Moravians this sealing was transplanted to the Methodists; but whereas the Pietists, hedged in by Lutheran doctrine, still remained cautious, the Methodists have made out of it a complete and crass heresy."

Caspari, town pastor in Munich, known especially through the delightful little book "Spiritual and Worldly Matters, etc.," died on May 10 of this year.

The sixth Eisenach Church Conference of deputies of the various German territorial churches took place on May 30. Dr. v. Harless and Dr. Kliefoth were also present.

Saxony. In the Saxon Chamber, on May 27, the motion was adopted: the government, in appointing teachers at the higher schools who do not give religious instruction, should, where it appears admissible in the confessional interest, exempt the Reformed from the religious oath. The Catholics thus remain excluded from those teaching institutions, out of concern over their proselytizing.

False Love. Against this the well-known Baptist sensational preacher Spurgeon himself bears good testimony. He said in a sermon, as reported by the "Sendbote des Ev.," which communicates a portion of it: "I hope that I shall never see myself hindered from raising my voice against that so-called Christian love which is rampant in our midst, and which is a toleration not only of the person but also of the doctrine. I cherish a heartfelt love toward every brother in Christ who differs from me; I love him for Christ's sake and have fellowship with him for the truth's sake; but toward his errors I can bear no toleration, nor would I wish that he bear any toward mine. I say to him openly, to his face: If your views contradict mine, then either I am right and you are wrong, or you are right and I am wrong; and it is high time that we come together and examine God's Word together, to see which is the right one. What good are all our evangelical alliances — they will not last; they may well accomplish some beneficial purposes, but they are not the remedy we need for our divisions. What we need consists above all in this, that we return to the rule of the Word of G—