# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_September 1861_S288
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

288 Ecclesiastical-Contemporary Notes.

himself seemed to see, precisely at that point, the weakness of the symbols — namely, that besides them there are still other doctrines which are only now coming to the fore! Further down H. writes: "The individual will indeed have a right, and in fact to a higher degree the more genuinely he is a son of the church, to bring existing weaknesses up for discussion." — We do not deny that all these and similar statements can be construed favorably; but if we do so, we do not see what sense they are then supposed to have as against the Kliefoth journal. It will not occur to that journal to attack these principles if better construed than they sound. But Hengstenberg is not the man to set up sentences that contain no contrast at all. The above statements are therefore highly suspicious and might give just occasion for the fear that Hengstenberg, stubbornly clinging to his United territorial church, is making retreats instead of advances. This is also shown by the apology for the Union that follows soon afterward. Hengstenberg approves, for example, of the fact that to Minister von Raumer "the thought of abolishing the Union was wholly foreign," although he wished to be a Lutheran, and that he had not aimed at its abolition for the very reason that "he held the desire for the union of both confessions, given the state of affairs in Prussia as they actually are, to be too deeply grounded." When the Kliefoth journal makes this a reproach against the minister, Hengstenberg says, evidently growing touchy: "It is by no means the business of anyone (of a Lutheran in Prussia) to go blindly ahead, headlong, and to regulate his conduct by mere theories without regard to concrete circumstances and needs." The Word of God, then, which forbids wanting to join light with darkness, is to him a "mere theory," which must yield to concrete circumstances and needs! By this reasoning many a martyr might well have kept his life, and many an exile his comfort.

Unionism. Dr. Stahl said in his address opening this year's Berlin pastoral conference: "Unity at the expense of truth does not strengthen but weakens in the struggle against the kingdom of untruth, and a humanly manufactured unity leads only to still greater discord."

Judgment on Bunsen. In the aforementioned address Dr. Stahl reports the following: "The committee of the English branch of the Evangelical Alliance passed a resolution expressing its deep regret at the death of Bunsen and its heartfelt sympathy for those he left behind. In doing so it described him as an outstanding Christian statesman and scholar, only adding that it 'did not endorse all of Bunsen's theological views.' Against this a storm arose within the Evangelical Alliance, first and chiefly in that part of it belonging to the episcopal church, and, given the growing disapproval of the Christian public, the committee finally saw itself compelled to declare the resolution rescinded, with the exception of the condolences for the bereaved and the acknowledgment of the services rendered to the Alliance — that is, in other words, to withdraw the designation as 'Christian statesman and scholar.'"

Up-to-Date Theologians in Germany. In a lecture at the pastoral conference recently held in Berlin, A. Wuttke said: "To declare oneself equally zealously against confessional faith as against rationalism — that is the mark of a truly up-to-date theologian of the present day."

Certainty in Decision-Making. Dr. v. Harleß, in his tract "The Question of Divorce" (1861), utters a remark which is of great importance also in connections other than the one in which it was spoken: "Nothing is more gratifying than a certainty of decision joined with a clear awareness of the difficulty of a question. But where this awareness seems to be wholly lacking, or at least very unclear, nothing is more dangerous than supposed certainty. One arrives at this only through ignorance. And this ignorance tends to set in most where one believes oneself entitled, with a text of Scripture in hand, to ignore the history of the church. Then the youngest generation easily fancies itself the cleverest."

Pastor Rocholl, who had laid down his office at Sachsenburg in the Waldeck region for the sake of the Lutheran confession, has, on the presentation of the patron of the living, Baron von Klencke, been appointed by the consistory at Hanover as pastor at Hämelschenburg.