# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_October 1861_S319
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Church News of the Day. 319

After years she came back to herself, but could no longer speak a word of High German, and knew nothing of all that had happened to her. How clearly it shows here that those exalted states were somnambulistic, and what a significant pointer it also is, that the state of penitential preaching, which is often represented as an extraordinary working of the Holy Spirit, passes so quickly into a truly satanic state!" Cf. Acts 16:16–18.

The Caste Question. On the caste question raised by missionary Ochs, Prof. Dr. Hengstenberg has now also given his voice, in his Evangelical Church Gazette of July 6 and 10 of this year. He shows there with great clarity that this controversy bears the greatest resemblance to the great church conflict of the sixteenth century, and that Ochs represents the side of Karlstadt, the Leipzig Mission Board the side of Luther. At the same time he shows, from such passages as Acts 16:3, 1 Corinthians 9:20, Acts 18:18, 21:21–26, that the Leipzig missionaries doubtless have the holy apostles as their forerunners in their practice. Finally, by the example of holy Peter, he brings it to complete evidence that a man can be a true Christian even while still held fast in the prejudice of caste custom. Acts 10:1–28. This latter line of proof is all the more important and masterly since it is precisely Acts 10:15 that is supposed to be the "iron wall" of missionary Ochs and his party.

Death. In the month of August there died the licentiate F. M. A. Hänsel, well known to many readers, senior deacon at the Neukirche in Leipzig and private lecturer there, in his 69th year.

Ehlers's Kirchliches Zeitblatt has been appearing since July 1. Among other things it reports in its first number the following: In Magdeburg there already actually exist two mutually exclusive congregations, in that the superintendent, Pastor Lasius, has been ministering with Word and Sacrament to the members of the congregation who did not follow Pastor Wolf (in his separation from the Supreme Church Council). He had, namely, come to Magdeburg to conduct an investigation against Pastor Wolf, and has suspended him from office — a suspension which Pastor Wolf has not recognized. The board of the Lutheran congregation at Liegnitz considers it best that a general synod be convened again, and that at it not the doctrinal controversy be renewed, but rather an attempt be made to find a way in which, among those who differ from one another in the doctrine of church government, sacramental fellowship might be maintained. In the second number Ehlers confesses that it is becoming ever clearer to him that what is at stake in their controversy is the truth of Luther's Reformation, in that among them the Roman doctrine of church government is actually being taught: Pastor Dr. Schröder at Thorn has laid down his office as pastor of the Lutheran congregation at Thorn. Pastor Räthjen, too, has separated, together with the congregations he served, from the Supreme Church Council. The church councils of the three parishes of Erfurt, Liegnitz, and Reinswalde have petitioned both Supreme Church Councils for the calling of an extraordinary general synod, to be held still this year. According to the third number, Dr. Huschke has written a tract: "Provisional Defense from God's Word, the Confessions, and Luther, against the new doctrine of Pastor Diedrich and his following. For all those who wish still to remain truly Lutheran and not to make themselves complicit in the tearing apart of the Church." (30 pages.) Ehlers begins in that number the refutation of this pamphlet, in which Dr. Huschke intends to prove that there exists in the Church a church government to which one owes obedience, by divine right, in all things that are not contrary to God's Word.

A Pastoral Conference. We read the following in the third number of Ehlers's "Kirchl. Zeitblatt": "On the 2nd and 25th of July the pastors of the Liegnitz Lutheran diocese were assembled for a conference at Brieg near Gross-Glogau, to which the pastors Wolf, Diedrich, and Räthjen, who had withdrawn from the Supreme Church Council, were invited, and who also duly appeared. The purpose of the gathering was, alongside the existing unity in the doctrine of church government, also in other relevant