# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_November 1861_S349
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Church Contemporary News. 349

his ingratitude and lack of trust in the divine promises, tormented as he
was by the thought (for it was only a thought, and nothing more) that his
usefulness as a servant of the Gospel was at an end, in that the
congregation would lose all respect for him and conclude that he himself
had not believed those scriptural truths which he had for so long, and
with such evident earnestness, preached to others."

Pharisaism. So we read in the Kirchenfreund of Philadelphia, in the October
issue: "The day of fasting appointed by the President (Sept. 26) was
observed by all denominations. From the various addresses delivered
before congregations on that day, we take the following passage: '"Our
teachers" — remarked Dr. Cheever in the Church of the Puritans, N.Y. —
"tell us quite earnestly that God is angry with us for our atheism,
Sabbath-breaking, worldly-mindedness, our intemperance, and all those
sins which have characterized generations and nations before us — with
the exception of the one crying sin so peculiarly our own as a nation.
Nearly all the peoples of the earth have given themselves over to sensual
pleasures, in manifold ways forgetting God, profaning his commandments
and his Sabbaths, but we have no proof that God has ever judged a people
with a devastating war or rebellion arising out of any of those sins,
unless it be oppression. Jas. 5:1–4. Jer. 34:17."'" So, then, the whole
guilt which the North has to confess in the present war consists in this:
that the South has sinned!! One can easily imagine how gladly unconverted
hearers must have listened to such a sermon of repentance. Cf. Ezek. 13.

The Wisconsin Synod. The president of this synod says in his latest
annual report: "We have, in our Evangelical Lutheran Church, God's Word
pure and undefiled; let us, like our fathers, hold fast to it in life and
death, sacrifice for it, if need be, goods and blood, body and life, and
suffer anything rather than yield so much as a hairsbreadth of recognized
truth and of our confessions." (See Kirchenbote of Oct. 11.) That sounds
quite fine. Pity that it cannot be settled with orthodox phrases alone.

Anti-critical Remarks. — The dear readers of "Lehre und Wehre" will
no doubt recall having read, in the September issue of this journal,
under the title "A Reproach of Conscience," a brief citation from the
"Missionary" concerning the Union troops' defeat at Bull Run, together
with a critical remark. To this the editor of the "Missionary," in the
issue of Oct. 3, now responds; and after scattering a bit of incense over
the unusual skill with which "Lehre und Wehre" is edited, he then
continues, word for word, as follows: "We regret to say, of necessity,
that the customary honesty of the editors does not show itself in a
short notice which was given, in the 'Missionary,' concerning the cause
of the defeat at Bull Run. By the omission of the most important part of
our remarks, by which we intended to explain the preceding account, our
statement has been given a sense wholly different from what was
intended." — This is indeed a harsh accusation, all the harsher in that a
"customary honesty" is attributed to the editors of "Lehre und Wehre"
from which they seem, all at once, to have departed through the
outrageous act they are charged with having committed against the
"Missionary." Well, we will let every honest reader judge on which side
there is rightly cause to complain of a lack of honesty — whether on the
side of "Lehre und Wehre," which only meant to cite the main sentences of
the piece in question, and even indicated by ellipsis points that it was
not quoting the whole passage — or on the side of the "Missionary," which,
without any grounds, accuses it of misrepresenting its words through the
omission of the most important part of its remarks. To this end, let the
whole notice follow here in a faithful translation. It bears the heading:
"The Cause of Our Being Driven Back," and reads as follows:

"The political press has exhausted itself in explaining the causes of
our humiliating defeat, and deep-reaching and bitter are the accusations against certain papers