# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Februar 1862_S43
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

43

(Submitted by Dr. Sihler.)

The New Periodical on Us Poor Missourians.

Pastor Münkel, the editor of this journal, writes in No. 33, on the occasion of the distribution of charitable contributions for Lutheran fellow believers from the "Mecklenburg Poor Box," the following about us Lutherans of the Missouri Synod: "More promising, and therefore lying nearer at hand (than the Lutherans of Paris, of whom we have just been speaking), might be far-off North America. There was a time when a closer relationship existed between the German emigrants of the Missouri Synod out there and the Lutherans at home. Since then we have somewhat lost sight of our brothers, because their dialect seemed to many very Americanized, and their pronunciation seemed very sharp and almost shrill. It was held against the young plantation that it looked down somewhat self-sufficiently on the mother church, in the very midst of its years of apprenticeship."

The sharpest censure, which indeed Pastor Münkel utters with a sparing gentleness, more out of another's mouth than his own, and reports as it were historically, is undeniably contained in that last sentence, which we therefore wish to consider first. Here, however, the most important question at once arises: who then is actually our "mother church," for us German Lutherans who have wandered over here? Undisputedly, what is generally understood by that term over there is the Lutheran church rightfully existing in this or that German land, whose confession is, at least in formal fashion, guarded precisely as such by the various secular rulers of the land; and insofar as we were spiritually born, through baptism and faith, of the Lutheran church in this or that land or state, we too are glad to acknowledge, love, and honor it as our dear mother.

But if it is at the same time said that we find ourselves as "a young plantation still in the midst of our years of apprenticeship" — which is also entirely true — then the question arises whether "the mother church," which has already taken us into instruction after our baptism and ought further to do so with maternal love, is the Lutheran church of the present day in the German lands. To this we can also answer Yes, insofar as this church, in its ruling character — both in its pulpits and in its academic chairs, and in its books of preaching, instruction, and edification, as well as in its learned theological writings — is borne and permeated by our orthodox confession, and punishes doctrine contrary to that confession with due severity. But where, then, in Germany, is this Lutheran "mother church" of the present generation, from whose breasts we, as "newborn babes, desiring the sincere milk of the word," might suck, and from whose pantry, should we already, "in the midst of our years of apprenticeship," have sufficient power of digestion, "strong meat" would be given us? It would certainly be a great service of love done to us, were "this mother church" named for us. For up to now we can find her neither in the last-