# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Februar 1862_S61
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Church and Contemporary Notes. 61

Friedrich von Schmidt has done shows in any case a matter of consistency; for indeed, he who makes the ministry dependent on ordination must, unless he is a simpleton or inconsistent out of policy, necessarily arrive at the doctrine of the apostolic succession of the office held by the Episcopalians.

II. Abroad.

The Duchy of Nassau. For a number of years now — so the Allg. Kirchenz. is informed — very few young people in the Duchy of Nassau have devoted themselves to the study of evangelical theology; in the year 1860 not a single candidate had presented himself at the theological seminary at Herborn. At present eight young people have again registered for admission to it. The church-constitution fever now raging in the old fatherland has seized Nassau as well. A deputation, however, which addressed the duke with the request for a freer church constitution, was received by him with the utmost displeasure. The duke remarked quite briefly: that he was the best Protestant in the land and at the same time also Summus episcopus; that the initiative in church matters belonged to him alone, and that he would take it up once he judged the time had come for it — on that the deputation might rely, and simply wait it out; that they should also refrain from taking part in assemblies, because nothing good came of them; that politics was always being carried on there on the side, as one could indeed already tell from the persons of the speakers who had come forward. Thereupon he dismissed the laymen and admonished the three clergymen once more in particular to wait quietly and to take no part in assemblies.

The Pope and Revolution. The following we read in the Allg. Kirchenz. of November 30 of last year: That the Pope is only an enemy of revolution where it endangers his own interests is a truth which the history of ancient as well as of modern times preaches, and against which the arguments of the Ultramontanes prove nothing. This truth now presents itself to our eyes quite plainly in the Polish revolution. It is well known that the Polish revolutionary party has for the past year, in Poland — especially in the Russian portion of it — been setting everything in motion in order to re-establish the Polish kingdom, as it stood in the year 1772 before its well-known partition, as an independent, self-standing state.

For about a year now, the Polish revolution has appeared in ecclesiastical garb. The Catholic clergy is no longer content, as formerly, merely to fill the people in the confessional with hatred against their governments as heretics and tyrants, and thereby to prepare and incite them to insurrection; rather, it has introduced revolution into its churches themselves. The pulpits, the altars, the prayers and hymns — everything must serve this purpose. Almost daily the clergy assembles its faithful for patriotic devotions, in that it either has them strike up revolutionary songs, or celebrates feasts in honor of Polish commanders fallen in the struggle for the freedom of the fatherland, or in honor of the insurgents who have fallen as victims of the present uprising. For such feasts the outward festal marks of distinction are also demanded — the closing of shops, the putting on of mourning clothes. Those quiet citizens who take no part in these demonstrations are insulted. Massive processions and pilgrimages are arranged to famous places of pilgrimage, in order there to implore the wonder-working images for the liberation of the fatherland. Colossal crosses are erected bearing the image of the Savior, which is torn in the middle, in order thereby to set the image of the torn fatherland plainly before the eyes of the faithful. And in order to represent this fanaticism as spread over the whole population, the Protestants, who are few in number, and the Jews, who live very numerously in Poland, are forced to take part in these feasts as well, in their own churches and synagogues. When at last the Russian government could no longer look on quietly at these ecclesiastically revolutionary demonstrations, but finally intervened in several churches of Warsaw, the Catholic clergy declared this a desecration of the church and refused to hold divine service any longer in these churches — evidently with the intention that, by suspending public worship, the people should be moved to rebellion in just the same way as happened in the Middle Ages, when the