# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Mai 1862_S151
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

From the Grand Duchy of Baden. 151

In expressing our joy over the content of this testimony, over the resolve and courage with which it was made, we cannot forbear the following reflections.

1) It was out of the general vote of the whole so-called evangelical people that, exactly 40 years ago, the union of the Lutheran and Reformed Church arose. Ever since, the vote by majorities has ruled in all synods. Quite consistently, the majority has now also made the new church constitution. The two honored men contend against the poisonous growths, but overlook the poisoned soil from which they have sprung.

2) When they appeal, on occasion, to the confessions, the answer must be that at the making of the Union the confessions were degraded to the level of mere historical monuments. Now it has dawned on many: "This we have done to our brother Joseph!"

3) It is unclear what position the two honored men themselves occupy, now that they have renounced the united Church of Baden as thus constituted.

4) An evangelical Church of Germany we no longer know and no longer have, alas, since several German territorial churches fell away into the Union.
C. E.

On the document cited above, the Freimund makes this remark:

How rightly they have viewed matters may be seen from the fact — reported in the Protestant Kirchenzeitung, 1862, No. 4, from Heidelberg — that in not one significant city was so much as a single believing man elected to the congregational-church assembly; and further from the fact that it is openly declared there that the old-believing party no longer has any voice when it is decided what shall be held valid in the Church. It may say what it likes privately, in newspapers and assemblies — but in the council of the Church it shall henceforth hold its peace!

That is plainly spoken, and now one knows where one stands. Whether what they want succeeds today or tomorrow, we do not know. In any case it is highly significant that the movement in Baden has seized the whole German population; for wherever one looks — we have already given the proofs and shall give more — one perceives the same striving as in Baden. So much, at any rate, is certain: unless God once more intervenes and brings their counsel to nothing, we stand on the eve of a hard, hard time. Therefore let us watch and pray, that we may stand fast in the evil time!

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