# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juli 1862_S223
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Church News of the Day. 223

be founded, and the funds of the collection thereby relieved; should all the scattered evangelical children of the land gradually be gathered into orderly congregations — even then other distresses, some of them very close at hand, would still await our help! Is it not understandable that the Lithuanian and the East Prussian, when he brings his gift for the scattered brethren, as he has hitherto generously done, does so with a sigh, considering that he himself belongs to a parish that comprises more than 5,000 souls in eight localities, and in which only a single preacher labors? Can you hold it against the Pomeranian brother, or the Evangelical in West Prussia and Posen, if he too finds his own distress worthy of help, since, though he may perhaps have a church or a prayer-house nearby, he must seek his preacher, along with the inhabitants of more than 60 localities, over miles of distance — or when his clergyman must preach on Sundays in four, or even six or more churches or prayer-houses, and besides that perform the official acts, visit the sick and the dying? Can you fail to hear the sighing of a zealous preacher in Prussia, in Posen, in Silesia, in the Kur-Neumark, in the Altmark, when, overwhelmed by the excess of filial churches, he has worked on Sunday from early morning into the night and yet could only hurry through everywhere, and could do nothing at all on Sunday for the growing youth? This traces in many places back to the consolidation of parishes, whether because the Thirty Years' War consumed their strength, or because hereditary leasing, contracted in an unfavorable time, drained them dry. And from where are the youthful energies, or rather, from where are the means for their support to be taken, in order to maintain vicars for the province or the district who can be sent out in cases of urgent need to fill the empty place of the shepherds, where nothing else can help? And how many hundreds of preachers must perform their office with sighing, because with a wretched income of under 500, 400, indeed under 300 thalers, at today's high prices, they no longer know how to feed their families! Need we point, further, to the great cities, where 15,000, 20,000, indeed 50,000 souls are, to this day, in the charge of one or two clergymen?"

France. From G. R. in Paris, the "Freimund" is told the following, according to its number of April 17: "In our Lutheran territorial church the old archenemy of the Lord Christ and his holy church still reigns undisturbed. To be sure, this archenemy is neither the Pope nor the Turk; it is the Rationalism that equals both of those potentates. It reigns in church government, it reigns in the theological lecture halls, it reigns in the mass of the clergy. What wonder, then, if this unbelief has gradually spread among the congregations, and especially in the city of Strasbourg — once so devotedly attached to the Lutheran faith — has risen, among a considerable number of the citizenry, to the level of actual enmity? Yet among us too Rationalism has taken on various forms. Since the old rationalismus vulgaris, that is, ordinary Rationalism, gradually became vulgar (commonplace) and threatened to go the way of all flesh, a school proceeding from Dr. Reuss has sought to bring it into a rejuvenated shape by freshly dressing up the old idol of reason with a few feathers borrowed from sentimental Christianity. The foremost representative of this younger school is a certain Mr. Colani. He has for years published a 'theological' periodical bearing the title: Revue de théologie. In it, one Christian doctrine after another is ruthlessly overturned. This man, who through his sermons — in which, however, he does not display his false teaching as openly as in his journal — has gained a following, this open denier of Christ, has recently been called by the church government as lecturer into the Strasbourg seminary in which the theologians are trained. This seminary rests on the old foundation of St. Thomas, which not long ago, with much effort and difficulty, and by appeal to the fact that its properties belong by right exclusively to the Augsburg Confession, was rescued from the hands of the secular state authorities. — Thus unbelief celebrates one victory after another, and now intends to entrench itself for a long time in the sanctuary of the church. But thank God that here and there a vigorous testimony against this mischief still resounds. For years now Pastor Horning in Strasbourg has fought with untiring zeal against the disastrous