# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_August 1862_S250
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

250 Literary Notices.

of personal preference. That which alone makes the Church — doctrine,
conviction, faith — is left free to arbitrariness and has neither rule nor
order. The church government has done its utmost to set rule and order
aside in the weightiest matters. The territorial church, without inner
unity, would therefore resemble a heap of deposited rubble washed together
by the current of the age, were this heap not cemented and brought into an
outward bond and shape. This bond is the church order. The unity of the
Weimar church is thus the church order. One will therefore understand what
a sanctuary it is, and how the church council, which stands and falls with
it, must set everything at stake to defend it. The doctrine of the Church
may and shall count as valid only insofar as it agrees with God's Word. But
when Vollert asked that he be granted the same latitude and freedom
regarding the church order, since it was but a human institution, the
church council recoiled as though the shepherd were to be struck and the
sheep of the flock scattered. Even the Grand Duke, who would gladly have
saved Vollert, recognized that it would be all over with the territorial
church if its last sanctuary were placed at personal discretion.

If, then, Vollert too has overstepped the proper measure, one must not
forget that the greater guilt lies not on his side, but on the side of the
Weimar territorial church. It is truly not in such a state of order and
purity that Vollert could have learned from it and respected it.
Conditions such as those in Weimar must necessarily lead to disorder,
excess, and one-sided developments; and the foremost punishment ought to
fall not upon these, but upon the authors, fosterers, and defenders of such
conditions.

Vollert, however, has not given up his work with his removal from office.
"My next concern, labor, and prayer," he writes, "is now the constituting
of a free Lutheran congregation, which for the present will consist of all
those Christians who have freely chosen me as their pastor." In order to
work for this cause in wider circles, he publishes a "church paper for
evangelical truth and freedom" under the title Gideon. The matter does not
seem to be of great importance. Yet let one not overlook that such
phenomena are now breaking out in several places like thunderstorms
threatening the territorial churches with a severe shaking. In quiet a
great separation is being prepared, which keeps pace with the decline of
the territorial churches.

From Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht in Göttingen has appeared:

C. Schulze, The Biblical Proverbs of the German Language. 1860.
Pp. 200. 1 Thaler.

Dr. Münkel reviews this work in his Neues Zeitblatt of the 6th of June
with the following notice: In this work are gathered all the proverbs,
from the earliest times, that have flowed from Holy Scripture and
demonstrably passed into common life, as many as there are. Sometimes the
proverb is unchanged