# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_August 1862_S256
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

256 Church and Contemporary Affairs.

Lutheran pastor. Now since, under church law, such a certificate of
permission states that the person for whom it is intended is a member of
the unionist pastor's congregation, the Lutheran laypeople cannot accept
such a certificate without thereby declaring themselves unionist and
surrendering their Lutheran right. Nor does it make any real sense that
Lutheran pastors should demand the certificate, since by doing so they
themselves expressly attest that they recognize the unionist parish
constraint over Lutherans and stand in sacramental fellowship with the
Union. What further use is the certificate, then? Let the Lutherans go to
their unionist altars, if they come with certificates showing that they
are incorporated into the Union. The laypeople have therefore consistently
refused to demand unionist certificates. They might still have made the
attempt of asking the consistory for a declaration that these certificates
were necessary only for the sake of order, without implying membership in
the Union. That, too, would admittedly have been of no help. — Instead we
learn of other steps taken. The congregation at Sachsenberg has, as
readers will recall, been forcibly unionized through the introduction of a
clergyman bound to the Union, in consequence of which the first clergyman,
Rocholl, took his leave and has been reappointed in the Hanover territory.
A portion of the congregation, however, is not content with this and will
not be served by the unionist pastor, and has therefore turned to the
government with the request to be allowed to accept the services of a
non-unionist clergyman without a certificate of permission. To this the
following reply was given to "Hallenberg and associates at Sachsenberg":
"Since the congregation of Sachsenberg, as has been declared and
demonstrated to the petitioners in the resolution of the 11th of March of
last year, is not a Lutheran but an evangelical, that is, unionist,
congregation, and since the same persons belong to this evangelical
congregation for as long as they have not expressly declared their
withdrawal from it and, upon fulfilling the conditions required for that,
founded a separate congregation, their petition submitted to His Serene
Highness the Prince under date of the 3rd of February of this year — that
they be permitted to have spiritual acts of office performed by a
domestic or foreign clergyman without certificates of permission from the
pastor of Sachsenberg — cannot be granted, all the less so since all the
clergy of our land, whether or not appointed under the postscript
published by the announcement of the 21st of October, 1859, belong to the
united evangelical Church of our land, while foreign Lutheran clergy are
wholly unauthorized to perform spiritual acts of office in our land. This
is hereby communicated to the petitioners with highest approval. Arolsen,
27 March 1862. The Princely Waldeck Consistory: Bauer. Steinmetz.
Albrecht." — If Sachsenberg is, by right, Lutheran, then it is the
unionists who, together with their pastor, must withdraw. The consistory,
however, instead demands of the Lutherans that they withdraw and give up
their congregational rights and claims, because it recognizes no Lutherans
in the land at all. Yet under the condition that the Lutherans first
renounce all rights and acknowledge the legal validity of the Union, it is
willing to let it happen that a Lutheran separation should form even in
Waldeck. But what if a separation should form with a protest against the
very violence of the Union?

The Prussian-Lutheran Church. Räthjen reports the following in his
Kirchenzeitung für Lutheraner for the month of June: There is well-founded
hope that His Majesty the King will publicly recognize the official acts
performed by us since the imposition of the presumptuous Breslau
suspension, and will also grant to those pastors who renounce the
jurisdiction of the Upper Church Council the right to perform, with civil
effect, marriages and all other spiritual acts of office in their
congregations. The church linens and the like taken by execution will
presumably be returned to the pastors concerned. Unfortunately, besides
Pastor Löfflad in Lobsens, Pastor Gumlich too, at Weigersdorf near Niesky,
laid down his office on the Thursday of Holy Easter Week into the hands
of Superintendent Pistorius.

A Manuscript Literary Remain of Luther Discovered. In Breslau
the bookseller Skutsch has acquired one of the greatest rarities: a
collection of proverbs in the autograph handwriting of Dr. M. Luther,
which, on 33 pages in octavo format, comprises more than 500 proverbs and,
so far as is known, has not yet appeared in print. It is to be hoped that
Mr. Skutsch will soon make this find common property.