# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_October 1862_S319
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Church and Contemporary Affairs. 319

antiquated forms of the 16th and 17th centuries, the Lutheran church in America might easily remain the island of Felsenburg."

Chiliasm. Dr. v. Hofmann writes in the Erlangen Zeitschrift for July: "Among the most gratifying evidences that a correct understanding of the scriptural prophecy aimed at the outcome of the present course of the world is gaining ever more ground, is the fact that Dr. Kliefoth, in his recently published book on the prophet Zechariah, without letting himself be led astray by the anti-chiliastic zeal of our day, acknowledges on p. 30ff., as the teaching of Holy Scripture, the hope commonly regarded as chiliastic — that God will one day gather the Jewish people again out of their dispersion, bring them back into their land, and thereby lead them to their conversion." After v. Hofmann remarks further on that Kliefoth nonetheless polemicizes against his (v. Hofmann's) eschatological theory, he asserts that he (v. H.) "has shown, concerning Israel's spiritual conversion, exactly the same thing as scriptural doctrine that Dr. Kliefoth recognizes as such!" "Moreover," he adds, "Dr. Kliefoth will hardly be able to remain content with that measure of chiliastic thought to which he would like to confine himself. Even a repeated mention of the passage Zechariah 14:16-19 will lead him beyond that and into true chiliasm." Quite true, certainly! Whoever gives chiliasm a finger will soon be seized by it by the whole hand.

Berlin, June 18. From Westphalia a petition has been sent to the House of Deputies concerning the introduction of non-confessional public schools: "High House of Deputies! The undersigned most respectfully move that the high House, in its deliberation on the education law, give effect to the following provision: The public school shall be an institution independent of all ecclesiastical doctrinal systems, in which every pupil can receive the intellectual, religious, and moral formation indispensable to him as a human being and future citizen."

Sermon gradings. In Bavaria there presently exists the arrangement that, throughout the whole territorial church, trial sermons are submitted by all preachers — with the exception of those who have passed their fiftieth year — on a fixed day, first of all to the deaneries. The deaneries, and alongside them the senior chapters, must read these sermons, draw up opinions on them, and then submit both — the sermons and the opinions — to the relevant consistory. The consistory must then re-examine all the works from all the deaneries, compare the judgments of the deaneries and senior chapters, confirm, reject, or correct them, and after this has been done, the matter is finally taken up once more by the Supreme Consistory in Munich, together with the result of the consistorial work. The number of sermons submitted in the year 1860 through the Consistory in Bayreuth is 204, of which only one received the grade II*, 28 the grade II, 32 the grade III*, 68 the grade III, 33 the grade IV*, 35 the grade IV, and 5 the grade V. In the relevant circular of the Supreme Consistory of March 20 of this year, it expresses, as the Allgemeine Kirchenzeitung reports, its satisfaction that the works submitted on the whole bore favorable witness to the homiletical accomplishments of the preachers, and that a gratifying, pleasing overall impression had been gained from examining them. When one considers that a von Harless stands at the head of this Supreme Consistory, it is after all gratifying to hear such a judgment on the sermons of the Bavarian preachers.

Bohemia. Here a certain religious life is again stirring among the anti-Roman party, though carried by the idea of an independent nationality, which at present in Bohemia too has grown almost to the point of mania. In Prague, since the beginning of this year, a periodical has appeared under the title "Hus, Evangelical and National Papers," which has set itself the task of combining a kind of Protestantism with specifically Czech tendencies. According to this, if not the Hussites, then at least the Bohemian Brethren are to be brought back to life anew. In that paper it says, among other things, in the first number: "Should we do nothing, or very little, from which one might judge