# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_December 1862_S376
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

376 Church and Contemporary History.

-ment of political questions. In its political review it has simply to
report facts. And this it does. But if some readers nevertheless consider
it partisan, that comes either from their being themselves one-sided and
therefore regarding the middle road as a side-road, or it comes from the
imperfection that clings to all human things and therefore also to the
Evangelist, which we must earnestly strive to lay aside.

The Negroes. On their capacity for education in general, a
correspondent in the Evangelist of November 1 says: The following
passage in Dr. Kapff's report on Africa — a man who is certainly a
warm friend of Africa, and deserves to be heard — is important and
worth taking to heart. "The African, like all other peoples, is disposed
toward Christianity, but not toward a culture in the sense of the
Japhethites, and because of his boundless lack of discipline, bodily
servitude, under divine permission, becomes for him, as a disciplinarian
leading to Christ, almost indispensable." Set the African free, and then,
unless the whole social edifice is to be endangered, he must be placed
under guardianship — so that we would be abolishing, at enormous
cost, one form of slavery only to introduce another, still more costly and
less effective one.

The "Lutheran Herald" has of late, particularly since Prof. Brauer
weighed some of the Herald's articles on justification and found them
too light, been growing ever more bitter toward us. In the issue of
November 1 it says, for example: "There are whole synods which
separate themselves and want no fellowship with others of the same
confession, under the pretense that these are so-called Lutherans who
do not have the pure doctrine — the right faith. But when one examines
the matter properly, it often turns out that the chatterers mostly have
only a historical head-faith: a mere science, which is moreover usually
very superficial; a mere holding-for-true with the understanding, by
which, however, the heart is untouched and life shows little fruit; a
faith such as even the devils have," and so forth. That we Missourians
are meant hereby by this loving Herald is beyond any doubt, for further
down the Missouri Synod is explicitly named, and it is said of it that it
has "recently called a false slanderer's mouth to be its second
professor." At the close, the judgment of Prof. Kahnis on the church
press is cited, as that of "a professor known as strictly orthodox,"
applied to us, with the addition: "Among those whose downfall would
be a gain (namely in money for the Herald) belongs unquestionably the
''Lutheraner'' and the ''Lehre und Wehre,'' unless these papers lay
down the office of executioner." Formerly the dear "Herold" always
imputed to us the intention of wishing to bring about the Herold's
downfall; now it confesses itself that it carries this "Christian" wish for
our papers in its own "faith-filled" heart. We thank it for this candor.
But we must remind the gentle-hearted gentleman that Prof. Kahnis,
though formerly regarded in Germany as "strictly orthodox," is now
generally regarded as one who has fallen away from the fundamental
doctrines of Christianity, and is for that very reason just as bitter
against his reviewers as the Christ-mild "Herold" is against his.

Americanism. A chief component of the American character is a
self-conceit that verges on the ridiculous. So long as it merely spreads
itself in the political and social sphere, it is simply ridiculous; but in
the religious and ecclesiastical sphere it is an abomination. We were
reminded of this when, in the (now, under the editorship of the
Reverends Diehl, Stork, and Conrad) Lutheran Observer of November
14, in an essay "The Lutheran Church and the Reformation," we read,
among other things, the following: "The mother church in Europe has
always been more or less hindered in its forward progress by the
unholy union between church and state. Its growth was checked and its
development hindered by the secular arm. — The American daughter
is freeborn, and has never been in bondage. Profiting from her
experience and learning from her temptations, she steers straight
between Scylla and Charybdis. And guided by enlightened reason"
(as item number one), "by the instructive lessons of her history, and by
the truths which her