# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_December 1862_S378
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

378 Church and Contemporary History.

it is now. But it is not politicking with which the servant of Christ
should seek to help, but the preaching of the Law and the Gospel. That
alone is the help he has to bring, that alone the contribution he has to
render toward the saving of his state. The constitution that he, as a
preacher, has to expound is the Bible alone; every judgment on right
and wrong that can be decided only from the constitution and laws of
the land, a preacher must therefore refrain from pronouncing in the
pulpit, and leave that to the servants of the state. If, indeed, he is at the
same time so full of statecraft that he cannot keep it to himself, well
then, he is also a citizen, and as such he may speak and vote. But let
him make use of this right not in the pulpit but in the place to which
such wisdom belongs. If he brings it into the pulpit, however, he
profanes this holy place, which is meant to work upon the state only
indirectly, namely through care for souls, for the transformation of
hearts; and he denies that he is Christ's servant, whose kingdom is not
of this world. To appeal to the prophets, moreover, in support of one's
politicking, is the same abomination as when the German princes, in
their subjugation of the church, appeal to the kings of the Old
Testament theocracy.

II. Abroad.

The Catechism Controversy in Hanover. On this Dr. Münkel
writes the following in his "Neues Zeitblatt" of August 22:

Surprisingly quickly has the catechism controversy in Hanover come
to a head, even though it is not yet decided by this. Some inflammatory
pamphlets have helped bring this about. One is that of Archdeacon
Baurschmidt of Lüchow, a work as shallow as it is clumsy, out of the
factory of Rationalism. Luther's Small Catechism is in it schoolmastered
in the most outrageous manner; its teaching is found false, its
sense sometimes ridiculous. Had he only, at the very least, left it the
glory of its vigorous, churchly, and childlike-powerful language, which
at all times every connoisseur — Grimm and others too — has admired
in it! But Baurschmidt carps and picks at that as well, and seems able
to find taste only in his own sickly-sweet, feeble language with its
hollow sentimentality. What manner of spirit this man is of, one
example will show. The new Catechism gives, to the question, Can you
do what the Law requires of you? the answer: Alas, no, I cannot do it
perfectly in this life because of indwelling sin. What does Baurschmidt
remark on this? He says: "Oh, dear reader, would not your hand itch to
give your child a good box on the ear, if it wanted to give such an
answer regarding one of your commandments?" Is this not the same
cataract-blind Phariseeism that once gave the sinners' Savior blows on
the cheek, and now condemns the Catechism to box its ears? At the
end all fathers' and mothers' hearts are adjured to storm the "most
gracious father of the land." "A cry of distress is to reach, out of all the
church and school congregations of our land, the gracious ear of our
father of the land." A conference is to assemble at Hanover, like the
one at Durlach, out of which "the splendid constitution for the
evangelical congregations of Baden" proceeded.

Although the pamphlet soon reached its second edition, its effect on
the whole would nevertheless have remained weak. Therefore people
had already, early on, looked abroad for a theological celebrity who
could be used for stirring up trouble, since none was to be had in the
country itself. The choice could not be difficult. Without dispute, all
parties have awarded the prize to Consistorial Councillor Schenkel of
Baden, in that no theologian equals him on this field. Schenkel once
had some stirrings and graspings of the Gospel and fought, in the time
of the flourishing Reaction, in the ranks of the Neo-orthodox, whom he
now systematically mocks. But the chasing after honor and distinction,
and the accompanying inclination to swim with the great current, has
at last made him a poor man — like a barrel that resounds all the more,
the less there is in it. The catechism-stormers sent him the old and the
new catechism together with the remaining documents, and he was all
the more delighted at this, as he