# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_December 1862_S379
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Church and Contemporary History. 379

could now sate himself on Hanover too, and carry through his favorite
plan: Schenkel is a fanatical enemy of the "Brother-Luther's Church," as
he has called it, because it stands in the way of his German national
church, or rationalistic all-embracing church, of which he has set up the
model in Baden as exemplary for all Germany. It outraged the little
would-be great man that there was a land in the North where the
Durlach resolutions were not respected and where people wanted really
to remain Lutheran. That the Lutheran church rightfully exists in that
land and has its roots in the congregations, that the catechism had
proceeded, in legally valid form, unanimously and harmoniously, from
government, university, and consistory, concerned Schenkel not in the
least. He recognizes only the rights of his national church, under whose
iron yoke the congregations of Hanover, like those of Baden, must
equally be sold.

His inflammatory pamphlet has appeared. To pursue it, or to refute it,
would be just as thankless a labor as proving to an arsonist that he had
no right to his trade. Such people require a different answer. Only the
manner and style of the writing concerns us here. Schenkel makes no
serious attempt to show the unconfessional character of the new
catechism, even though he condemns it as high-church and neo-
Lutheran, particularly on account of confession. It is precisely its
conformity to the confession that is his greatest vexation, on account of
which he consigns it to the flames. He therefore mocks Luther's Small
Catechism as much as its exposition. But in this he unfolds the whole
of his art, showing that the catechism is not rational and up-to-date, but
stands in glaring contradiction to Schenkel's own progressive theology.
In order to make this strike home effectively, he employs a device that
has always proven effective: stirring the great mass into agitation. He
mocks the authors of the catechism as restoration-painters, because
they have created nothing new but want to restore the good old thing.
He does not love this branch of painting, for the old is trash. He has
turned with passion to caricature-painting, by which the great mass is
most easily led by the nose and inflamed; and this caricature-painting is
the chief strength of Schenkel's pamphlet.

This inflammatory pamphlet has been diligently scattered about the
land. But it would scarcely have accomplished much, given its
theological mode of expression, had not the reform-Jewish newspaper
for North Germany diligently stoked the fire and, day after day, incited
the people. It has an essential share in the movement, and as soon as
the movement grew, the papers that had for a while wavered or
hesitated also joined it. With vehemence people threw themselves upon
the passages of the catechism by which the people could most easily be
frightened and embittered. These were, in particular, the parts about
confession, about the devil, and above all the sentence: "In the
morning, when you get out of bed, you shall bless yourself with the
holy cross." Schenkel had already held out the prospect of the
introduction of the rosary for the latter, and the fanaticized mob was
completely convinced that Hanover was to be made Catholic. That the
cross is constantly used in our Lutheran services of worship, that it is
precisely the most objectionable-seeming passages that occur in the
Small Catechism itself, no one wanted to notice. The Small Catechism
was supposed to make us Catholic again, and the fire-engine with
which Luther had once quenched the wild fire of popery was now
supposed itself to set our own church ablaze. There was little
understanding in it, but all the more hatred against the Gospel, and this
can be set the more effectively in motion the more the passions
suppress the understanding.

After the masses had been bravely inflamed, it became a matter of
properly organizing them, so as to call them to arms at the right
moment and set up the militia. Over the whole land, at least in the
towns and boroughs, the national-unionist and democratic party is
spread abroad. To it the catechism was already odious on political
grounds, and it made this most plainly evident from the very
beginning, even though it let only its aversion to the Word of God
come to the fore, and was without doubt no less determined by that
very aversion. This party gave, as it seems, from the