# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Januar 1863_S29
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Church and Contemporary History.	29

...days he is a dog of the same temperament and behavior as other animals, but on Sunday his peculiarities and sectarian prejudices come to light. Unlike the crow, he can count, and knows when it is Sunday. Then he is not as he is on other days. He pursues no pastime. He keeps no company, nor familiar intercourse. He says in deeds, louder than in words, to the vain and doggish race: „„six days shalt thou play, and do all thy games.““ The family consists entirely of Presbyterians, but the dog is a Methodist. Sunday mornings he accompanies the family to church, leaves them at the door of the church they attend, and then goes his own solitary, untrodden way, until he reaches a somewhat more distant church. Having reached this church, he goes up the steps and has a particular place where he sits down; and if an intruder dares approach his seat, no beauty or fashionable lady, who (with her gown) sweeps down the church aisle and finds a common man in her elegant pew, can give more decided signs of her displeasure and disapproval than this dog. Once he is given his place, he attends the service properly and pays the word of Scripture a dogmatic attention. Every Sunday one can see him on his way to church, whatever the weather, good or bad, and his preference for a particular denomination is as well known as that of any fine gentleman in town.““ — Truly, it disgusts one to read this sanctimonious dog story, which springs as much from the Puritan spirit as it is, at bottom — without the writer, in his perversity, even suspecting it — an utterly base profanation of what is holy. — C.

II. Abroad.

Pastor Haag. His intrigues have already been reported in the December issue. Concerning him we read the following in Ehlers' Kirchliches Zeitblatt of October 1 of last year: „Against Haag. Under this title a small pamphlet by Max Frommel, Lutheran pastor at Ispringen near Pforzheim, has appeared (Karlsruhe 1862, on commission with Liesching in Stuttgart), in which the author exposes the doings of Pastor Haag in the Lutheran congregations of Baden and chastises them as they deserve. — We recommend the reading of this pamphlet to all who wish to form an independent judgment in the matter; for it was to enable readers to do so that Pastor Frommel wrote it. — For our part, we were convinced of Pastor Haag's wrongdoing even before reading the pamphlet, and the fact that he has renounced the O. K. C. did not in the least win him our sympathy; for just as Christ can be preached out of envy and strife (Phil. 1), so too can someone renounce the O. K. C. from impure, fleshly motives (and that this was the case with Haag, Pastor Frommel proves convincingly.)““— — May God restrain and ward off all those who stir up factions, as one must unfortunately say Haag does! But may he, like all who have forsaken the ways of righteousness and truth, likewise be led to repentance.““

Protest against state interference in church affairs. The entire Westphalian Provincial Synod, after the Prussian provincial estates had increasingly drawn church matters into the scope of their authority, resolved in its session of September 9 of last year, „that a. it hereby lodges, against every interference by the provincial representative body in the internal affairs of the church and especially in the manner in which the Evangelical Church constitutes its own governance, a protest as against an unauthorized and unconstitutional measure; and that b. the Moderamen be instructed to bring this protest, in suitable form, to the attention of His Excellency the Minister for Ecclesiastical Affairs.“ — Paragraph 135 of the Prussian Penal Code reads: „Whoever mocks one of the Christian churches, or another religious society possessing corporate rights in the state, or the objects of its veneration, its doctrines, institutions, or customs, or portrays it in a manner exposing it to hatred or contempt . . . shall be punished with imprisonment of up to three years.“ On the strength of this paragraph