# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_M rz 1863_S94
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

94 Church and Contemporary History.

was debated: "Shall we join a political association?" The report states: "The questioner's declaration — that he could, as a private individual and apart from his position in a public office, decide in favor of one particular political association — could apply only to the so-called "Greater German" association that arose in Frankfurt am Main in October of this year, but by no means to the self-styled "National Association" (which, like lucus a non lucendo, calls itself so though no one has commissioned it to call itself so), which aims at tearing apart the North and South of the German nation, is tangibly put together in a [kleontisch — reading uncertain, perhaps "eclectic"] fashion, and is an imitation of the church-hostile former Fatherland Associations of unhappy memory — was adopted unanimously." Nonetheless, the result was the unanimous declaration that the clergy should join no political association whatever — not only because that "honorable and truly patriotic association," which a Harleß, at the same time a Bavarian Councillor of the Realm, had joined, also counts among its members decided and notorious Ultramontanes, but also, and indeed above all, because a churchman, by joining such an association as a regular member, endangers his independence and his official effectiveness.

Novels. The novels most read at present — indeed, devoured by thousands — are, as is well known, tendency-novels, that is, writings that do not wish to serve the ordinary general purpose of this literature, namely entertainment, but pursue, in the form of an invented, exciting story, certain particular tendencies — namely, to generate hatred and contempt toward the existing religious, civil, and social conditions as the source of all misery, and longing for the realization of the new radical-humanistic ideas as the sole salvation of the world. Among these tendency-novels of the present day, which are likewise devoured here by the German and English public, belongs the book Les Misérables (The Wretched). In a public lecture on this very book, Pastor Kögel of The Hague said: "Man alone is guilty of sin. Of this a Victor Hugo knows nothing in his widely read book, also celebrated as Christian (!), Les Misérables. He does not know how to portray a Christian; man, evil, the infinite — these are his trinity. This book is entirely calculated to increase ignorance. Who is responsible for evil? His answer runs: Society gave to me and I ate, it took from me and I was corrupted. Sin becomes an accident. The book is a religion-book of sentimentality; it is the cult of romances, of chaste adulterers, of honest thieves, of truth-clinging liars. The enlightened Christian can learn from it how altogether differently the Bible judges than does Victor Hugo, but the blinded will learn from it to cast all guilt upon social and civil conditions." This novel is evidently a companion piece to Uncle Tom's Cabin.

Mecklenburg. The following we read in the "Freimund" of December 18 of last year: At the Mecklenburg Diet, interesting ecclesiastical proceedings were conducted this past December 5, having as their subject the rejection of a faithful churchman by the power of the state. Pastor Plaß had namely refused the customary funeral solemnities to a former estate owner, Krüger, belonging to his congregation — a man who, "as a man of honor and a former veteran of the Wars of Liberation, stood in the best remembrance among his friends" — because this man, "being of a different mind, had not attended the pastor's sermons and other official acts," that is, was a despiser of church and sacrament. A complaint by the relatives before the superintendent placed over him, Polsdorf in Güstrow, was rejected. A petition to the Grand Duke, however, had the effect that a neighboring clergyman was charged with burying the deceased with church honors. Pastor Plaß withheld himself from any part in this. Thereupon the son-in-law of the deceased, Herr v. Bassewitz-Dersentin, brought the motion that the Grand Duke be requested to see to it "that Pastor Plaß be seriously called to account for this public scandal, for the quieting of the congregation, and that the pastors of the territorial church be forbidden in general from allowing themselves such unfounded and unwarranted 'attacks upon the peace of families' in future." This motion aroused, among one part of the