# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_M rz 1863_S95
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Church and Contemporary History. 95

district councillors, among whom especially Mr. v. Maltzan of Rothenmoor deserves mention, a veritable storm of indignation. The motion, however, found the strongest support on the other side, especially from the delegate Dethloff-Karlsruh, the "staunch supporter and defender of Baumgarten," and from Syndikus Meyer of Rostock. The latter put forward an improved motion, on account of which von Bassewitz withdrew his own, and which ran that the Grand Duke should forbid clergymen — as Pastor Plaß had done — from encroaching on the competence of the church court, respectively the consistory. This motion was adopted by 72 votes against 66, that is, referred for further deliberation. It still remains to be seen what the Grand Ducal government will decree. — In any case, the whole affair is a fresh proof that it is becoming well-nigh impossible to exercise public church discipline, or else that the church must resolve to go her own way in opposition to public opinion and the power dependent upon it, and to make earnest of the word: Render therefore unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's.

The German Mission in North America. Under this title the Darmstadt General Church Gazette reports, of December 10 last, that the society formed within the Prussian territorial church, having its seat in Berlin, for the German mission in North America, had in the past year an income of 980 thalers and had already sent out three missionaries (named Denninger, Titze, and Hönecke) to America, and also that the society is on the point of founding its own periodical and, at the initiative of Pastor Mühlhäuser's enterprise at Milwaukee, a preachers' seminary in that same city.

Stockholm, December 17. The government's proposals concerning marriages between Christians and Jews came up today for debate before the knighthood and the nobility, as well as in the clerical and burgher estates, and were adopted by the knights and nobles by 87 votes to 48, and by the burgher estate, but were sent back again by the clerical estate — which, however, can have no consequence, since the peasant estate had already adopted this proposition earlier. — So we read in the Wahrheitsfreund. A sign of the times, too. The barriers between Christendom, Judaism, and heathendom are falling more and more. We are going, there is no doubt, ever more swiftly to meet those days of which the LORD speaks, Luke 18:8, or rather we already stand in the midst of them.

The Hanoverian Synod. Under this heading Dr. Münkel writes the following, under date of November 28 last: "And misfortune strides quickly," says Schiller. Immediately after the riot came the royal ordinance of August 19, which left the new catechism to free choice; after the Osnabrück disturbance in October there followed in November the decree which likewise left Luther's Small Catechism, the so-called Consistorial Catechism, to free choice; finally, after the Celle pastoral conference of October 7, there followed the royal promise of November 20 to take up the synodal constitution in earnest. The Celle pastoral conference had set in motion a mass assembly, a Durlach Day, for December 2, to which all congregations were to empower, by election, trusted men, clergy and laity alike, in order to press the government that it introduce, with all speed, the presbyterial and synodal constitution. The elections for this were already well under way in town and country congregations alike, and would certainly have yielded a massive result. Whether such revolutionary assemblies have a license, I do not know. The government thought it advisable to forestall this, especially since the Göttingen pastoral conference too, which counts only churchly or believing members, had approached the consistory about a synod. It was thought better to take the matter into one's own hand and to proceed from oneself than to let it be wrested away. Thus one would retain power and freedom over it. I fear that this reckoning is greatly mistaken. For the church government no longer has anything essential in its power, not even itself; and the opponents will triumph in that, by mere warning shots and without any real struggle, here as in the Osnabrück affair, they carry through their will and force the fortress to surrender.