# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_April 1863_S124
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

124 Church and Current Events.

10. However hard Mr. Schenkel exerts himself to bring this "key" into disrepute, all faithful Lutherans nevertheless have great cause to thank God that in the well-known, precious "layman's Bible," as in all their dearly-won confessional writings, they possess a serviceable instrument with which to guard themselves against such intruders as threaten the house of God with axes. For were these not kept at a distance by the fundamental rights of the congregation, a merely formal right might easily enable them to force their own taste even upon those who ask not for harmful delicacies but for wholesome bread, subject to no change of fashion.

11. As for this "right" in the present case, Schenkel's dictum ("Where there is no right, duty likewise ceases!") finds no application here. The Church has now been given a hearing among us; she has come into her right. Unjust, on the other hand, was the arbitrary removal of the old, faith-true catechism, under which she sighed long enough in the land of Hanover. And to the Church must belong whoever wishes to have seat and voice in her. She is not, however, as in the unionist Baden view, the crowd that shows up on election day, in the full self-will of its own pleasure, to vote on who-knows-what, whether or not the person otherwise professes the faith of the congregation or holds to its preaching and its Lord's Supper; but rather, according to Holy Scripture and Lutheran doctrine (see the Smalcald Articles and the Augsburg Confession, Arts. 7 and 8), she is the fellowship of those who hear Christ's voice and have gone out from the world through faith. Whoever, on the contrary, so plainly separates himself from her that he rejects her confessions — and, for that very reason, on account of its content, rejects the catechism that has been restored to the lands of Hanover by the ordinance of April 14 of this year — shows plainly enough that he knows of no duty toward the Church. There the saying then holds: Where there is no duty, there is likewise no right!

(To be continued.)

Church and Current Events.

I. America.

The General Synod. In the Lutheran Observer of February 27, a contributor lets the objection be raised: "Did not Christ say: This is my body?" and answers to this: "I observe that he also said: I am the door. — The bread is, in the one case, his body just as, in the other, he is the door. He is not, however, a literal, bodily door, nor is he literal bread. He nourishes the hungry soul through faith in him, and by that same means he is the door, or the way, to heaven." Further on the same General-Synod man says: "The Lord's Supper is not the crucified Christ himself, but rather a memorial testimony of this cardinal truth. One sees in these institutions" (the holy Lord's Supper and holy Baptism) "not a living Savior, but the sign of his sufferings and the efficacy of his atoning death." From this it is evident that within the General Synod a Zwinglian-ratio-