# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_April 1863_S125
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Church-Contemporary-History. 125

...rationalistic doctrine of the holy Supper is carried through — a doctrine of which even the Calvinists, with a Calvin and a Beza at their head, would have been ashamed; not to mention that the writer at the same time betrays a complete ignorance of the doctrine of the tropes. For were the proposition "This is my body" an analogue of the proposition "I am the door," it would have to read: My body is bread.

From the South. In the Lutheran Observer of March 6 we read: "The paper The Southern Lutheran is still published at Charleston in South Carolina under the editorship of Dr. Bachmann and Rev. Aldrich. It shows itself free of that political bitterness which is common to the secular papers of the South. While it reports the current events of the war historically and upholds the legitimacy of the Rebellion, it carefully avoids all expressions of personal bitterness against its northern brethren, and devotes its columns chiefly to the spread of religious knowledge. The churches, amid the present excitements, are wonderfully generous and full of glowing zeal in their support of the paper. A small congregation in Virginia recently sent in forty subscribers. Newberry College is still active under Rev. Smeltzer as president, supported by the Reverends Eichelberger and Schreckheyser as professors of the ancient languages and of mathematics. The number of students is small, but the trustees seem determined that the college shall survive the war."

II. Abroad.

Hanover. At the Landtag held at Stade on December 5 of last year, Landrath Neubourg moved: "that the Landschaft allow the small Lutheran catechism in the edition of Sötefleisch" (an excellent little book) "to be made, at least in the schools where it has already long been in use, the foundation henceforth also for the religious instruction of the smaller children." When the presidium had ordered the vote on this motion in such a way that those voting for it should stand up, 15 of the 30 members of the Landschaft present rose. During the count, one more member rose who had misunderstood the question but had meanwhile been informed of it by a neighbor. But the presidium now declared that this one member's vote must be counted no longer for but against the motion, because with the beginning of the count the act of voting was concluded, and the latter could not afterward be changed. This ruling was upheld despite the lively protest raised against it from several quarters; and so the result came out that the motion was held to have been rejected on a tie vote — although in reality 16 members of the Landschaft had voted for and 14 against retaining the small Lutheran catechism of Sötefleisch. — Such maneuvers involuntarily put one in mind of American colleges here, except that it is especially distressing to hear that over there such dishonest machinations are employed for the very purpose of withholding God's pure Word from His people. — For insight into the present ecclesiastical conditions of Hanover it may further serve what the Vossische Zeitung writes under the dateline Hanover, December 9: "The consistory here has found itself compelled, also with regard to the exorcism of the devil (should probably read renunciation) at baptism, to give way to the powerful current of the times, in that it has for the time being allowed the clergyman at Brevensen near Uelzen to omit that" (to the children being baptized) "offensive question (dost thou renounce the devil, etc.), on the condition, however, that the sense of it be taken up into the baptismal address."

Papism. Under the dateline Rome, January 31, we read in the Katholischer Wahrheitsfreund of March 4: "Pius IX will not be moved to any act of condemnation against the Poles similar to his predecessor's, through diplomatic insinuations." Certainly not, for the pope condemns revolution only when it runs counter to his temporal interests; in the contrary case he promotes it — indeed, as the true Antichrist, he himself sets it in motion.