# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_April 1863_S127
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Church-Contemporary-History. 127

only a single congregation would remain faithful, provided the assent of the great
majority were required. In addition there comes a large number of congregations in
which the new catechism has been adopted either by the majority or at least by the
minority. Nor is this to be reckoned lightly, if only in view of the fact that the catechism
has here and there taken root, and this is indeed most often, or rather frequently, the
case where at the same time the life of faith has taken root — which shows itself to be the
best keeper and guardian of the catechism. Comparatively favorable seems the state of
affairs in the north, in the duchy of Bremen-Verden, whose clergy distinguish themselves
just as much by their practical competence and diligence as they are notorious for their
confessionalism. It has stood them in good stead that the old catechism has been more
and more set aside there since 1815, and has therefore had less influence on the religious
formation, or malformation, of the people."

Dr. Tischendorf declares the Greek Simonides, who claims to have himself fabricated
the Sinaitic manuscript, to be a fraud.

From Dr. von Harless there has just appeared, at Bläsing's in Erlangen: The
Relation of Christianity to the Cultural and Life-Questions of the Present Age. 8vo. (VII
and 85 pp.) bound, at 12 Ngr. (42 kr. rh.)

The Heidelberg Catechism. The Reformed "Evangelist" writes: "The three-
hundredth-year jubilee celebration of the Heidelberg catechism was observed in Germany
only in a few scattered places. Even in Baden, in Heidelberg, in the Palatinate, in the
homeland of the venerable textbook, there was no public celebration, because it was said
that people there are now Union and must give no offense to the Lutherans. Only from
Elberfeld and other congregations of the county of Berg, from Mörs and its
neighborhood, and from the Jülich country do reports come in of a churchly celebration
of January 19." This indifference and apathy does not surprise us. The Heidelberg
Catechism is no fresh confession, but the contrivance of an apostate Lutheran, who set
the words in it so artfully that a simple person cannot rightly tell whether the catechism
teaches Lutheran or Zwinglian doctrine — although the Synod of Dort confirmed it. In the
days when it was still a matter of fishing in troubled waters for Lutherans who could not
be got hold of by other means, the catechism attained a high reputation. That time is now
past. So too the sympathy for the book has died out, and the attempts made here to
revive it will remain without lasting success. Already the Schaff catechism seeks to run it
out of the race. Books built on artifice always outlive themselves sooner than even those
in which error is set forth boldly and bluntly. Union catechisms always model their
doctrine after the demands of their own time, and therefore undergo a metamorphosis
with every new age. As proof of this from the most recent times it may serve that, for
example, the Union-Evangelical Society here, during its short existence, has already
brought into the world a catechism changed for the third time in content and form; every
storm washes off some more of the loose whitewash, so that there is no end to the
whitewashing, patching, and plastering. How thankful, then, we Lutherans ought to be to
God for our catechism! In it too there has proven true, and will prove true until the last
day: God's Word and Luther's teaching shall not pass away, now and forevermore — even
though our enemies and ill-wishers should burst over it.

Baden. Union State Church. In the week between the first and second Sundays
of Advent of the current church year there died in Baden the old pastor Aloys Henhöfer,
whose name, alongside Sailer, Boos, and Feneberg, is of significance in the history of the
peculiar evangelical movement which passed through the Catholic Church of southern
Germany at the beginning of our century. According to a course of life recorded by
himself in a church register, he was born on July 11, 1789, at Völkersbach, a small Baden
place. His parents were Catholics. His bigoted mother destined the boy early for the
clerical estate. After the local parish priest had prepared him in Latin, he attended the
school of the Piarists (a clerical order of the Roman church) and later the Lyceum at
Rastatt. In the year 1811 he took up, as a theology student, studies at the Catholic
university at Freiburg.