# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Mai 1863_S153
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Church and Contemporary History.	153

...of the Savior in the Holy Supper, and that is why there has been strife over the symbolic books for some three hundred years now. And are we any closer to unity? I think not. And while we are doing this, the Methodists are going off with the people. Is that not a fact?" — In this line of reasoning only this is astonishing: that "Lutherans" who think and write in this way can still remain a moment longer in the Lutheran Church, and can still hesitate to have themselves incorporated into the Methodist fellowship.

Concerning the "Missourians." The claim that we "Missourians" are on the direct road to Rome has by now become such a worn-out hobbyhorse that we ourselves no longer expected even the New York "Lutheran Herald" to still be riding it. But what will good will not accomplish where proof is lacking! For we now read again, in the aforementioned "Herald" of April 15: "From this there follows, for an aspiring preacher, the necessity of the study of church and dogma history, which likewise belongs to his scholarly preparation. The point just touched upon is more important than some may suppose. Were our neighbors, the Missourians and the Buffaloans, to weigh it rightly, they could not be so anti-Lutheran and exclusive. They would allow the spirit of Protestantism, which bore and nourished the Reformation, its original right, and would not, as they now do, try with all their might to steer toward Rome." A dreadful prognostication! The writer of this has signed himself J. H. S.

The Quakers of Pennsylvania have submitted a memorial to the legislature in which they declare that their religious conviction permits them neither to perform military service nor to buy themselves free from it; they would rather suffer punishment. So reports the Mennonite Volksblatt, published in Milford Square, Pa. These Quakers are at least consistent.

II. Abroad.

Concerning the Prussian Lutheran Church, Dr. Münkel reports under the 27th of February: "The number of pastors who have withdrawn so far amounts to about 12, roughly a fifth of all the separated pastors in and outside Prussia. But even among the remaining four fifths there are still many doubtful ones, who in part stand in open opposition to the teaching of the Supreme Church Council [Oberkirchencollegium]; and if the Tiedrich separation had not conducted itself so badly, it could still become very dangerous to the Breslau union. It is not only the doctrine of church government, but also the doctrine of the church and of the preaching office, that is everywhere caught up in such a ferment that as yet there is neither unity nor clarity on any side, not even among the newly separated."

Pastor Löhe writes, at the close of an account given by Pastor Großmann in Iowa of his (Großmann's) conflicts with Missouri pastors — an account which naturally casts the latter in as odious a light as possible — in the Church Communications of March of this year: "This ought rightly to encourage us not to cease praying for the eventual union of the Lutheran synods in America that gather around the good confession, since nothing separates these brethren except that the one side will take not a single step further in doctrine than the old teachers of the sixteenth century went, while the others wish to hold fast the whole (?!) achievement of the Reformation, without renouncing a proper advance in knowledge drawn from Holy Scripture."

Hanover. Thus we read in the Freimund: "We hear from Hanover that the Commission convened by the government to prepare the synodal constitution has completed its work to the point that the convening of a pre-synod can now take place. The Commission has, as reported, made the following proposal regarding the composition of the pre-synod: that this pre-synod should consist of 63 members, of whom the King is to appoint 21, the congregations 21, and the clergy 21 members.