# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juni 1863_S168
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

168 Dr. Hengstenberg's Position on the Questions of Ministry and Church Government.

right of the congregations brings with it, which not infrequently withdraws from the very ablest characters, the most concentrated personalities, the proper ground for their activity, because they lack the popularity that wins hearts at the first approach in canvassing." But are not the same great evils found among the authorities? If the congregations are unbelieving, they choose rationalist preachers; if the appointing authorities are unbelieving, then whole countries are flooded with the plague of false religions. Quenstedt already says (Theol. did. pol. pag. 1614): "It is objected that there are certain drawbacks (in election by the people), namely: first, that the people are ignorant and unskilled in judging; second, that in a city there are always more who outvote the good and therefore elect men like themselves; third, that election by the people is attended with danger of unrest and riot. Answer: first, if the proof is to be drawn from possible drawbacks, then the choice can far less be left to a single bishop alone, or to the clergy alone." H. further holds: "Where, in an entire province, the congregations have a free right of election, the wholesome remedy of transferring clergymen is closed off — clergymen who, through no fault of their own, have fallen into a strained relationship with their congregations." But can not the Lord Jesus, through the calling of the congregations, effect a transfer just as well as through an ordinance of the authorities? How good it would be if one trusted more in the vigorous, circumspect, never-neglectful governance of the Lord Jesus, and correspondingly less in the wisdom of poor, short-sighted children of men, however highly placed as churchly dignitaries they might be. Finally, H. says further in the same connection: "Without a certain right of appointment to office, the authorities will also lack the full authority required for the beneficial conduct of their office." O, broken reed beyond compare! So the authorities are supposed to have, besides the power of the Word, something else besides, by which they can act upon the dispositions of the preachers and move them to obedience — a gentle pressure on the belly, a pointed hint toward a fuller or emptier larder, a fat or lean parish must help things along. How hard it is for many a German theologian to think his way into the Lord Jesus' spiritual manner of governing his church — how anxiously they still look around for worldly police help; the dominion over the conscience, they think, is not great, strong, thoroughgoing enough — it must extend over the body as well. And so the arm of the authorities must be strengthened, power must be concentrated; hence the aversion to church constitutions with a "democratic" basis, and the preference for constitutions with a monarchical coloring. —

We have here a synodical constitution, and feel ourselves well and happy under it, and thank God for the fair gift. But we do not overrate it; we know very well that it is only a human order, which has no power in itself. Whoever would rely on it, whoever would presume upon it, would surely find out in due time that thereby, against the assaults of the