# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juni 1863_S190
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

190 Church and Contemporary History.

Lord who rules in the congregation has, in the course of time, step by step overcome and cast
them out. Why should the modern mission wish to proceed differently than the apostles
proceeded? It should not be hard to answer this. In the first place, it is generally granted in our
own day, on the part of all sound, sober-minded Christians, that polygamy and the institution of
slavery are incompatible with the spirit of true Christianity. This is an insight and a conviction
which, it seems, was not yet given to the apostles in the full clarity and definiteness with which
the Spirit of the Lord has, in the course of time, granted it to his congregation. Would it now be
right, and could it be answered for, if the mission of our day were to put under a bushel a light
that the Lord has now given to his church? By no means. We would sin against the mission
congregations if we wished to tolerate in these matters what the apostles, given the measure of
their enlightenment, could tolerate. — We, on the other hand, would heartily wish and hope that
these statements of the Mission Magazine are not shared by the leaders of the Basel Mission,
and that the writer of that essay, too, merely let them glide from his pen in haste, without
mature reflection. For that thereby 'the mission of our day' would be cast down from the firm
ground of Scripture into the abyss of what our fathers, at the time of the Reformation, aptly
designated by the name of enthusiasm [Schwärmerei], scarcely needs to be pointed out to all
'sound, sober-minded Christians.' For them, who know of no other 'spirit of true Christianity'
than as it lies before us in the apostolic testimony, and who do not consider themselves or the
present-day congregation more enlightened than the Lord's own high apostles, such a line of
argument can of course prove only the opposite of what it was meant to prove.

Security against Hierarchy. In what the mission superintendent Aug. Hardeland,
appointed by Harms, sees such a security, he states as follows in a travel account appearing in
the Hermannsburg Mission Gazette (Jan. 1863): "On October 9 we held our conference. In the
course of it I also installed Brother Prigge as superintendent. Some had expressed the wish that
I should give a quite precise instruction, as it were a constitution or charter. I explained to the
dear brothers that we would indeed have to be real fools if we abandoned our splendid
constitution and, like all the heathen, wanted to have such a (paper) 'king.' Our whole mission
is one great family, and shall and must remain so. At every station the head missionary is the
general housefather, in every district the superintendent [Vorsteher] of the district, over the
whole the Superintendent. The superintendents have housefather-duties; they must therefore
watch over everything, counsel and help in everything, in everything without exception. That
would indeed be a wonderfully beautiful relationship, if we did not spoil it through our own sin,
if things went in a truly fatherly and truly family-like way. This wonderfully beautiful and
blessed constitution can, like everything, be spoiled by sin and turned into an oppression.
However, they are fairly well secured against this. From the station-father one can turn to the
district housefather, from him to the superintendent, from him to the Papa in Germany. That is,
I think, security enough against any tyrannical harshness and perversities. Now I must also tell
them, however, that I shall most earnestly punish any revolutionary, self-willed, arrogant
rebellion against the leadership, according to God's will, Numbers 12 and chapter 16. — So our
mission shall and must be constituted and remain; whoever does not agree with that does not
belong here, and may leave us, the sooner the better. Brother Prigge then vowed to them to be a
faithful and careful housefather; the brothers in turn vowed him reverence and obedience." W.

"What Can We Expect from a Synod?" To this question, "put to Pastor Harms
a hundred times over," the same man answers as follows in his Mission Gazette (Feb.) — quite
correctly, certainly, for conditions in Germany: "A synod is an assembly of pastors and
congregation members, who are to take counsel together on ecclesiastical matters. Now, the
first thing we have to expect from a synod is naturally, as we are accustomed to put it here, a
peck of costs. For all