# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juli 1863_S218
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

218

(From the Freimund.)
An Example of the Church Discipline Exercised by the Evangelical-Lutheran Bohemian
Exiles in Berlin.
(From the Bohemian record-book of this congregation, translated by Lic. theol. Borbis.)

In the year 1734, on the 13th of August, the punishment of the daughter of Wostry, Marie by name, was carried out in our church assembly, on account of a theft committed while she was in service with Mr. Sikrta (pronounced Schicktra) in Berlin — in the presence of the whole congregation, of the older members as well as of the young children, and in the presence of Messrs. Sikrta and Pekar, from whom she had stolen money.

The eldest brethren deliberated above all on how she should be punished. And so they resolved that, in the sight of the whole congregation, she should be chastised in the assembly with a whip by her mother and by a brother called upon for the purpose, and should suffer a fixed number of blows both from her mother and from one of the brethren.

When the people had now assembled, and the aforementioned Marie, stripped of her corset, was brought into the assembly together with her mother (a widow), the congregation sang the hymn: "The Wrath of Almighty God," etc. (page 574 in the Amsterdam hymnbook) and the other: "Ah, How Many Kinds of Care Has Everyone," etc. (from the Harp, 162). Then a prayer was spoken by one of the brethren for the blessing of the punishment about to be carried out, and after this the following was read aloud in a raised voice:

"In the name of the glorious Holy Trinity! To you all, our dearly beloved brethren, and to you, whole Bohemian congregation here assembled, we make known as a warning that a person of our church congregation, Marie, daughter of Katharina Wostry (who had to stand in the midst of the assembly), led astray by the devil, allowed herself to be deceived by sin, and through her wicked theft has dared to provoke God grievously and to bring great shame upon the whole congregation. In her service with Mr. Sikrta she conducted herself unfaithfully and dishonestly, in that she stole money from him and from his dear friend Pekar out of the shop, applied it to godless extravagance in clothing, and thus made herself, before God and the church, an unclean and contemptible person. She confessed with her own mouth the course of her theft at the examination held by the eldest of the brethren, but only after Mr. Sikrta had already complained to us, and she had been convicted of her theft. Her theft is that she first took two Greschel, then 2 Groschen, and the third time more, until she was able to procure for herself a gown for 2 Thaler 6 Groschen, an overcoat for 1 Thaler 10 Groschen, an apron for 18 Groschen, a pair of stockings for 10 Groschen, a vest for 6 Groschen, a bonnet for 5 Groschen, and the material for a vest for 7 Groschen. The