# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juli 1863_S224
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

224 Church and Current Events.

—church at all, then it must tell itself that the rift among the people has long been present, and has for years been furthered in manifold ways through gymnasium and academic education, through the administration of the Church, and through the old catechism in the schools. What has been corrupted on the whole systematically and lastingly, one cannot, without the greatest unfairness, expect a couple of pastors to set right again in ten years. But if the government itself had to know of this long-standing rift, since it lay nakedly before men's eyes in the cities, then it must also have known that the state church, with or without a new catechism, could be preserved only by seeing to it that the church's measures and ordinances were given force and obedience by compulsion. A state church can never exist in any other way, for it is like Rebekah, in whose womb Jacob and Esau wrestle with one another. Least of all can it now exist without compulsion, and it is not the new catechism that is to be held responsible for the rift now laid bare, but rather the fact that the power of the state church left the new catechism in the lurch. The clergy have only the power of the Word, which, as experience and Scripture show, does not extend over the great multitude."

German Catholicism. No. 16 of the "Sonntagsblatt" of Uhlich contains the following cry of distress from the chairman of the council of elders of the German Catholic congregation at Leipzig, Mr. E. Roßmäßler: "Forget not Leipzig! If ever the advocacy of religious progress by manly champions was called for by the circumstances of the time, and if this has ever been urgently to be wished for, it is now, it is the case in Leipzig, at a time and in a place where orthodoxy comes forward daily more decided and more rigid. Since the departure of Dr. Beyer from Leipzig, since October 1860, our congregation has been without its own preacher and therefore without spiritual leadership. It is owing only to the sound core which the congregation harbors that it has not, in this time, decayed and fallen apart. But the longing for a preacher of its own is gradually growing ever more impatient, and already here and there the unmistakable signs of discouragement may be perceived, while at the same pace grows the scarcely concealed jubilation of our opponents over the long-desired collapse of the congregation."

Missionary Bishop Colenso has published a critical examination of the five books of Moses and the book of Joshua, in which he denies that the former come from Moses himself. This has given great offense not only among Christians, but also bears its evil fruits among the heathen. Münkel writes: "While gratifying advances of the Gospel are reported from India, one hears, on the other hand, from Ceylon, that the Buddhist priests there are arming themselves in earnest for the struggle against the Gospel. They have formed a society of their own for the protection of Buddhism, have published the impudent unbelieving writings of Tom Paine — which they surpass still further through their own blasphemies against God — and have, finally, even brought out an excerpt from Bishop Colenso's recently published book (see No. 1, p. 4), with the remark that one cannot be expected to believe what bishops of the Christian Church themselves do not believe. (!) And Colenso is a missionary bishop. What must our progressive theologians think of their improved world-religion? In India similar observations may be made.