# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_September 1863_S285
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Church-Related Contemporary History. 285

... piece of the church emerge into visibility, but because, according to God's
Word, it stands firm for faith that the means of grace, where they are rightly
administered, do not remain without fruit.

For Lutheran doctrine the questions: What is the
Church? and: Who belongs to the Church? do not differ at all; for the Church is the
communion of believers. That Harnack places a decisive weight (p. 24) on that
distinction between the two is once again only
a proof that he has thoroughly misunderstood the Lutheran doctrine of the Church.”

—————

Church-Related Contemporary History.

I. America.

From the Christlicher Botschafter of Cleveland, of July 25, we learn
by what principle the fanatical Methodist sect of the “Evangelicals,” also
called Albrecht's People, proceeds when breaking into other Christian congregations.
There it says: “Indeed the preacher's responsibility extends far beyond the bounds
of his own congregation and applies to all whom he can possibly bring under
the influence of his office.” One would think these people could never
have read the passage Acts 20:28; but that is not so — immediately before this,
the writer himself cites that very passage! — In the same number of the paper named
we find yet another proof of the loving disposition of the gentlemen of Albrecht's People. One of their
“missionaries” wandering about in Germany writes from Ulm: “What I must
especially mention is the fact that so many of the would-be-pious Pietists and
the professed followers of Michel Hahn still encourage the raw rabble in its mad course;
and it would be better, in my judgment, for the people of Württemberg, if the
whole of real Pietism were soon to go up to heaven in a single day” (meant, of course, in an
ironic sense) “— could it but do so, for it is not only indirectly in the service
of vice(!), but even directly so.” As proof the writer goes on to cite
the fact that the Württemberg Pietists do not regard the observance of Sunday as a divine
institution. — One more thing from the number cited. Recently the editors
of the united papers “Union” and “Hausfreund” quarreled with one another in a rather scandalous,
even personally disgraceful, manner; our “Botschafter” reports this
and maliciously adds: “both of them Lutheran periodicals.”

On the way to Rome, or already arrived there, is said to be — according to the New-Yorker
Catholic Kirchenzeitung of August 6 — a “Lutheran” preacher in Middle Village,
L. I., a village not far from New York. Belonging to the Pennsylvania Synod,
he is said, on the occasion of its convention at Reading, Pa., to have delivered a
Romanizing sermon on John 20:21–23 concerning the power of the keys and auricular confession,
and to have received a reprimand for “imprudent expressions” that occurred in it.
On August 2 he is said already to have preached his farewell sermon and in it to have
charged the Lutheran Church with ten main points of false doctrine, as a result of which
a charivari with windows being smashed was brought upon him the following night.
At the same time it is reported that the chosen successor of the convert is a pupil of his own
and gives hope that he too will follow his teacher into the bosom of the Roman sect.

The Unbelievers Here. We read the following in the “Evangelist” of
August 8: “The Infidels, as they call themselves, recently held their annual meeting
in Boston. Their zeal for their common cause does not seem very great, for the
report of the ‘treasurer of the Union of Unbelievers in North America’ shows an