# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_September 1863_S287
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Church-Related Contemporary History. 287

ahead. Since it fights for the most exalted cause of this age, it has cast off
petty party questions entirely, and nobler ideas and impulses move the driving
wheel of its striving. Constant mortal danger, in which they hover, engenders more earnest
thoughts, and in the face of eternity one views men, measures, and events with
different eyes. So it happens that a man who is enrolled in the army and
has done active service is, in general, far more intelligent and freer-minded
in his views than another who has stayed at home at his accustomed
occupations. The well-founded patriotism of our armies is just as fervent. Whatever
the initial motives of our soldiers on entering the army
may have been, the fact that they stood between their country and its enemies
has kindled a purer and deeper flame of patriotism in their hearts than ever
glowed there before. The heart of every true soldier has become an altar
on which he sacrifices his own self to the honor and glory of his country. That decisive
and heroic patriotism of our fathers, which we, who have not yet laid our life
on the altar, possess only in part, dwells in our armies.”

II. Abroad.

From the 14th General German Teachers' Assembly at
Mannheim, held May 26–28, the Leipziger Illustrirte Zeitung of June 13 reports
some very noteworthy things. There, on the very first morning, the town pastor
Riecke of Neuffen spoke with enthusiasm in the Trinity Church of the coming equalization
of all confessions, the Jews included, when one would no longer ask, “what
do you believe?” The same town pastor opened the afternoon session with a
lecture: “The Common School as a School of Thought.” In the evening a
festival performance of “Don Juan” at the court theater, arranged especially for
this assembly, was attended. — On the second day the liberal Grand Duke of Baden honored the further
proceedings with his presence, remarking on that occasion, “he felt and shared
the endeavors that had brought them all here.” In the discussion of the topic introduced
by seminary director Lüben, “Natural Science (the standing topic of this
General German Teachers' Association) in Seminaries,” one of the teachers present, a Herr
Lohrer of Mosbach, ventured the remark, “it seemed as though nature were to be deified —
nature, over which surely something higher must still be set, namely God!” — yet
he was “pressed to a close amid general indignation.” — The
words of the Mannheim pastor Schellenberg: “the Church will not fear the day
on which it is relieved of oversight of the school, so as to
work only in its own domain,” *) were received with jubilation.
— The report closes with the words: “Nearly 2000 German teachers were
united by this festival; they have now returned to their homes, filled with the significance
of what was discussed in their midst. They carry the seed that was
scattered in these assemblies to the farthest ends of Germany,
and we hope this seed will come up among the German people and bear
glorious fruit.” — Sapienti sat [a word to the wise is enough].

In Dresden, Leipzig, and Chemnitz, moreover, individual teachers were also given
150 thalers from the municipal treasury of each city for the journey there. All this
in majorem gloriam sæculi [to the greater glory of the age]. The peasant lad who, in his
sancta simplicitas [holy simplicity], carried more wood to Huss's
stake believed he was doing this, at the very least, to the honor and service of God.
(Sächsisches Kirchen- und Schulblatt.)

Pastor Diedrich, the originator of the New Separation in Prussia, has in Alsace
received 11 persons into his Lutheran church. They had turned to him with their

*) Does this Union-church pastor know nothing of the word of the Lord to his apostle: “feed my
lambs! feed my sheep!” John 21?