# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_September 1863_S288
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

288 Church-Related Contemporary History.

complaints and representations concerning the affliction of the Lutheran Church in Alsace, and
he called upon the faithful and resolute Pastor Horning of Strasbourg, who had fought so
successfully for the right of the Lutheran Church, to step forth at their
head from the state church. About nine pastors with 12,000 souls are carrying on the struggle with him.
Since Horning did not answer, Diedrich himself traveled there and received the 11 souls into
his church through divine service and the Lord's Supper, without first approaching Horning and
making the necessary inquiries. This is done quickly enough under the new church
order, and it will doubtless proceed the same way. (Münkel's Zeitblatt.)

Synod and Confession. What we here have now, for a number of
years, testified against the synods of this country — which require of their members only a
confession set on screws with regard to the church's confessions, as notably the
so-called Lutheran General Synod here — this Dr. Münkel now testifies, addressing
the synod about to be organized in Hanover. He writes in his Neues Zeitblatt of
May 15, among other things, as follows: “Whoever wishes to attend the pre-synod can do so only on
the condition that he seeks to bring Scripture and the Confessions, as the standard of the synodical
proceedings, to a clear and unambiguous recognition, and thereby
makes up for what has been neglected and removes, in this respect, the stain of apostasy
from the synod. Should the synod then evade or reject such an unambiguous declaration,
nothing would remain, to be sure, but to reject the synod itself, which would thereby
have renounced the Church. Then the word would have to hold: Be not unequally
yoked together with unbelievers. There is henceforth nothing wholesome left to
accomplish in the synod, and the struggle must be carried on outside the synod. If the majority of the
synod has declared itself against the validity of Scripture and the Confessions in its resolutions,
the minority will be defeated on every deciding question, and it acts foolishly if
it nevertheless helps to bring about that ruinous resolutions are passed under its cooperation.
For even if it votes against them, it still at least acknowledges the synod, through its
presence and participation, as a Lutheran one, although it thereby lets such resolutions be passed
to the ruin of the Lutheran Church. Where Scripture and the Confessions are not acknowledged,
there we lack the firm ground on which we can fight with success. We
are set in the air and shall wage battles in the air. Every policy that loses sight
of that will carry its own revenge within itself; it will still think itself able to save something
when the main thing is already given up for lost, and after the shipwreck has occurred, will have kept only
the passage into the deep.”

Youth. Pastor Brunn says, in an article that appeared in Dr. Münkel's
Zeitblatt on the folk church and the free church, among other things, the following: “This weakness shows itself in an
alarming way, especially in the almost universal corruption of the youth in our
congregations — so great and evident that, conversely to how Luther saw
the hope of the Church blossoming in its youth, we must see, in our own youth, the
downfall nearly impending for our own Lutheran free churches before our eyes,
unless it be God's mercy that lets a small remnant survive for us.” We must, alas,
join in this same lament here. Especially in the older congregations the sight
of the youth fills one, instead of with hope, only with fear for the future, when one considers
that this rising generation is to carry forward the holy work that has been begun. Might
the cause not often be sought precisely with the “Christian” parents, who show an almost
mysterious faintheartedness in intervening decisively with Christian discipline, in order to
guard their youth against the influences of the present spirit of the age — indeed, all too often showing
the greatest willingness to lay their children into the glowing arms of this Moloch. With
horror one recalls, in this connection, Luther's saying, that parents can earn
nothing more easily than heaven and hell, through their children.