# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_October 1863_S311
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Church and Contemporary History. 311

...indeed has fought its way and believed its way through mountains of obstacles." All this extravagant praise, and whatever material support it may thereby have won, we would gladly grant the gentlemen of Iowa, if only they did not peddle in the marketplace, in place of God's Word and Luther's doctrine, their own notions, their chiliastic daydreams, and their tricks of "progress." But this does not permit us to join in this praise, or in the further boast that follows: "It has also so built up the inner structure of the congregations and of the synod that it stands like a closed phalanx, in the midst of the contending parties of the Lutheran churches of America a sign of peace and a messenger of peace, a hope of better times." What a sweet "sign of peace" the Iowa Synod is, the "Mittheilungen" themselves attest in the April number, where they let Prof. G. Fritschel report: "Missouri leaves us tolerably in peace, although of course they cannot help barking at us a little now and then in the Lutheraner."

The Wisconsin Synod. Concerning this, Prof. G. Fritschel of the Iowa Synod reports as follows in Pastor Löhe's Mittheilungen for April: "Some time ago several pastors of the Wisconsin Synod wrote to the Rev. Pastor Löhe with the intention of making it possible for students from the Wisconsin Synod to be trained at our seminary, and Pastor Löhe at that time seemed to have hope that a closer union might be achieved between the Wisconsin Synod and our own. But the Wisconsin Synod, taken as a whole, has a Unionistic tendency. There is, to be sure, a faction in it that leans more toward Lutheran practice, but these are only isolated individuals; the prevailing spirit in it is a different one, as shown not only in the synod's official connection with Unionist German mission institutions, but also in its own ecclesiastical practice here. Of church discipline there is in any case no question. A pastor of the Wisconsin Synod serves a congregation that has fallen away from our synod because it would not tolerate the exercise of church discipline."

Loyalty. It is hardly possible to say what hypocrisy is practiced these days with this catchword. We do not have in mind here so much the atheistic subverters who have made it the business of their lives to kindle the bloody torch of revolution among all the peoples of the earth and to overthrow every throne, indeed every existing constitution that is not democratic-radical, and who nonetheless boast here of their supposed loyalty, because to them loyalty is synonymous with revolution; rather we have in mind here those who wish to be the most zealous Christians in America. Foremost among these belong the Methodists. Not only have they always openly sympathized with every revolutionary movement in the Old World, and thereby in fact most impudently mocked God's word, "Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God" — indeed, even now they display their intimate sympathy with the present European revolutions in a shameless manner in their secular and religious public papers. To pick out just one example from countless others that has just come to our attention, the "Christian Apologist" of the Methodists writes on Aug. 24: "Who does not rejoice even over the smallest victory of the Sarmatians, even over the most insignificant defeat of the Russians in the present struggle? Napoleon the Third has shown himself so utterly base and dangerous that everything depends on his downfall, and no sacrifice is too great to bring about this joyful event. Should even a Bourbon come to the throne of France after Napoleon's fall, it would be a gain, for then the worst enemy would be removed, and the rest would soon be dealt with. The freedom of the Poles triumphs together with that of all peoples." While the revolution stinks in the throats of these prophets of murder at almost every word they speak about politics, they at the same moment puff themselves up with their loyalty!! In the same "Apologist" we read, in the preceding number: "Rev. Dr. Clark spoke" (at the "great Union meeting" in Cincinnati on Thanksgiving Day) "on the loyalty of the Methodist Episcopal Church. He said: From the year 1784, in which the Constitution of the Meth. Church was adopted, down to the present day, the Methodists have shown themselves uniformly loyal. Immediately after the inauguration of