# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_November 1863_S350
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

350                    Church and Contemporary History.

for a longer time he had displayed his Roman sympathies openly. His synod, the so-called mother synod, let him go very unmotherly indeed. The latter, the son of a dean in Besigheim in Württemberg, was Schnurrer's pupil and successor in office. Now the Catholic Kirchenzeitung of New York reports further: "To the three converts named" (including a certain probably formerly Reformed man named Riedel), "who were formerly preachers, I can now add a fourth (Lutheran), who formerly held a position in Hazleton, Pa. His father was Dean B. (Brandt) in Winterbach near Ansbach, renowned for his piety." Herr Oertel rightly appeals to the piety of this gentleman's father, since there is all the less to boast of piety in the gentleman himself. — Another recent conversion is that of the well-known founder of the "Ev. Review" and leading representative of the General Synod, Dr. Reynolds, to the Episcopal Church.

Death. The "Lutheran and Missionary" reports from the "Southern Lutheran" of April 4 that Dr. Samuel Godfrey Henkel died on March 8 of this year in New Market, Va. He was the third son of the well-known Dr. Solomon Henkel, born 1807, and, although a physician, distinguished himself in the service of the American Lutheran church, especially through the English translation — undertaken chiefly through his tireless zeal — of the Book of Concord and of Luther's principal writings on the sacraments.

II. Abroad.

New German Theology. In the third quarterly number of the current volume of Guericke's periodical, Dr. Delitzsch writes: "As against this enslavement of the Negro, Christianity is thoroughly abolitionist; for where the Spirit of the Lord is, who died the slave's death on the cross, there is freedom." To thoughtless or fanatically partisan readers this sort of argument may seem striking; to us it is a sad specimen of the new German theology. Indeed, one imagines one hears not a Lutheran theologian arguing here, but rather a Thomas Münzer, or even a communist of our own day; for if this argument is correct, it will be equally correct to say: Where the Spirit of the Lord is, who was made poor and the subject of a despot, there poverty and subjection are abolished, there is wealth and free citizenship, there is equality.

A False Rescue of Infant Baptism. The more importunate the Anabaptists presently become in Germany, the more eagerly the newer theologians devise some fixed theory to rescue infant baptism. Unfortunately, in doing so they do not go back to the old, simple doctrine of our church, which is deeply and firmly grounded in God's Word. In the Saxon Kirchen- und Schulblatt of August 20, a correspondent makes an attempt which, he believes, strongly recommends itself by its simplicity. It is indeed simple, and it rescues infant baptism, but it overturns baptism itself. He writes: "If the writer finally sums up his view of infant baptism briefly and to the point, it comes to the following. On the ground of the literally translated and correctly interpreted words of institution of this sacrament, the permissibility of infant baptism — if not indeed its necessity — must be acknowledged. But because the (newborn) child, by its very nature, is not able to satisfy both requirements of baptism (the outward and the inward), it is for the child, at first, only a public confession and act of admission (made in its name) — while there is nonetheless always included at the same time the solemnly sealed title to eternal salvation which its Founder attached thereto. If the child that was baptized gradually comes into riper years, where it is able to meet the condition expressly laid down by the Lord, that is, to believe, then together with faith there is added the second element, namely the actual appropriation of the heavenly gifts of grace. If we understand infant baptism in this way, then no one can take offense at it, nor is anyone obliged to resort to daring or even dubious hypotheses; rather, one can confidently apply the Lord's admonition also to infant baptism