# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_December 1863_S380
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

380 Church and Contemporary History.

-testant church to another through the provision made in our synodical constitutions for honorable discharges and the reception of ministers from other denominations."

The Synod of Northern Illinois. That the Americans are practical people and as such far surpass us awkward Germans, even their ill-wishers must grant them; but it can just as little be denied that the aforesaid, when it comes to achieving practical results, are not especially scrupulous in their choice of means. For both sides of the American character, the Synod of Northern Illinois furnishes, according to the "Observer" of Oct. 9, a clear proof. At its last annual meeting it resolved, namely, that henceforth at every synodical meeting a committee of three laymen and two pastors, under the name "The Committee on Ministers' Salaries," should be appointed, to whom every pastor should hand in a written statement of the amount of salary paid him during the past year and answer the following questions: 1. Are you being maintained in your present position? 2. Has your congregation paid you what it promised you? This committee is then to submit to the synod a complete and exact report, and in case brethren answer the above questions in the negative, the synod is to take such measures for their support as may appear to it, in its wisdom and judgment, fitting and necessary. — We should think this procedure would not fail of its purpose with the congregations.

California. The "Evangelist" reports in the same place: In California there are now some 10,000 Greek-Catholic Russians. The Episcopal Church of our country seeks to bring this population under its care, saying that it could recognize the Greek-Catholic church, because its bishops derive their ordination in unbroken succession from the apostles.

The Alleghany Synod, on the occasion of its meeting on Sept. 3 in Williamsburg, Pa., adopted so-called war resolutions, in which it states, among other things: "Whereas we believe that to break down this wicked conspiracy (of the South) is the will of God and the task of our nation; a work which, when accomplished, will burst the yoke and the chains from the neck of the slaves and give a fearful example of the just God against all oligarchies, aristocracies, and slave powers; a seed which, under the sound of the gospel, will grow through the centuries to the bloom and beauty of the thousand-year kingdom: so be it" (among other things) "resolved: that we believe in the employment of the Negro as a soldier," etc. Truly, that is a worthy counterpart to the new dogma of Pope Pius IX, through which the Alleghany Synod shows itself equally worthy of the Roman church of the advancing nineteenth century. C.

Sermon Topics. So reports the "Evangelist" of Nov. 7: In New York the great theme on which Paul preached every time he wished to proclaim the Word of God — Christ crucified — seems in some churches to have become too commonplace. Many preachers publish on Saturday the subject they intend to treat on Sunday, and so there stand in a newspaper, alongside several evangelical topics, also the following: Satan; the moral condition of our population; the surroundings of the heavenly city; — unchangeable things; — the thousand-year kingdom; and one outdoes them all: his topic was: Was the President right to suspend the writ of habeas corpus?

The Methodists lately began the proceedings of their Illinois Conference by requesting the Governor of the state to administer the oath of allegiance to them beforehand, which the same then also did from the pulpit, whereupon the same, together with General McClernand, at the request of the Conference, also delivered a "statesmanlike" speech; that of the former lasted an hour and a half, during which, according to the reporter, there occurred in the