# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_M rz 1864_S95
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Church-Related Contemporary Affairs.   95

hymnbook are here exposed to ridicule. Münchmeyer: these hymns are never sung in the home; that is a plain untruth. The president forbids the expression and asks the speaker to continue. Uhlhorn, Münchmeyer, Durlach, Niemann, Probst, Lührs, Münkel, Ernst, Arnemann, Stracke, Seffer, Hardeland, Jacobi, and Dankwerts leave the assembly hall. — The same return again. Münkel reads out a protest signed by them, to which many clergy remaining in the hall attach themselves: "We, the undersigned members of the pre-synod, enter our protest against the fact that hymns, in which our congregations pray to God in public worship, may be described, in the proceedings of the pre-synod, as hymns that provoke ridicule." Volkmar: He never said that the hymns must, i.e., that they cannot help but, provoke ridicule in school."

Hesse. We read the following in the Freimund of December 24 of last year: In the Grand Duchy of Hesse there lives a professor by the name of Schwabe. This man was a pastor and loved the gospel. Indeed, it was a matter close to his heart that it should be further spread. He occupied himself with special fondness for the old hymns of our church. He wanted to bring more participation in the church to laypeople who were otherwise indifferent to it, and joined with several like-minded clergymen to form an Evangelical Conference, and founded the Evangelische Blätter. The conference and the paper were meant to promote and support the church. And where has this man ended up with his paper? Exactly as far as the Pfälzer Courier and the Baden Landeszeitung. Like these, the editor of the Evangelische Blätter follows the church government step by step. Every ordinance, every appointment to a position, indeed every act of the church government, is subjected to criticism, the most important question being whether it suits the paper or not. Schwabe is now a professor. There he conducts himself toward the church government like a schoolmaster toward a pupil. If the church government appoints someone to a position to Schwabe's liking, it is praised. If the one promoted is orthodox, then there is an outcry. The individual articles often remind the reader as though they had been written by candidates hungry for a position, who think more about having a position than about tending to it, who think more about shearing the wool than about the proper pasturing of the sheep. The scolding resembles the yelping of a Siberian wolf that scents its prey in winter hunger. But the mischief goes further still. When a position becomes vacant and a Lutheran applies to the sovereign for it, he is barked at by the Evangelische Blätter, as a beggar is by a raging watchdog. One does not even know how they learn that this or that application has been made, yet the barking has already begun. And it is worse still. Even the gravest sins against the eighth commandment are permitted to themselves. Because some patrons in Hesse have presented to Lutheran positions candidates who truly confess the Lutheran confessions, these are alleged to have formed a kind of league and to have pledged themselves to appoint only the orthodox. The paper calls itself "Evangelical," but its actions are not evangelical. There is no gospel there, and no evangelical spirit. There is nothing but vain pride, greed, strife, discord, quarreling, murder, hatred, bitterness, slander, and an evil eye.

Field Chaplain. When, in December of last year, the march-out of 6,000 Saxon troops to Holstein was decided upon, the assistant preacher J. F. Pötzschke of Stollberg was immediately designated field preacher, and accordingly set out at once with the troops. It may be of particular interest, under present circumstances, to learn what the position of a field preacher in a Lutheran land such as Saxony is presently like. On this the Saxon Church and School Paper of January 7 reports the following: The Evangelical field preacher, according to the service regulations for the Saxon army, holds the rank of first lieutenant, receives 50 thalers in support for equipment expenses, further 50 thalers monthly salary, rations in kind equal to officers of his rank, and, on the march, free conveyance in a commissariat carriage. He is also, at his own request, assigned a soldier as servant, to whom, however, he must grant a wage supplement of 1 thaler 10 groschen monthly. Should the contingent be placed on a peace footing, he receives waiting-pay until his re-employment in civilian status. Should disability occur during the campaign, a corresponding pension is to be granted him, and, in the event of his death, a pension to his widow and children according to the provisions of the civil-servants' pension law. The sacred vessels, church registers, and service books have been issued from the War Ministry. Pötzschke's installation was carried out by Superintendent Schneider of Stollberg. In his call he is "in the name of the Holy Trinity, called to this office in such a way that he is to recognize therein a divine calling and accordingly to expound and preach to the troops entrusted to his pastoral care the pure, unadulterated Word of God, as it is contained in the Holy Scripture of the Old and New Testaments and as it is set forth and reaffirmed in the unaltered Augsburg Confession of the year 1530 and in the other symbolical books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, and to administer the venerable sacraments according to the institution of our Lord Jesus Christ and according to the church order in force in these lands,