# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_April 1864_S113
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

113

Why a So-Called Old Lutheran Finally Fled into
the United Church.

We learn this from a letter of a former Prussian so-called Old Lutheran
to a Bavarian pastor, which the local Kirchenfreund — we do not know
from what source — communicates in its March number. This letter is a
remarkable document. It contains much that is true and much that is a
warning. It shows, in one concrete case, how true it was, what we have
always maintained, that most so-called Old Lutherans of Germany, for all
their zeal against the Union — a zeal that swallows up almost everything
else — themselves pay homage to unionistic principles, are irresistibly
swept along by the very current against which they think they are
fighting, and, for those among them whose eyes are finally opened about
this relationship (though not about the truth), open the way back to the
Union they had left. This letter also documents on what a fragile
foundation the faith of many Lutherans who rage against the Union rests.
Our "Old Lutheran" at last discovers that his Old Lutheran fellowship, in
its connivance toward the most varied diversity of doctrine within its own
midst, and still more the so-called Lutheran territorial churches, given
their complete lack of discipline in the doctrine, practice, and life of their
teachers and hearers, are at bottom united [unionistic], and that nothing
is lacking to them for this but the name. And what does the dear man do
after this sad discovery? Does he do as Bishop Liberius did, who, when
everything had become Arian, answered the question of the Emperor
Constantius — "What fraction of the world are you, that you alone hold
with that godless man Athanasius and disturb the peace of the whole
world?" — by saying: "That I stand alone takes nothing away from the
word of faith, for even once there were found only three who resisted the
royal command"? Far from thinking and acting so, our hitherto zealous
"Old Lutheran" draws instead this conclusion: Since I see that the Old
Lutheran fellowship into which I once fled for conscience's sake from the
Union itself stands, seen in the clear light, on a unionistic foundation, I
will go back again to where I came from, for there at least one has more
peace. But here is the letter.

*          *          *

You consider it desirable, my dear friend, that I set out for you at greater
length how I came to the United Church. You cannot make sense of my
step, and the dear friends whose judgment matters to me also shake their
heads. It goes with you as it does here. I am condemned from all sides.
Indeed, my brothers in office in the Separation, loved by me now as
before, who recently gathered in Berlin for a conference, have told of my
"deep fall." But it does not come unexpectedly to me on either side.
"Converts," says Hase, "we do not love, even when they come to us." I
certainly do not consider myself to be one in any way, but I am once taken
for one,