# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Mai 1864_S153
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Church-Contemporary Affairs. 153

of our synod, precisely from those who reproach our synod above all for a
lack of love, moderation, and modesty. This, however, cannot keep us from
confessing the truth; this must and will in the end prevail.

Amendment of the Constitution. That there is a move afoot to amend the
Constitution of the United States so that an acknowledgment of God and of
the Christian religion be incorporated into it, we have already reported.
Here it unfortunately becomes all too often evident that this is not being
done in the right, Christianly humble spirit. In an essay from the N. Y.
"Independent," reprinted by the "Apologete" of March 28, it says, for
example: "In possession of a constitution which acknowledges the Christian
religion and assures freedom to all who stand under its blessed provisions,
we could appear before the world with honor — as the first Christian
nation, as the true land of Immanuel, as the asylum of the oppressed of
every clime, as the foremost on the glorious course of Christian
civilization. Our nation would endure as long as sun and moon remain." God
preserve us from such a haughty confession to the religion of humility! In
God's eyes it would be nothing but an abomination.

A Misunderstanding? In the Chambersburg Reformed Church Gazette of
February 25 we read the following: "Luther set forth his doctrine of the
Lord's Supper, as he communicated it 'in summary' to Melanchthon, in the
following blunt manner: 'That truly, in and with the bread, the body of
Christ is eaten, so that everything the bread effects and undergoes, the
body of Christ effects and undergoes, that it is distributed, eaten, and
crushed with the teeth.' In the face of such crass statements, which
certainly still betray a good deal of a remnant of the medieval doctrine of
transformation, it cannot surprise us that Zwingli was driven more toward
the opposite extreme." — If the Reformed Gazette finds the "crassness" of
that statement in anything other than this: that it thereby signifies the
true presence of Christ's body in the Holy Supper and its sacramental union
with the blessed bread, then its judgment rests on a bad misunderstanding.
Luther's other explanations set it in the clearest light that he did not
believe the body of Christ is eaten, chewed, swallowed, etc. in a natural
way, or even that a transformation takes place. To cite only one relevant
statement on this, Luther writes in his (so-called great) "Confession
Concerning Christ's Supper" of the year 1528: "Therefore it is indeed
rightly said that, when one points to the bread and says, 'This is the
body of Christ,' and whoever sees the bread sees the body of Christ — just
as John says that he saw the Holy Ghost, as has been heard — so also,
henceforth, it is rightly said: whoever touches this bread touches the
body of Christ, and whoever eats this bread eats the body of Christ,
whoever crushes this bread with teeth or tongue crushes the body of Christ
with teeth or tongue; and yet it always remains true that no one sees,
touches, eats, or bites into the body of Christ as one visibly sees and
bites into other flesh; for what is done to the bread is rightly and truly
attributed to the body of Christ, for the sake of the sacramental unity."
(Erlangen ed., vol. 30, 297.) Were we not dealing here with a Reformed
writer, we would remind the critic of expressions that, with respect to the
person of Christ, are entirely correct — for example, God died on the
cross, God shed His blood, and the like — although the Godhead cannot die
or shed blood. But because the Reformed accept a true personal union of
the Godhead and manhood in Christ as little as they acknowledge the
sacramental union of the body of Christ with the blessed bread, those
expressions of Luther's must, of course, seem just as "crass" to them —
that is, to their unbelieving reason — as do these modes of speech about
the person of Christ that are grounded in the mutual communication of the
natures and their properties.

Support of a Church by the Civil Power. From the Presbyterian Banner
the Lutheran Observer communicates the following item: "An order of the
Adjutant-General to the commanders of our armies directs that the use of
Presbyterian churches in the reconquered territory be handed over to the
Domestic Missionary Boards of the Presbyterians of the Old and New School.
That is a step in the right direction (is it?), which will help prepare
the way for the restoration of the