# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Mai 1864_S160
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

160 Church-Contemporary Affairs.

words: '''the Lord keep your going out and your coming in from this time
forth and even for evermore. Amen.'''*) The baptizer: Dear friends, you
have brought this little child to the Lord Christ and have asked that He
receive it, bless it, and give it the kingdom of heaven and eternal life.
And you have also heard that our Lord Christ is so heartily willing to do
this and has promised him all this in the Gospel. Now you must also
consider: whoever is baptized into Jesus Christ and added to the holy
congregation of God must also renounce the ungodly nature and worldly
lusts, and serve God alone and set his hope on Him alone. Do you accordingly
desire that this child be baptized? Answer of the sponsors: Yes. The
baptizer: So let us, in the place of and on behalf of this child, renounce
unbelief and superstition and all sins as works of the devil, and with
heart and mouth confess our Christian faith. I believe in God, etc. (there
follows, after the baptizer has spoken the Apostles' Creed, the baptism
itself.) Given at Herrenhausen, January 5, 1864. George Rex." — When the
godly Johann Arndt was to give up the actual exorcism because of the
pressure of the enemies of the truth, he chose rather to be deposed from
office and banished from the country than that he should have yielded —
what will the believing pastors in Hanover now do? — Pastor Harms of
Hermannsburg says in his mission paper of January of this year, in the form
of a dialogue: "I now sit, to be sure, on a powder keg on account of the
law. I am supposed, for example — although the renunciation questions have
always been customary here, and although I myself have never baptized
otherwise than with the renunciation questions, as the church order
prescribes — I am now supposed, just as it occurs to any father you please
to have his child baptized without the renunciation questions, to comply,
to drop the renunciation questions, and to perform the baptism according to
the new baptismal formula. So I am to measure with two different measures.
I am supposed, on request, to baptize one time with the renunciation
questions and another time without the renunciation questions, according
to whether a believing or an unbelieving father wants it so. Tell me
honestly, dear R., could you still have the slightest respect for your
pastor if he played such a double game with the administration of the
sacrament? R.: I can hardly bring myself to say it to you, but it is true,
I could then no longer have any respect for you. But there is one more
thing I must ask. Does not something about the devil also occur in the new
baptismal formula, that one is to renounce him? Would it then be against a
pastor's conscience to use this formula? It would after all be about the
same thing. P.: That it is not the same thing you can already tell from
the joy with which the unbelievers everywhere have welcomed this new
baptismal formula. They see in it a formal victory that unbelief has
carried off. R.: I do not yet quite see that. P.: I will show it to you,
but let me tell you beforehand that the unbelievers are only rejoicing over
the new baptismal formula for the present. It will soon become evident
that they also want to get rid of what is still left of the devil in it.
The new baptismal formula is for them only a partial payment. I will, in
good time, appeal to what may soon come, and be still before God, who
helps me and will give me strength to do nothing against my conscience.
Does not Father Luther himself say: It is not advisable to do anything
against the conscience." — God stand by this dear man, that he may shine
before many weak ones as a light, and that he himself may hold fast his
crown and not lose what he has labored for. Now is the time for the
Hanoverian pastors to study Article X of the Formula of Concord and confess
this part of the confession — with the deed. What good does it otherwise
do them to confess, however loudly, the whole Book of Concord with the
mouth?

A Bible with Apologetic Notes. Dr. Münkel reports: In England a society
of prominent theologians from the state church has been formed, which
intends to publish a biblical commentary in order "to enable the reader to
understand the Word of God and to provide him with sufficient answers to
the objections that have been raised." It is remarkable that this idea has
the Speaker (President) of the House of Commons for its father, while the
Archbishop of York has drawn up the plan for its execution, which does
indeed seem to be on a grand scale. — Certainly a splendid thought.