# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juni 1864_S192
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

192 Church-Contemporary History.

-lawful union of the duchies with Denmark, not unilaterally dissoluble, up until November 15, 1863. But on that day, God the Lord himself immediately dissolved that bond by calling Frederick VII out of this earthly life, and since then there has remained only a union of Schleswig-Holstein with Denmark through the wicked London Protocol — which resists the dispensations of God — the powerless work of a godless diplomacy. Truly "joined together by God" are now, by right of inheritance, Duke Frederick VIII and the duchies of Schleswig-Holstein. — And indeed powerful assistance could be lent to "the Revolution" through the conduct of the German powers-that-be and those close to them regarding the Schleswig-Holstein matter; but only through conduct that trampled underfoot the right, out of regard for questions of power — not through the sort of conduct that the Evangelische Kirchenzeitung, in unholy alliance with the Kreuzzeitung, wishes to ward off. If those who are supposed to protect the right instead suppress it, and thereby violate the people's sense of justice, then they make themselves the most welcome accomplices of the "evil enemy," the Revolution; then occasion is given to the Revolution to misuse, for its own purposes, a cause that is in itself just." — In a later issue, Hengstenberg sketches the following picture of the intrusion of politics into the ecclesiastical domain over there: "The struggles in the ecclesiastical sphere over doctrine and the very existence of the church seem for the moment suddenly to have been suspended; the articles of the Christian faith no longer seem, even to theologians nowadays, so important that they are held to stand in the foreground of the church and to deserve, above all else, one's attention: orthodox or heterodox, friend or foe — these now seem, even among crowds of theologians, to be mere denominations for people who have a sense for nothing but politics. Whether one is a good Augustenburger and a good South-German constitutionalist — that seems, at the moment, to be on its way to becoming the main question for the church."

Italy. Concerning the bill, already touched on several times, regarding the abolition of the religious orders in Italy, the Allgemeine Augsburger Zeitung reports the following in No. 63: According to this bill, in the future, throughout the whole Kingdom of Italy, all religious societies hitherto recognized by law, all religious houses of orders, and all regular and secular congregations are to cease to exist. Only houses of orders that contribute to the public benefit can be exempted from this by special royal decree. The members of these bodies receive, upon leaving the monasteries, full civil and political rights. A pension is guaranteed to them, ranging, for priests, between 300 and 600 francs, and for lay brothers and converts between 150 and 300 francs. The canons, titular abbots, etc., receive the income from the endowments taken from them. All rural and urban properties belonging to the archbishoprics, bishoprics, and cathedral chapters, as well as other ecclesiastical benefices and livings, are to be sold off, though not merged with state property, but applied to the salaries of the parish clergy. The monetary value of the monastic properties to be confiscated is estimated at an annual income of more than 76 million francs, that is, a capital of 2 billion.

(Freimund.)

England. In England a remarkable ecclesiastical-court judgment was handed down. Among the authors of "Essays and Reviews," learned treatises which were in part directed against the authority of Holy Scripture and the truth of Christian doctrine, there were also some clergymen. They had been suspended from office by their competent authority, but appealed from instance to instance, finally even to the highest one, which is formed by the Queen's Privy Council. This body now decreed that there was no ground for the suspension, and ordered, amid the applause of almost the entire press, that the clergymen be reinstated in their offices. — Thus, in England too, worldly hearts, who undertake to judge spiritual matters without the Spirit of God, hold sway and manage things even in matters of the Christian faith. (Freimund.)

In the city of Nuremberg, according to the parish registers, 1,055 legitimate and 413 illegitimate children were born in 1863. Two hundred fifty years earlier (1613), the number of legitimately born children in the same city was 1,616, and of illegitimately born children, 37. (Freimund.)