# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juli 1864_S223
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Church and Contemporary Affairs. 223

grant." — The Consistory rejected the petition of this "Peace Association." At
this the city authorities met together in a joint session, whose result was again
a petition to the Supreme Church Council, in which the petitioners declared
that they "could no longer recognize Superintendent Petrich as their pastor,
and would neither go to church to him nor allow him to perform any of the
other official acts." Alongside the above "Peace Association" there formed, also
gathered at the town hall for its support, an association of women and maidens,
whose members on both sides pledged themselves, among other things, not to
have their children baptized by Petrich. —

So far has the conflict risen by now. Will the Union's patch-menders, who
dreamed of nothing but peace within their Union, soon wake up and realize
what they have brought about? — B.

Paris. Since December of last year there has appeared here, under the title
"The Little Ship of Christ," a monthly journal. It is at present the only
Evangelical-Lutheran periodical in France. It costs only 2 fr. 50 centimes a
year abroad (to be ordered in Paris from J. Schneider, 11 rue des Grès). A
correspondent of the Ev. Kz. writes about it from Paris, under date of March
4 of this year: "It is a special undertaking of a few young German and
Alsatian clergymen of our Lutheran church and of the German mission in
Paris. This innocent little paper has, however, already been allowed to
weather a few gusts of wind, which, I hope, will not sink it. It has especially
been reproached for its proud flag, on which the Augustana shines forth, as
though this splendid inscription were meant to be a firebrand of discord! — In
this connection your readers will not be without interest in the following
declaration by our dear friend von Bodelschwingh, in which such attacks are
answered once and for all; and it is to be hoped that this calm and candid
defense will find a favorable echo in the hearts of all true friends and will set
their minds entirely at rest about this phenomenon. ""So, in closing, the
writer of this allows himself to lay down the following confession, for which
he alone also wishes to be held responsible. When I came to Paris six years
ago, I would have been the first to sign the above objections to a fixed
confession, resting on the very same objection — that only One Thing is
needful. I have not spent these six years in the study, but in constant
association with poor people and in the struggle against moral and spiritual
distress such as can scarcely be found greater anywhere within the Christian
church. The waters of my own and others' affliction have risen far too high
against my soul for me to have had the time or inclination to fall upon side
issues, and yet it is precisely during this time that the clear, firm confessions
of our church have become dear and precious to me. First of all, for my own
soul. I had to experience, right at the beginning of this time, that several of
my closest friends suffered shipwreck in the faith, simply because they wanted
to trust their own spirit alone in interpreting Scripture and rejected the faithful
guide of our church's confessions, and I myself came close to plunging into
the same abyss. Then God sent me a flock of poor children whom I was to
point to their Savior. Since I was now at a loss how I should even begin this,
I reached, for the first time since my youth, for Luther's Small Catechism,
this church's own true confessional writing for our people. It set me right; it
helped me into Scripture itself, showed me within it the One Thing needful,
and so I also came to love the other confessional writings. It now does me a
great deal of good that, as a steward over God's mysteries in the distribution
of word and sacrament, I am not thrown back on my own judgment alone,
that I need not let myself be tossed and weighed by every wind of doctrine
and by the deceptions of men greedy for novelty, but that, on the fundamental
truths of the Christian faith, I have on my side the concordant testimony of
such a cloud of faithful witnesses, who, calling upon the Holy Spirit, have
sought in Scripture the One Thing that is needful. With that one can go one's
way with confidence and joy, not because one relies on men, but because one
has a well-founded certainty that one stands with both feet firm on God's
word. But also for