# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_August 1864_S253
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Church-Contemporary Affairs. 253

Prof. Sternberg declare that strict Lutheranism would plunge the church
into ruin and that nothing can save it except his own rationalistic views
and those of his party. Which issue of this paper are we to believe?" C.

A Specifically American Interpretation of Scripture. In the
publishing house of Poe and Hitchcock in Cincinnati (the same firm at
which the Methodist "Apologete" also appears) there has been published a
work comprising 236 pages in 12mo: The American Republic and human
liberty foreshadowed in scripture. By Rev. Geo. S. Phillips, A.M., which
shows to what madness American freedom-and-emancipation mania leads.
Even "Brother" Nast gives the book the praise that it "contains many
interesting truths," but must nevertheless add: "But of the correctness
of his interpretation of the Old Testament prophecies" (which probably
differs here and there from that of Nast's own Bible commentary) "the
author has by no means convinced us." The following is Dr. Nast's
account of the contents of that work: "An attempt to demonstrate the
divine origin of civil liberty and God's purpose regarding the United
States. The author regards the Hebrew republic as the type of the
American — in fact as the 'United States of Israel.' Since the first
seat of republican liberty was destroyed and annihilated through the
dispersion of the people of Israel, the author holds that its literal
restoration can no longer be expected, and therefore applies the
prophecies of a restoration to our own republic, which he holds to be
the nation that, according to Isaiah chapter 66, is to be born in a
single day. He also claims that it is the fifth kingdom named in Daniel
chapter 2, which shall never be destroyed but, after it has crushed all
other kingdoms, shall remain forever. Our author sees in the woman of
Revelation, to whom wings were given that she might fly into the
wilderness before the great red dragon, the flight of the pilgrims from
the old world into the new. He maintains that God never founded
monarchies but only republics, and that our own was founded through his
direct agency for the purpose stated in our Declaration of Independence,
namely upon the basis of the equality of all men, without regard to
birth, wealth, education, or color; that we have departed from God
through the toleration and support of slavery, and that our present war
has been permitted by God for the restoration of an erring people whose
spirit and constitution stand on the side of liberty and equality."

The Mixing of Church and State. The last Methodist General
Conference has, among other things, also produced the following
resolution: "Resolved, that we will use our influence to bring about such
a change in the national constitution as will recognize the existence of
God, our dependence upon him for the furthering of our welfare, and
likewise his Word as the foundation of civil law." These blind leaders
of the blind hardly know what they have resolved by this. God have mercy
on orthodox Christians if this resolution were carried out, and they
were consequently made by our jurists to sit through an exegetical
lecture in court and, naturally, submit to it, or else be condemned as
"disloyal"!

Heroldian Theology. In the Luth. Herold of July 16 there is an
article on the question: "Where do we stand with respect to the Law?"
The point of it, presented with much significance as "a self-
examination," seems to consist in sharpening the conscience of the
congregations on the matter that it is God's commandment, not only in
the Old but also in the New Testament, that the tithe be given to the
servant of God. The article closes, namely, as follows: "The dietary,
purification, and other laws were in part conditioned by climate (!) and
local circumstances which no longer exist for us; circumcision and the
Passover lamb have been formed into baptism and the Lord's Supper. The
regulations concerning the observance of the Sabbath must be transferred
to the observance of our Sunday, which God has marked out for us, as the
day that is to be important to us and which we are to hallow as His day,
through the great deeds that have occurred on it. Some difficulty is
posed by the Levitical law of the tithe, Numbers 18:21–24. If we regard
the spiritual offices in the Christian