# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_August 1864_S256
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

256 Church-Contemporary Affairs.

articles and formularies of the church, according to their true verbal
sense, and to decide whether a clear, undeniable contradiction resulted.
For whatever was not laid down in the confessions must remain free.
Three points of accusation were before it, and were judged according to
these principles. First, the doctrine of inspiration: whether the Bible
as a whole and in its parts is God's Word, or whether God's Word is only
contained in the Bible (the latter being the teaching of the Essayists).
The court decided: "The proposition that every part of Scripture was
written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit is to be found neither
in the articles of faith nor in any formulary of the church." The 20th
article of the confession says only in general that Scripture is "God's
written Word." The second point of accusation was: the Essayists teach
that in justification the merits of Christ are not transferred to us,
that this transfer is a mere figure of speech. The court decided that the
word "transferred" is not to be found in the confession of the church.
On the third point of accusation, concerning the denial of the eternity
of the pains of hell, it was argued that the confessional writings
expressly teach an "eternal fire." The Privy Council did not allow this
to stand, because the meaning of the eternal fire is nowhere explained.
The confessions ought, therefore, in the opinion of the Privy Council, to
have expressly added that by "eternal" fire they meant only an eternal
fire and not a temporal one. — Established church supreme courts are no
protection for the church either. All visible supports of the kingdom of
God prove to be rotten. Blessed is he who does not build on sand. B.

Discovery in Jerusalem. The Frenchmen de Saulcy and Michon, together
with the German Salzmann, have with Turkish permission conducted
excavations in Jerusalem. Of this it is reported as follows: They were
able, with complete freedom, to bring within the range of their research
the inner ring wall of Solomon's Temple, which until now only a very few
travelers had visited in secret, to erect scaffolding and take
impressions, and to draw the precious remains of Solomonic architecture
that had escaped the great fire which destroyed the Temple at the taking
of Jerusalem by Titus. The most important of these works, however, is
the excavation and complete uncovering of the extensive necropolis
(chamber of the dead) known under the name "Tomb of the Kings." The
atonement monument which King Herod had had erected upon these tombs,
after they had been desecrated in order to rob the treasures contained in
them, was found again amid the ruins that blocked the main entrance.
Moreover, the travelers had the unheard-of good fortune to discover a
still intact burial chamber, sealed with great skill, in which the
coffin of a king of Jerusalem had been laid to rest. A magnificent
inscription in Hebrew characters from the earliest period is engraved on
the front of the sarcophagus. The royal corpse which this precious
marble coffin contained crumbled into dust as the outside air penetrated
the cavern. This monument, unique of its kind and such as no European
museum possesses anything similar to, has arrived at the Louvre together
with the other antiquities discovered during the expedition. The whole
is intended to form a Hebrew museum, and will be of great interest. Mr.
de Saulcy will shortly publish a work on the results of his expedition.
(Wandsb. Sonntagsb.)