# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_October 1864_S308
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

308    News of Church History.

-tions and installations, reserving to themselves the right to appoint substitutes, as circumstances may require.

And so we hereby commend ourselves and our congregations to the mercy of the faithful God and Savior, who has promised His Church: In the world ye shall have tribulation, but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world — and: Behold, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.

To HIM be praise and glory
in the congregation from now until eternity. Amen.

L. O. Ehlers. J. Diedrich. Zöller. Th. Crome. C. Räthjen. L. Könnemann. G. v. Kienbusch."

One really does not know on what principles of church power this synod builds itself. To be sure, it lets, as we have heard, laymen also have a say, but only after it has been constituted solely by pastors and is cut and dried; then it asks its congregations "also to declare their agreement with it expressly and to bear witness to this in the midst of every congregation." To be sure, it sounds quite fine when the constitution says that the synod shall be held annually "with free participation by members of our congregations," but, looked at closely, this provision of a "free participation" arouses the certainly not unfounded suspicion that the laity may indeed speak at the synod, but cannot really be members of the synod with equal rights alongside the pastors, having with them likewise "voces decisivas" [decisive votes]. The synod thus shows itself to be a mere pastors' synod, through which, as Ehlers himself expressly says, the pastors who alone have signed it wish "to present themselves as a united spiritual ministry to the congregations entrusted to them and to everyone." This suspicion is all the more justified, the more decisively the two leaders of the synod, Ehlers and Diedrich, have hitherto publicly rejected the Lutheran doctrine of the preaching office, of the spiritual priesthood of all believing Christians, and of the rights of Christians and of the congregation.

News of Church History.

I. America.

American Lutheran Literature. Under the heading "The Literature of the Lutheran Church in the United States," the latest (July) number of the Gettysburg Evangelical Review carries a lecture given by Dr. J. G. Morris at this year's meeting of the General Synod at York, Pa. The Lutheran Observer remarks on this: "Dr. Morris' view of our 'Lutheran Literature,' though it puts the best face on the matter, shows how little we have to boast of; our pretensions in that line are shown to be so small that it would seem more modest not to make any at all." — With regard to the translation of German theological writings it is mentioned in the lecture that so many good Lutheran books are translated by men of other denominations that even "our translation of German hymns has not been successful. Men of other denominations have