# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_October 1864_S315
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Church and Contemporary Affairs. 315

readily think of sending a child rather to a Catholic academy than to a Protestant
college, than that we would advise a son who wishes to study theology to go rather to
the new seminary than to Gettysburg. In this advanced age of Christian liberality and
progress we can have no use for preachers formed after the antiquated theological system
and the most exaggerated symbolism of this abnormal seminary. We need men now who
are full of life, not antediluvian petrifications and theological automatons." Well, that is
once again genuine General-Synod poison against Lutheran soundness in the faith and
loyalty to the confession. C.
Promotion. Scarcely had Prof. Sternberg, at the "Lutheran" (??) Hartwick
Seminary, distinguished himself by his hostile stance against the specifically Lutheran
doctrines, namely those concerning the Holy Supper, when he was presented by the Union
College in New York with the title of Doctor of Theology.
Gettysburg. — Dr. J. A. Brown, for several years pastor in York and
Reading, Pa., afterward professor in South Carolina, and for some years chaplain in a
government hospital, has been unanimously elected to the place of Dr. S. S. Schmucker
as professor at the Gettysburg Seminary. — Dr. Schmucker had already resigned in the
spring and intends to devote himself more to literary work.

II. Abroad.

Union. In Geneva, at the Calvin celebration, Luther's hymn "A Mighty Fortress" was sung.
Sailing Churches. The Bishop of Newfoundland has made an ingenious invention
to help out with the geographically difficult terrain of his diocese, which does not
everywhere permit the building of churches. He has had a ship of his own fitted out
as a chapel, and sails to certain stations, where the parishioners concerned board boats
to attend the shipboard chapel service.
Toleration in Spain. Spain is now still the only country in Europe that holds
fast to the old strict religious laws. Only in Spain do the envoys of the Protestant
powers, of Germany and England, have no chapels for worship, which even the Pope in
Rome does not deny them. Queen Isabella is strictly Catholic, with all the superstition
that abounds in connection with that in Spain. When she was approaching her
confinement, she had a relic, the arm of St. John, brought from Saragossa and laid down
in her chamber. She therefore watches with strictness over the laws for the protection of
her church. When on March 24, "taking counsel alone with the gracious impulses of her
own heart," she pardoned all political criminals, the only ones excluded were those who,
like Matamoros and others, had been banished for their Protestant faith. On January 5
the publisher of a newspaper was summoned before the court, who had said in an article
that religious toleration would be the best means of repopulating the country and bringing
the colonies into prosperity. This strictly Catholic spirit, however, still pervades the whole
country, and there are only isolated voices that rise publicly against it, even though in
private the number of those who long for more freedom may be growing.
Africa. The Lutheran congregation of Cape Town in Africa has existed, according to
a report in the quarterly Nachrichten of Consistorial Councillor Cammann, already before
the conquest of the colony by the English in the year 1795. It is to be attributed to
English influence that the congregation, from that time until 1827, requested its preachers
from the Consistory at Hanover. The experience, however, that these preachers, after a
number of years, returned again to their homeland, moved it, from then until 1850, to
obtain its preachers elsewhere. Among these, Stegmann distinguished himself especially by
his gifts and activity; he also vigorously attacked the work of mission, although that work
is nowhere less favored than in the neighborhood of the heathen. But since he took great
liberties in his ministerial activity, and administered not only the sacraments contrary to
Lutheran practice, but also, in his teaching, e.g. concerning baptism, put forward reformed