# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_December 1864_S369
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Correspondence from Germany. 369

opposing doctrine as the only symbolical one. So now it must in any case
come to bending or breaking. It is indeed an unspeakable misery that
things stand so, but it would also be the most favorable thing for us if
the synod were to take such decisive steps that we would know, and be
placed beyond all doubt, what we have to do. But precisely then, when
error seems to itself so secure and mighty that it believes it alone
holds sway, then the time has come when the Lord God brings it down and
all honest hearts must recognize the truth.

Greet the assembled brethren, all of them, most heartily from me and
from our associated brethren here, who stand with me in this struggle,
and help us to fight and to pray that, on this side of the ocean too,
the cause of the old and pure Lutheran truth may find a band of
confessors — even if at first only a small one, yet a faithful one.

In most heartfelt love and faithfulness, your brother united in the
Lord,
Fr. Brunn.

Steeden, October 20, 1864.

***This time I have particularly to report to you on the Breslau
synod. I sent my first report on it to our dear Brother Sihler at Fort
Wayne, because I supposed you were all there at your synod. I hope my
letter from Fort Wayne has been brought to you. I am now addressing the
continuation of my report directly to you, since you will no doubt
share it in your columns.

How completely fruitless our negotiations on doctrine with the
pre-synod turned out, I have already written. On September 29 the synod
itself convened, consisting of 90 voting members. First the
administrative report of the Supreme Church Council [O. K.] was
presented, then individual committees were formed to evaluate it, which
in turn had to present the results of their examination to the synod.
The first week of the synod passed in this way, first with negotiations
on lighter matters, whose review could be completed more quickly by the
committees concerned. Into the last week of the synod there gathered
the decision of all the difficult questions that occupied us.
Unfortunately, the synod as a whole turned out to show the same main
result in advance as the smaller pre-synod: namely, the great majority
let itself be entirely governed and led by the influence of the Breslau
spokesmen, Huschke, Nagel, and Besser. The authority of these men
retained its uncontested standing with the majority, while one had the
impression that, on the whole, only a few had consciously and
independently made Huschke's system of doctrine their own. It was
deeply painful to us, in particular, in part that we could not bring
the majority — including in it many pastors who had individually
expressed themselves better before — to a counter-testimony even
against the harshest points of Huschke's doctrine, but rather that they
accepted the whole of Huschke, lock, stock, and barrel, with everything
he had said,

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