# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Januar 1859_S29
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Ecclesiastical-Contemporary Chronicle. 29

and indicates and exaggerates the consequentia (consequences); nor does he do too much when he continually persists in this rebuke and does not let up so long as the sin is not put away; but against the person he then exceeds due bounds, when he does something in the office of rebuke that is contrary to the love owed the transgressor, as a. when he rebukes more out of hatred against the person than against the sin; b. when he proceeds far too sharply in his words and does not use the gentleness to which St. Paul exhorts, 2 Tim. 4:2, or when he would scold the people, which the Apostle has likewise forbidden, 1 Tim. 5:1; c. when he proceeds too hastily in the process, either punishing when he does not know the right ground, or not proceeding properly according to the gradibus admonitionum (degrees of admonition), etc. So that St. Paul's saying, 2 Cor. 5:13 — "Whether we are beside ourselves, it is to God; or whether we are sober, it is for your cause" — (if indeed that saying should be understood of the office of rebuke at all, of which he is not in fact speaking there, but rather of the Apostle's own boast) is not to be applied to the excesses just cited, but rather to the punishment of sins, in which there can be no such thing as too much.

In the office of rebuke regard must also be had to the particular estates of persons. The Apostle directs preachers, 1 Tim. 5:1 seqq., to certain ordines and estates, that although in the office of teaching and rebuke no respect of persons ought to hold, and to no one, for any cause, ought anything be kept silent to his eternal harm, yet the office of rebuke is to be so conducted that the observance and deference due one estate before another is not set aside; therefore Timothy is to rebuke old men and women with such deference as is owed to age (Lev. 19:32), and children are to render what they owe their parents (Exod. 20:12). Whoever, then, does not rebuke each estate in such a way that (so far as this can be granted on the preacher's part) its due respect remains to it, has done too much in the matter and overstepped the terminos officii (the bounds of his office)."

Ecclesiastical-Contemporary Chronicle.

I. America.

Our General Conference. The "Lutheran Observer," in its number of November 19 of last year, after having spoken of the Kirchentage [church conventions] in Germany, makes the following remark, which without doubt is meant to contain a thrust at our General Conference: "How much more glorious would the results be if preachers and laymen, instead of coming together yearly to discuss the articles of a particular faith in our country, were to assemble in order to discuss such subjects as were the subject of the deliberations of the Kirchentag. The misery of our days is not that people do not believe enough, but that they do not do enough. The lack is not too small a faith, but too few works, to prove the existence of a genuine, active faith." Genuinely American principles! The spring, then, is there; only the outflow is lacking. The fire is there; it burns but simply does not shine. O blindness upon blindness!

Eastern District of the Evangelical Lutheran Synod of Ohio. The members of this district were again assembled on September 16 of last year and the following days. The former president, Bierdemann, had submitted theses on the doctrine of church and ministry.