# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_April 1859_S127
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Ecclesiastical-Contemporary Chronicle. 127

Pastor Joel Swartz was excluded from its midst on March 2 by the ministerium of the English Ohio District Synod for obstinate error and unbecoming practice, and deposed from his office as pastor at Circleville. So reports the Lutheran Standard.

The Confession of Faith of the strictly Calvinistic-minded Presbyterians has appeared in the German language; the Old School Presbyterians, too, are accordingly minded to cast their nets after the immigrating Germans. The "Luth. Obs." expresses its surprise at this — not, however, because it did not wish the Germans to be made Calvinists, but because it holds the thing impracticable. For thus it closes the expression of its surprise in the number of March 11: "We entertain no contempt for our brethren of this faith, and would not blame but rather commend the efforts they are making to gather the German immigrants into their congregations; but the thought that these Germans should subscribe from the heart to the Westminster Confession of Faith seems impossible. If it is possible for them, so much the better, and we certainly wish them God's blessing on their labors among this class of our fellow citizens."

II. Abroad.

The German religious newspaper literature has, according to the report of a correspondent of the "Independent," an astonishingly limited circulation. The correspondent reports that, according to a catalogue of the German periodicals published last year by G. W. Wittig in Leipzig, the Hengstenberg paper and the Protestant. Kirchenzeitung each have 1,500 subscribers, the Darmstadt paper 1,000, and the Zeitschrift für christliche Wissenschaft und christliches Leben 600, while the small, monthly Berlin Dorfkirchenzeitung, by contrast, has 3,500, whereas the great majority count only 500 to 600 subscribers. Characteristic of German conditions is the fact that the Calw and Barmen mission papers have the widest circulation, namely 10,000 and 15,000.

England. Here too the spirit of the age is being reckoned with. The bill permitting marriage with a deceased wife's sister was adopted in the House of Commons by a majority of 58 votes.

Freemasons. After the famous poet Heinrich Voss had been a Freemason for eleven years, he wrote: "In eleven years I surely ought to have gained some closer knowledge of the interior, where the mystery is supposed to lie, and of the unknown Watchers; but even now I know only this much: that those very rites which I would gladly make public, in order to give the laity a prejudice in favor of the genuineness of our sect, were nothing more than a farce, over which even the respectable officers in Berlin have laughed. Only ask, with the earnest thought of God's judgment: who are the superiors — themselves still unknown even to you — who stand at the head of the order, and what purposes the men who allow themselves such means can have with us? To whom does one promise blind obedience? The rogue whom discovery will not deter ends up at last in the Societas Jesu." True it is, adds a correspondent of a political newspaper here, only this much: that individual Masons, even Masters of the Chair, are secret Jesuits, and, like the one from Mainz, even openly declare themselves confederates of the Jesuits. Either, he continues, a secret really exists, or it does not. In the latter case the order is either a work of deceit or of playacting. — And to this "Christian, Lutheran preachers" wish to belong!! For shame!

Luther's Bible Translation. The Basel Bible Society had for years entertained the thought of improving Luther's Bible text, but has now come to the decision to abandon it. A voice from the Canton of Schaffhausen reported: "We set out here upon an improvement of Luther's translation, and divided up the work, but came gradually to the conviction that it would result more in a worsening than an improvement. In any case, this would probably occasion a confusion worse than all the shortcomings of the present translation." — So reports the American correspondent, adding the good remark: "May one, in bewailing the alleged or real faults of Luther's translation, not forget: first, that compared to the abundance of what is correctly and aptly translated, these almost entirely disappear; further, that Luther, even where he has not translated with complete accuracy, has nowhere translated in such a way that the reader could thereby be led astray regarding the way to salvation; and finally, that alongside the printed people's Bible there still stands the teaching office in the Church, which, by virtue of its linguistic training, can also go back to the original languages and thus supply the deficiencies of the translation." The latter is, admittedly, not a very strong consolation for America, nor for the greater part of Europe either.

The Hermannsburg Mission had, in the past year, an income of 31,133 thalers against an expenditure of 30,923 thalers. The income was half again as large as in the previous year.