# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Mai 1859_S137
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

The Distress of the Evangelical Church in the Grand Duchy of Hesse. 137

Bible! The stream of it, so full at first, was lost in the sand already in the second installment. Of any false brilliance there is by then scarcely any more talk; in its place has come dreary tedium. The editor has evidently withdrawn from the work almost entirely and let his young "philological consciences" run and rule freely. . . . . . Such literary phenomena have hitherto been found only in France — one need only think of Dumas — in Germany they have scarcely occurred.

(From the Saxon Church and School Gazette.)
The Distress of the Evangelical Church in the Grand Duchy of Hesse.

It was on Sunday Invocavit of last year that Pastor Ewald delivered a sermon in the town church at Darmstadt which, in the most offensive manner, mocked the clear teachings of Scripture. Not only was the doctrine of a real devil called a "phantom born of night," but the person of the Redeemer, too, was degraded, in that He was declared to be an ordinary man, it being asserted that He had known, from His own experience, "the natural weakness of our flesh and the power of sensuality with which all who are born of woman must contend." Candidate Jäger of Frankfurt, who was staying in Darmstadt at the time and heard this sermon, felt himself constrained in conscience to bear public testimony against it, especially since the preacher in question had already, in a very provocative manner elsewhere, sure of the favor of the great deluded crowd, represented the faith of the Church and the teaching of the plainest scriptural passages as the opinion of a few individuals; and he published a pamphlet, which was likewise noted in many newspapers of the time, under the title: Devil, Original Sin, God-Man, or Rationalism in the Pulpit versus God's Word and the Confession of the Fathers.*) A few days later a placard was posted one morning on every street corner, which linked Candidate Jäger with the Jesuit father Roh, who was then preaching in Darmstadt, and in their names invited the public to a great exorcism of devils on the parade ground. The pamphlet now attracted ever more attention. A German-Catholic preacher wrote a defense on behalf of his embattled friend Ewald. Ewald's friends in the congregation, however, headed by an advocate named Reh known from the revolutionary period, drew up an address of devotion to Ewald, which, as a remarkable testimony of unbelief, was also printed in the N. Pr. Zeitung. In it the teachings, as Christ

*) An Open Word occasioned by a sermon delivered by the Reverend Pastor Ewald in Darmstadt on Sunday Invocavit 1858 in the town church, on the history of the temptation of Christ. Darmstadt, 1858, published by Friedrich Würtz.