# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Mai 1859_S142
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

142 From this year's Preface to the Saxon Church and School Paper.

First of all it is the Unionist spirit that raises its head full of hope. After the former General Superintendent Möller had declared that in the Province of Saxony there were only 10 united congregations, and that on the Lutheran side there was a preponderance of practical competence and successful activity, Stier answered with the Union Society, which already numbers close to 400 members — as at least the "Neue Evangelische Kirchenzeitung" assures us — and now has a following. It is well known how decisively some churchly counselors, such as General Superintendent Hoffmann, have already urged that the Union be pursued in earnest again, even if very many should separate over it. Already Feldner in Elberfeld, despite his moderate Lutheran leanings, has felt driven out of the United Church and toward joining Breslau. It looks as though one is testing how far one may go along this path. For if the withdrawal of a Feldner finds only relatively small following on the part of the congregation, then one may venture it with others still more boldly. In other provinces of the territorial church, not a few clergy seem to be looking ahead to the point where remaining in the Union will become for them a moral impossibility. But here too, especially in the Province of Saxony, probably only few from the congregation will join them. Stahl has been dismissed, at his own request, from the Supreme Church Council; Hengstenberg, without his own request, from the Examination Commission; and Nathusius has been condemned for his attack on the Union. If this course continues consistently, Nitzsch and Hoffmann will soon scarcely be able to go along any further, and Bethmann-Hollweg will have to refuse his cooperation. One might have been surprised that he, and not someone more rationalistically minded, was appointed Minister of Culture. But we should probably see in this only a transitional choice. For the present a man had to be taken who was at least of this persuasion — a man of the Union, of the Kirchentag, and of the Preußisches Wochenblatt. Those who know him more closely doubt whether he is fit to be a minister, and doubt too, for that very reason, that he will remain long in office. That he does not yet determine the spirit of the ministry is shown by the appointment of Olshausen. Bethmann will go; Olshausen will stay. How things will develop further from here one can only conjecture, but for now there is not much more to say about it. In any case it is good and salutary that the situation is becoming clear, that the chaff is blowing away, that strength is being concentrated. Should the state of affairs take a more serious turn, the orthodox will stand firm and faithful to the throne, as they did who stood upright ten years ago.

Matters have come so far that the Jesuit father Roh had to preach Jesus Christ in Darmstadt. Of his sermons in Lent 1858, the "Report of a Layman" in Gelzer's Monatsblätter (June 1858, p. 406) confesses that the people of Darmstadt have seldom heard the deity of Christ spoken of with such clarity and cogent development, and that many Protestants too have testified to this impression. Otherwise it was