# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juli 1859_S201
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Correspondence from Germany.                                                      201

"he barks all right, but he don't bite!" — If the Americans saw in the
Germans real earnestness, old German-Lutheran resolve, and not
Americanized suppleness and elasticity of conscience, they would treat
them differently, and would at least not dare to blow such American blue
smoke under their noses.

As for the rest of the General Synod's business, it was simply the usual
business, which the synodical report will in due course bring closer to
view.

——◆◆◆——

(Submitted by Prof. Cramer.)
Correspondence from Germany.

The dear readers of "Lehre und Wehre" will no doubt still recall a reply,
published in the April number of Volume IV, from the Fort Wayne
Conference to a letter from a dear brother of the Lutheran Church of
Germany, in which he had expressed himself concerning the church
affairs of Missouri and concerning "the voice of our Church on the
question of Church and Ministry." After a longer delay, a rejoinder from
that dear brother has now reached us some time ago, containing the
declaration that he has now not only fully grasped our exposition of the
doctrinal points in question, but also finds himself in complete and full
agreement with it. Although a new concern has since arisen for him, and
there is this and that in our practice which he still cannot entirely
reconcile — a matter we may perhaps take up at some later time —
nevertheless the portion of his letter that relates most directly to our
writing contains so eloquent an expression, both of his sincere, faithful,
brotherly disposition and of his position toward the Lutheran Church,
and is at the same time so important — because in it we hear, concerning
various phenomena in the field of the Lutheran Church of Germany, a
voice from within it, indeed from a man who himself stands in the midst
of the Lutheran movement — that we considered it our duty to publish
this portion at once. It follows, then, herewith, for kind information, in
a faithful transcript.

To the members of the Evangelical Lutheran Ministerial Conference at
Fort Wayne, my beloved brothers in the Lord, grace and peace!

With heartfelt praise and thanksgiving to our faithful, gracious God and
Savior — of whose guidance and governance your brotherly letter of
March of this year (1858) is to me a new and truly powerful proof — I set
myself to answer it. Above all I thank your faithful, brotherly love,
which has undertaken so thorough an examination of the concerns I
expressed regarding your Synod. It has been God's special providence
that my letter should come into your hands, and that you should have
had to answer it so fully just at this time, when your answer, through a
concurrence of circumstances, and especially through the development of
our