# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_August 1859_S254
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

254 Gleanings.

...intends, from now on, to amend his life?" One should certainly not forget that in our own times many "Lutheran" preachers hold Roman notions of the preaching office; but the Roman concept of the office hangs inseparably together with the Roman concept of confession — the one draws the other after it involuntarily. But a carnificina conscientiarum [a torture-chamber of consciences], such as the Roman ear-confession is, the evangelical private confession was never meant to become, either in Luther's sense or in that of the Augsburg Confession.

VII. In the treatise of Dr. A. Frantz, superintendent at Sangerhausen, "The Pretensions of the Exact Sciences," from last year, the Copernican system too is rejected, among other things — as we learn from a review of it by Rudelbach. Rudelbach writes: "Frantz regards the Copernican hypothesis of the world-system as one of the gravest encroachments; together with other investigators (among whom, notably, Schelling and Hegel) he calls attention to the high significance of the earth, and brings to bear Tycho Brahe's pointer toward the earth's mass being unsuited for motion, while he sees in the heavenly bodies light-bodies whose substance is not earth, but light."

VIII. In a review of the treatise "Nature-Astronomy for Every Sound Human Understanding. By J. W. Schmitz" — Ströbel writes: — He (Schmitz) writes "for every sound human understanding"; going by the content of the little book, that can only mean: for every enlightened Schildbürger [a proverbial simpleton, after the legendary town of Schilda] who, so as not to fall behind progress and the spirit of the age, renounces all thinking of his own and, like a well-trained starling, mechanically parrots the words of his teacher. Only the greatest non-astronomical stupidity can still be impressed by assertions such as: "Today, now that the telescope has discovered the infinity of the universe, the notion of the daily rotation of the endless universe around the floating globe of the earth stands beneath every level of human understanding." Whoever believes that must also maintain: "The planets move from west to east around the sun, and in their course likewise turn from west to east about themselves — just as a rolling ball revolves in the direction in which it runs. Thus the earth rolls in a circle around the sun," and so forth. But it is utter nonsense — clearly enough hinted at even by Schmitz himself (§ 54) — that a ball continually rotating and rolling from west to east could describe a circle around another body. Certainly not out of "credulity" (p. 67), but simply to be rid of this nonsense, Weinbach (in his New World-System, As It Is) lets the earth move only about its own axis, and not at the same time around the sun as well. — Schmitz's little book has confirmed for me anew that the Copernican theory is defended by non-astronomers solely out of hostility toward Holy Scripture. So it stands, at least, in our own day — and in earlier times things were probably not much different.

IX. In Münkel's New Gazette we read: the Baptists have heard, with great rejoicing, the speech of the Minister of Public Worship von Bethmann-Hollweg on religious freedom before the Prussian Diet. They see the time no longer far off when they will be publicly recognized in Prussia. Their courage is thereby greatly lifted, and they take hope that, after such developments, they will find the way opened up everywhere in German lands. Mecklenburg, it is true, is still too tough for them; they have raised an outcry in their organ, the N. Ev. K.-Z. — it has not helped, and they fear that even the mediation of the Evangelical Alliance will not help either. For this they hope