# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_August 1859_S255
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Church and Contemporary History. 255

...they hope that Hanover will not prove so tough. Indeed, they have no complaint at all against Hanover as such. It is only the intriguing by which they reach into other people's congregations that is being turned back within its proper bounds. But that is exactly what they wish to put a stop to, and what they brand with the names intolerance and oppression. "We lie," they say, "under the heavy yoke of religious oppression, and we groan. Our assemblies are being violently broken up" (namely, in other people's Lutheran congregations — for no one hinders them in their own assemblies), "the foreign missionaries are being banished, fines and imprisonment hinder our work." In other words: the government protects them against meddling in other people's congregations, and against transgression of the seventh commandment. Therefore they say: "Brothers! it is high time that we bestir ourselves and go to work together as one man." The Baptist emissary Haupt of Bremen, who has already been expelled from Hanoverian territory by the police more than once, has issued an appeal to all Baptists in our land, in which he says: "I should like to propose that we have a petition drawn up, signed by all the brethren in the land of Hanover, and addressed to His Majesty the King of Hanover" (perhaps by one of the eminent contributors to the N. Ev. K.-Z.), "in which we set forth our sorry condition in facts and ask for relief." Haupt then offers proposals for how this is to be carried out, and closes with the words: "So, to work — the gates must be made wide, and the doors in the world made high, so that the King of Glory" (namely Oncken and his associates) "may enter also into the land of Hanover, and many sinners' hearts strew palms before him." They could certainly spare themselves the trouble. Our government has so far shown no inclination to walk in Prussian shoes, and will hardly grant the Baptists leave to make proselytes in congregations not their own, since it does not even permit this to the churches recognized in the land.

Church and Contemporary History.

America.

The Fröhliche Botschafter [Joyful Messenger] of Dayton, Ohio, organ of the so-called United Brethren in Christ (whose fellowship was founded by the Reformed preacher Otterbein), writes in its number of June 9 of this year: "That the condition of religion, especially in the English-speaking part of our church, suffers from a spiritual wasting-away is not at all doubted among us, and is also plain to the eyes of other experienced Christians; but that this evil is more prevalent in some parts of the West than in the East, and far more deeply rooted in the larger cities than in the countryside, is, to judge from our own observations, quite certainly the case."

Baptism and the Sects. The sects express themselves about baptism in two ways: some say outright that it is nothing but an empty token of recognition, a rite of admission; others, who at bottom hold exactly the same view of it, make use of ambiguous language, by which they seek to satisfy at once both those who regard baptism as a means of grace and those who look upon it as a powerless ceremony. The ambiguous manner of speech of the latter therefore brings them, in the eyes of the former, under suspicion of being secret Lutherans. This is what recently happened to the Methodists, to their great dismay. A member of the United Brethren in Christ had attacked, as Lutheran, the doctrine of baptism set forth by the Methodist Richard Watson in his Theological Institutes. To this Nast replies: "It never occurred to Watson to teach that water-baptism is the new birth. He does maintain that it is the door to the church, but only a thoroughly confused mind could take that to mean the same as saying: water-baptism is the new birth, or the great matter of salvation." To this the editor of the Fröhliche Botschafter replies, in its