# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_September 1859_S288
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

288 Kirchlich-Zeitgeschichtliches [Church and Contemporary History].

...because they have fallen away from the former, they want to know nothing of the latter, which puts loyalty to the former to the test. Nevertheless, on the strength of this opinion the ministry found it inadvisable to grant the requested permission to use the textbook.

Lippe. Here a Roman Catholic member of the nobility has protested against the legally mandated introduction of the Heidelberg Catechism, because in the answer to the 80th question the Mass is (quite correctly) called an accursed idolatry. The minister of culture of the land has therefore instructed the clergy to avoid this answer in instruction!

In Löhe's Mittheilungen aus und über Nord-Amerika, No. 6 of this year, we read a letter from a chiliast of the Synod of Iowa: "Near Schieferdecker we have received a congregation of Austrians of the Württemberg-Bengelian persuasion, who had been left orphaned by Missouri on account of chiliasm." (This is to say: who, secretly stirred up by Schieferdecker, drove out a Missourian pastor, into whose place we have now hastily slipped.) "Schieferdecker himself will join us once he has met with us personally, so he says." (As far as we know, the matter stands otherwise. Those who have remained loyal to Schieferdecker are for the most part people who were already, as such, enemies of the Synod beforehand, and who therefore are quite unwilling to let him lay the "synodical yoke" — which they shook off with such good grace — upon their necks again.) "From Missouri two pastors have recently withdrawn on account of the Missourians' anti-chiliasm, Kilian in Texas, Harms with Schieferdecker." (That is one of the many bears which the chiliastic Iowans are now tying around the necks of their German money-senders, by way of due thanks and comfort.) "Pastor Dörfler is returning to us from the Buffalo Synod. Buffalo wanted this on account of the chiliasm." (A very euphemistic report!) "Everything is stirring and astir and in ferment. And now our synodical report is added to that." (One sees that these enthusiasts are pleased to be such important persons, able to disturb the church. But they ought to consider that even a reckless boy can set a fire and cause enough confusion and heartache. God grant that these inexperienced, thoughtless people may already here learn with sorrow how terrible is the guilt they have heaped up through their factious doings.)

Dr. Ernst Sartorius, General Superintendent at Königsberg, well known as one of the most zealous contributors to the Berlin Ev. Kirchenzeitung, died in June of this year, as that journal reports in its number of June 15th.

Ps. 51:17 [Psalm 51:17].

The hair must truly always stand on end, toward the mountains, for a right God-fearing servant of the Word as often as he mounts the pulpit, and it is deeply needful for him to say, with beloved David, Ps. 51:17: "Lord, open my lips, and then my tongue shall declare your praise." And blessed is he whose mouth and tongue are thus cleansed and polished. Such a one may boast, with the Apostle, of a new and learned tongue; just as Christ himself boasts of the same, Isa. 50:4.

(Luther, in the sermon on the glorious mandate of Christ. IX, 2701.)

Anecdotes for Pastors.

"How much does your parish bring you in?" a bishop asked a country pastor while visiting his diocese. — "Just as much as your Excellency's bishopric brings you," answered the pastor, "either eternal blessedness or hell, depending on how we administer the office God has entrusted to us."

The satirist Piron once heard a sermon delivered with ever more powerful gesticulation of the arms and upper body. Once he had soon enough grasped the reason for it, he said to his neighbor: Just look how he is trying to save himself by swimming. —