# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_December 1859_S375
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

The Evangelical Supreme Church Council and the Evangelical Church Gazette. 375

be uttered without the most thorough examination of conscience, as to whether one has not oneself given occasion for the sad necessity of distinguishing between divine and human authority. Were this the case, the Evangelical Church Gazette would deserve thanks instead of harsh censure, for having taken pains to set limits to the consequences of such error and thereby to lessen the responsibility. In the case of a paper like the Evangelical Church Gazette, moreover, one ought not to be quick with the reproach of revolutionary tendencies — a reproach to which those are least entitled who, only a few months ago, still stood in opposition, and indeed in a very agitated opposition (the position which the political weekly took against the former ministry is still fresh in everyone's memory). It has, at times when this was harder than now, shown the very opposite of such sentiments. It came forward with courageous testimony against revolutionary conduct immediately after the March days, and repeated this weekly for as long as the crisis lasted. It said, for example, under the date of June 21, 1848 — that is, in the days of the storming of the Arsenal: "The greatest German prince can no longer live safely in his own capital city. The heir to the throne has been insulted and reviled, and has left the country. The King's ministers have negotiated with mobs, led by literary men and demagogues, over whether he might return, while a cry of shame, horror, and dismay shot through the provinces, until at last, as 'deputy from Wirsitz' in the 'Constituante,' he gained a moment's hearing, only to withdraw again at once. — Shall there be no reaction against the outrages that have assailed the honor and property of the Prince of Prussia?" That was at the time nearly the only voice that made itself publicly heard in such a manner. We have not changed since then. It is the same spirit of loyalty in which we then stood up for the royal house, and in which we now rise up for the honor of our heavenly King. Let no one strive to bend and break this loyalty in the land, merely because it is momentarily inconvenient to one or another "constitutional" minister or to the Evangelical Supreme Church Council. Times can, indeed will, come when it is needed again just as urgently as in the year '48, in which the faithful pastors did an immense amount for the good cause — the most, next to the army. It was recently said in the House of Deputies: "whatever one is to rely upon must have power of resistance" — let that be applied also to our "party," if one wishes to call us a party at all, to us, whose highest aim is to be firmly rooted in the whole Word of God, in Him of whom this Word testifies, and in the Church that is founded upon this Word. Before the year '48 we were once called, by a high authority, the "all-too-loyal." But through that year the worth

of a man whose name carried a "good ring" in the assembly, the Minister would not have allowed himself such a thing.