# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_December 1859_S378
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

378 Church and Contemporary Affairs.

institutions, which had grown together with the seven-hundred-year-old municipal institutions absorbed into the unitary state, that with the cessation of the latter in the year 1850 the reorganization of the former became necessary. The Superior Consistory laid a draft before the government for confirmation. This was returned in essentially altered form in the year 1855 as a "provisional regulation for the representation and administration of the Evangelical territorial Church of the Augsburg Confession," and, after the autonomous Church had declared itself in agreement, was put into effect in the year 1856 in the two lowest organs of administration. The territorial church assembly and the superintendential consistory remained in abeyance. Meanwhile the "delegated" Superior Consistory — left over from the earlier time and consisting of officials of the sovereign — supplied the want, its competence having by now been called into question by nearly all the district consistories, some of which have even formally renounced obedience to it.

This is a brief sketch of the legal and constitutional condition of the Evangelical Church in Austria. The facts, presented here with conscientious fidelity, speak for themselves with a thousand tongues. A resolution is urgently needed; it can be postponed no further. —

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Church and Contemporary Affairs.

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I. America.

Chiliasm. In the October issue of the "Signs of the Times" we read: "Some indeed consider it Christian modesty and simplicity of heart to give no thought to future things '(on earth).' In doing so they fear losing something of their inner peace and their straightforward direction of heart toward Jesus (as they say), and therefore desire to be spared as much as possible any instruction concerning the things of the end. If it had been left to them, when the Spirit of God enlightened the holy men for the composition of the Word of God, the knowledge of Jesus Christ would have turned out very meager." — The knowledge of Christ, then, when it does not relate to future events, is meager to the Chiliasts; the knowledge that one is justified through Christ is to them the bones, but that Christ is coming to his thousand-year kingdom is the flesh.

The Hartwick Synod assembled on September 23 in Lockport, N.Y. In the proceedings published in the Lutheran Observer of October 14, it is reported that the synod discussed the interesting question: "How far should our pastors and church councils tolerate heterodox opinions among the members of the Church?" The result of the discussions, unfortunately, is not reported. At the close of the report it says: "What greatly increased the interest and pleasure on this occasion was the fact that so many ministers and delegates brought their wives with them. It is to be hoped that this custom will be retained in the future and prevail to a still greater extent." It seems to us quite doubtful whether this custom will promote the proper synodical interest and pleasure.

The Synod of North Indiana has resolved to convert the school at Wartburg, Ind., into a so-called mission institute, similar to the one at Selins Grove, Pa. (whose president, as is well known, is Dr. B. Kurtz).

The Allegheny Synod, on the occasion of its meeting on October 14, adopted, among other things, the following resolution: "That we, as a synod which believes God's Word and endorses the Augsburg Confession, hold it our duty publicly to declare that neither Luther and his helpers, nor the Evangelical Lutheran Church in its practice