# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1850 01 08_S151
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

succeeded, especially with us in Bavaria. To be sure, there are German-Catholic congregations everywhere — in Nürnberg, Erlangen, Fürth, Wunsiedel, Schwabach, etc.; but this is by no means in the least to be lamented — rather, all faithful members of the church wish from the heart that still more such congregations would come together, so that the unbelievers who have hitherto lived in the midst of our church and led many astray might at last have occasion to withdraw and hold to their own kind. In Saxony the German Catholicism seems to be doing better business, yet even there it is not vehement; the same in Prussia and Württemberg. Up to now neither a Protestant nor the Catholic church needs to fear it. But you, in your present homeland, the land of sects, must know far better than I that a sect can do the church no harm but only good — even when at times it looks otherwise before our eyes.

For the third time I am now sitting down to this letter, after having twice been hindered from finishing it; but this time I hope to come to a close. What I would still like to tell you is a few words about the "Inner Mission." You have presumably already heard of it, and have probably already wondered at this curious, self-contradicting expression. So you will also already know that this work — which has as its aim a "penetration of the masses living within the Christian church but fallen away from the faith, with Christian elements," and at the same time bodily help for the poor and the sick — is being brought forward and most zealously promoted chiefly by Wichern, the director and founder of the institution at the "Rough House" at Horn near Hamburg. I mentioned Wichern's name to you earlier in connection with the Wittenberg confederation, and from that you will conclude — even if you had not already heard it — that this work of the Inner Mission is the chief work of love by which those gentlemen wish to couple the various churches together, and so indeed it is. A central committee for Inner Mission has constituted itself at Wittenberg, around which a great number of individual societies are now gathering. For about a year and a half all Germany has been filled with the outcry over the Inner Mission, an outcry which, since the last Nürnberg mission festival, has also found a very powerful echo in Bavaria. For at that festival Wichern himself was present, and by his amiable personality as well as by his captivating eloquence he won all hearts over to his cause. Then there began a running and a racing, a speaking and a writing, a collecting of money and a holding of conferences and a taking of counsel, such that one would have had to marvel that not all spiritual and bodily want in Bavaria had already been relieved, did one not know what is written in Rom. 9:16. Yet it must be said that it did not remain merely at talk; people also took action: not far from here, on the

Castell counts' estate, there was founded — or more exactly: is being founded, for it is not yet finished — the first rescue-home for neglected children, then in Erlangen, in Naila, in Weissenburg, and (if I am not mistaken) in Fürth — in short, Inner Mission has now become the fashion, and whoever wishes to pass as "Christian," that is, pietistically Christian, must speak and work for the Inner Mission, if his Christianity is not to be seriously called into doubt. So the Reverend Pastor Löhe, too, thought it good that we, who did not approve of this pietistic, work-righteous manner of carrying on the Inner Mission, let alone its being made subservient to the confederation, should nevertheless join ourselves together into a "Society for Inner Mission," but "in the sense of the Lutheran Church," and carry on somewhat more systematically what had already been done here and there individually — so that those among clergy and laity who had been set a little into motion and life by the general outcry over Inner Mission might not fall in directly with that perverse way of carrying it on, and perhaps even be drawn along into the whirlpool of the confederation, but might rather recognize, from our society, that this matter too can be carried on in a good Lutheran way, and so that everyone might recognize that the orthodoxy of the Lutheran Church is no dead thing, as it is otherwise so gladly reproached with being. This society did indeed come into being, and its work is now making good progress. To communicate to you its plan and its sphere of action I reserve for a coming letter, where I may then perhaps also be able to write of some success already achieved.

What you write me of the indifferent conduct and behavior of the members of the General Synod does not surprise me at all, for with us things are not a hair better. Yet, indeed, it grieves a faithful heart when one must see one's own dear mother struck in the face by those who wish to be reckoned as her own children. It is not a calamity for the church when she is plagued and persecuted by her enemies with writing and word and deed, but it is a great heartache for her when her own children fall out among themselves, and Babel moves in among them — and so it is with us in Bavaria. How thoroughly Lutheran the pastors of Nürnberg and Fürth and the professors of Erlangen wish to appear — and behold, they bear a greater malice against us than any Reformed pastor whatever. Oh, that the Lord would look down and take away from all our hearts all pride and everything else that otherwise hinders true unity in the Spirit! Let us pray, one for the other — you for the Bavarian, I for the American Lutheran Church — that He may help, for here the help of man is of no use.

With heartfelt love,

Your faithful friend and brother:

G. M[üller?].

May this letter, which, so far as it touches upon the ecclesiastical conditions of Germany, I have communicated in full, move all faithful members of our Lutheran Church in this country to think diligently of their brethren, yes, of the whole church across the ocean, whenever they cast themselves down, praying, pleading, giving thanks, and interceding, before the throne of God, wrapped in the righteousness of Christ; this is what your fellow pilgrim, small in his own eyes but joined to you with his whole heart in prayer, toward the city of the living God, wishes, asks, and begs — J. Seidel.

(Submitted.)
The Weyl Church Messenger.*)

In No. 6 of the Weyl Church Messenger a certain Mr. Theophilus has once again broken a lance against the Old Lutherans and, in a boastful manner, has promised victory in advance, claiming that he will convict us of inconsistency, however we may answer. His infallible dilemma is this: either we must accept the proposition that not Holy Scripture alone, but Holy Scripture and the doctrine of tradition together, are God's Word and the sole rule and standard by which all doctrines are alike to be judged and evaluated — or Holy Scripture alone is the sole rule and standard of doctrine, etc. That we Lutherans, in our answer to this, should be brought into the great embarrassment of having to confess ourselves guilty of inconsistency, twist and turn as we may — namely, that our doctrine and our practice do not agree with one another — no simple-minded person among us will be able to imagine. And so, dear readers, I must once again bore you and set before you the neat Theophilian proofs themselves, of which I would rather have said nothing, had I not been obliged to speak for the sake of the truth. Mr. Theophilus means, namely: that when one has, as the Lutherans do, so finely turned and sharply cut a dogmatics as stands in the Formula of Concord (which, in his supposed wit, he calls the "boys' three-formula," and which, as you see, he takes for a kind of dogmatics), then it does not take much to pronounce, just like the Roman church, ex cathedra: whoever says such-and-such, etc., is under the ban. Now we would indeed be dreadfully consistent in accusing the united and Reformed churches of this land of heresy, insofar as they depart in their doctrines from the teaching of the Book of Concord, but we would be inconsistent in that we do not also, in so many words, raise the Book of Concord itself to the authority of Holy Scripture. Here, he says, we could learn from the Roman church, which in its own catechism states outright that the Word of God is divided into Holy Scripture and the doctrine of tradition; a Roman Catholic Christian must therefore believe everything that the

*) The last number of this excellent paper that has reached us is the fourth, from the middle of February of this year. Presumably Mr. Weyl's world-renowned Christian love moves him to spare us, by not sending us the papers in which we are attacked, both an injury and the trouble of having to write a reply. The faithful, dear heart! — The Editor.