How the Missouri Synod is Judged in Germany Today.
[A review of an 1881 pamphlet by Pastor Rudolph Hoffmann of Germany]
By Pastor Ch. Hochstetter, Stonebridge, Canada.
Thus the reproach that we are again restricting church freedom too much is rejected in advance. When Hoffmann further writes of the Missourians [p. 11]: “The pure doctrine is the shibboleth of the Synod, whereas everything else essentially recedes”, then this is a testimony according to which the Missourians know what is first important for the constitution and the existence of a true church, and they are completely satisfied with Article VII of the Augsburg Confession [German text:]. “For this is enough [satis est] for true unity of the Christian Church, that the Gospel is preached harmoniously according to pure understanding and that the sacraments may be administered according to the divine Word”. And is it not necessary for the Christian Church to be truly united that uniform ceremonies are held everywhere, instituted by men, as Paul says in Eph 4:5-6: “One body, one Spirit, as you are called to one hope of your profession, one Lord, one faith, one baptism.” According to the often prevailing manner of the state-church union [now the LC-MS], this last sentence should read the other way round:
“It is enough [satis est] that a constitution and ceremonial service is established in the state-church; but that one teaches harmoniously and purely, that is not necessary here; everyone can teach what and how he wants, if he does not reject the false teaching; the Lutheran refutation [Elenchus] is forbidden.”
Hence the Babel of today's Union [Church]!
From page 12 onwards, Hoffmann notes the progress and the division of the Missouri Synod into different districts.
“Whoever impartially follows the progress the Synod has made since its inception cannot fail to admire it. <page 10> From the very beginning, the intention was to seek out the scattered German Lutherans.”
Whereupon the foundation of the Heathen Mission, the formation of the Publishing Company, etc. are listed. With great diligence, Hoffmann collected and briefly presented the statistics concerning the institutions of the synod, and also listed the (former) support of the Hermannsburg and Leipzig Mission, which in several years had amounted to the sending of 6000 dollars. In addition to the Negroes, the Emigrant Mission with its agents in New York, Baltimore and Hamburg is also remembered and the following testimony is finally added on pages 15-16:
“But all this is the work of barely forty years; the small mustard seed has become a tree whose shade many seek; the seed that was once scattered with trembling and fear has given a thousand-fold harvest; no authority has protected the development with its arm, no state provided the means, no coercion has extorted the money; voluntarily the rich and poor have put their mites into the treasury of God, free love has joined one to another; — who could fail to recognize God's blessing? Whose eye would have been clouded by prejudice, that he should not willingly and joyfully admit that the Lord has done this? — Indeed, no matter how important the expositions are that we will have to hold in the following, we will not be able to close our minds to the insight that in the Missouri Synod a homelike asylum was built over there for the German brothers, where they could save their souls from the spiritual dangers that occur there in an even stronger (??) power than in the Fatherland. The Missouri Synod has also recognized these dangers.…”
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