been born into the kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ." (59.) In 1875: "In most of the synods there have been seasons of special extended quickening. Large numbers have professed conversion. In some instances hundreds have been added to a single church in a twelvemonth." (23.) In 1848 the Synod of Western Virginia reported: "Almost all our churches have been blessed with revivals of religion. In some upwards of one hundred persons have professed to have passed from death unto life; in others seventy-five, in others fifty, and in some not so many." (45.) In 1859: "The two institutions, Roanoke College and Wytheville Female College, have also been blessed with gracious visitations from on high, which resulted in the conversion of a number of students in both institutions." (53.) The Virginia Synod, in 1859: "We have shared to some extent the great revival blessings which God has poured out upon the land." (51.) The New York Ministerium, in 1850: "The churches generally are in a state of prosperity, and many of them have been favored with special visitations of the Holy Spirit." (31.) In 1859: "The great revival has had its influence upon our churches; many have been added to our number, and the vital piety has increased." (61.) The Synod of West Pennsylvania, in 1850: "Interesting revivals of religion have occurred since the last General Synod in different places." (29.) In 1853: "The influences of the Holy Spirit have descended as the dew upon the labors of most of them, whilst there have been refreshing showers in the case of many. Revivals are known to have been enjoyed by eight of the pastoral districts within the last two years. This number embraces nearly half of the charges of the Synod. Some of these gracious seasons were of great power, resulting in the hopeful conversion of many souls, and furnishing a number of students having the ministry in view." (28.) In 1859: "Nearly all the churches have enjoyed revivals of religion more or less extensive; conversions have been numerous." (49.) In 1864: "In some pastorates there have been special awakenings, and many have been added to the Church of Christ." (55.) In 1871: "Many of the churches have been blessed with precious seasons of refreshing grace." (44.) East Pennsylvania Synod, in 1850: "Many sections of the Church have been blessed with special visitations of the Spirit of God." (32.) In 1862 the Synod of Central Pennsylvania reported: "In mercy God poured out His Spirit upon a number of the charges and congregations, and many souls professed conversion; and although the sad effects of the war are, in this Synod, clearly seen in her churches, still we are happy to state that much good has been accomplished." (45.) In 1871: "There have been extensive awakenings in several of our pastorates, and there is a steady and commendable progress in spiritual attainments generally." (47.) The Hartwick Synod, in 1853: "Precious seasons of refreshing have been vouchsafed to its churches. The Lord is in the midst of His people, making glad their hearts with the tokens of His presence and His love." (30.) In 1862: "Although there have not been, within the past three years, revivals so numerous and so extensive as in the two years previous, yet seasons of refreshing have been enjoyed on the part of many of the churches, and such progress made as to evince the Lord's presence and blessing." (41.) In 1804: "In several of our churches the Lord has graciously revived His work, believers have been quickened into higher life, and sinners have been converted." (57.) In 1871: "Many of our congregations have enjoyed special seasons of grace, and large accessions to the Church have been the result." (44.) In 1859 the Alleghany Synod reported: "Extensive revivals have been enjoyed and a large number of members added." (52.) In 1862: "The Synod has had some precious revivals of religion in many of its congregations. In many respects the Synod has prospered in vital piety." (42.) In 1869: "Some of the charges have made large additions, as results of religious awakenings, during the past winter." (58.) The Melanchthon Synod, in 1859: "Extensive revivals of religion have been enjoyed in many of the congregations, and large additions have been made to the membership." (58.) In 1862: "The churches within the bounds of this Synod enjoyed extensive revivals during the first two years after the last meeting of the General Synod, at which time the rebellion, so disastrous to both State and Church, took place and blasted many of our most cherished enterprises, and laid low many of our fondest hopes. During the past year, accessions to the Church within our bounds have been comparatively few, revivals of religion rare, whilst there has been a marked decline in vital godliness." (46.) In 1869: "During the past year quite a number of revivals of religion have occurred." (59.) The Synod of Kentucky, in 1859: "Some of our charges have enjoyed revivals of religion, which greatly refreshed both ministers and people, and considerably increased our numerical strength." (57.) The Maryland Synod, in 1859: "Extensive revivals have been enjoyed by many of the churches." (49.) The Synod of New Jersey, in 1862: "Our body has an existence of only one year. Yet we have enjoyed revivals of religion." (42.) In 1869: "A number of revivals of religion have been reported." (61.) In 1871: "Several of our churches have enjoyed seasons of special religious interest and revival." (48.) The Franckean Synod, in 1869: "Practical religion has been well sustained. Several precious revivals have been enjoyed." (62.) In 1871: "Synod is engaged with more or less success in establishing and unfolding a true religious life in the membership of the Church of God as the grand object of being, endeavoring to promote revivals of religion." (48.) The Susquehanna Synod, in 1869: "This Synod is in a prosperous condition. During the past year, and, more particularly, during the past winter, extensive revivals of religion were enjoyed and large numbers of souls hopefully converted to God and added to the Church." (62.) In 1871: "There has been a large increase in the membership, mostly through judiciously conducted protracted meetings and catechization." (48.)

50. Reports on Revivals (continued).—In 1869 the Synod of New York reported: "Some of the congregations have been visited with special showers of divine grace, and, as a consequence, large additions have been made to its membership." (58.) The English Synod of Ohio, in 1853: "There are but few congregations in connection with our Synod but what have, during the past year, enjoyed greater or less manifestations of the Spirit of God in the conversion of sinners." (34.) The East Ohio Synod, in 1859: "In all of our churches most precious seasons of grace were enjoyed. The Spirit of God 'came down like rain upon the mown grass,' and righteousness flourished in all our borders." (52.) In 1862: "The state of religion is healthy. The past few years have been marked with the gifts of the Divine Spirit, and, while sinners have been converted to God, the professed people of Christ have been stadily [sic] growing in spirituality and church-love." (43.) In 1869: "We have had many precious seasons of revival during the past year, and large accessions to the number of those who shall be saved." (59.) In 1871: "Many precious revivals of religion have been recorded, and large accessions have been made to the churches." (45.) The Olive Branch Synod, in 1853: "Almost all the churches connected with this Synod, during the year, enjoyed precious revivals of religion." (37.) In 1859: "Many of them have enjoyed refreshing seasons from the presence of the Lord, by which they have become much strengthened and encouraged." (54.) In 1862: "The churches are, with few exceptions, in a prosperous condition. Some of them have enjoyed seasons of refreshing." (43.) In 1871: "A number of charges have had precious seasons of revival, resulting in large additions to their membership. The state of religion in our churches is more favorable than it had been in the few years previous." (46.) The Miami Synod, in 1859: "Revivals have been enjoyed in almost every charge, and large numbers have been brought to the knowledge of the truth." (52.) In 1871: "Several of them have enjoyed special seasons of grace." (45.) The Synod of Iowa, in 1859: "Some of the churches have been visited by revivals of religion, and there a more healthful state of piety is seen." (58.) In 1862: "The most extensive revivals of religion ever known among us have been enjoyed during the past winter. Our laity are becoming more of a praying as well as a working people. A deeper tone of piety exists among us. There is more heartfelt and prayerful longing for the gracious outpouring of the blessing of God, and more earnest efforts are being put forth for the conversion and salvation of souls. It is therefore our decided conviction that at no former period of our brief history have we been so fully and generally awakened to our great mission in this distant West as at the present." (46.) The Synod of Northern Illinois, in 1859: "Our Swedish and Norwegian brethren are very active, and a living practical Christianity is making powerful progress among them. During the last two years extensive and powerful revivals have been enjoyed by many of the churches connected with this Synod." (54.) In 1871: "A number of refreshing seasons of divine grace has been enjoyed during the past two years." (47.) The Synod of Northern Indiana, in 1859: "In the last two years many of its churches have enjoyed revivals of religion." (57.) In 1862: "Many precious revivals of religion have been enjoyed." (44.) The Wittenberg Synod, in 1859: "During the past two years our churches have enjoyed the special visitations of the Holy Spirit and the number of our members has been greatly enlarged." (52.) The Synod of Illinois, in 1859: "Many of the churches have enjoyed refreshing seasons from the presence of the Lord, and vital piety is advancing." (53.) The Synod of Southern Illinois, in 1862; "Some of our congregations have enjoyed refreshing showers from the presence of the Lord, during the last winter, and are in prosperous condition." (46.) In 1864: "Amid all these hindrances, some of the churches have been revived by gracious outpourings of the Spirit." (59.) In 1869: "Although new elements of wickedness, such as rationalism, pantheism, etc., are making their way into our midst, yet Christians are awake to their baneful influences and are setting themselves against them." (61.)

51. Coming to Their Senses Gradually.—New-measurism was resorted to by the General Synod in order to revive the dying Church. The true cause of her apathy, atrophy, and decay, however, was not diagnosed correctly. It was the prevailing confessional indifference, religious ignorance, and the neglect of Lutheran indoctrination by catechization, especially of the young. Dr. Hazelius, himself a revivalist, as early as 1845, pointed out the real cause and cure. "The attachment of the Church"—said he— "has been weakened so much that the causes of this alarming fact have frequently been made the subject of inquiry in our churchpaper [Observer], and we are sorry to say that among all the causes assigned, we have missed the one which is at the root of the evil, viz., the remissness of many of our pastors in the religious instruction of youths." (Wolf, Lutherans in America, p. 484.) If this was the disease, it stands to reason that a cure could not be brought about by the quack methods of New-measurism, by exciting the nerves and emotions, but only by enlightening the mind and moving the will by the Word of God. Pastor Loehe, presenting in Kirchliche Mitteilungen of 1843 a description of revivals and camp-meetings in America, remarked: "They intoxicate themselves with spiritual drinks which are worse than whisky." (Nos. 2 and 5.) Indeed, Methodistic revivalism has been found wanting, and worse than wanting, everywhere. In a Lutheran congregation it must necessarily result in a total annihilation of whatever there may be left of true Lutheranism.—The inoperativeness of revivalism was occasionally admitted also by its friends within the General Synod. At New York, 1848, regretting the decrease in the number of theological students, the Executive Committee of the Parent Education Society stated: "This subject becomes more painful when we consider that since 1842, when the Church at large was blessed with extensive revivals of religion, the number of beneficiaries has diminished constantly until the present time, whilst there has been no corresponding increase perceptible in the number of theological students who sustain themselves. During the same time there has been no corresponding increase in the benevolence of the Church in any other direction; on the contrary, the contributions of the whole Church for all benevolent purposes may now be easily covered by the annual charities of a single congregation in this city." (64.) But the ministers and congregations of the General Synod were slow in coming to their senses. It was one of the symptoms pointing in the right direction when, in 1864 at York, the Committee on the State of the Church reported: "It is a hopeful sign of substantial growth and prosperity in the Church that the time-honored custom of catechization is coming more and more into favor with the pastors. This means of preparing the baptized children of the Church for an intelligent profession of faith in Christ and the privilege of communicant membership, had, in many places, fallen into neglect on account of the frequent abuse to which it had been subject in the hands of those who employed it as a mere formal mode of introducing the young to the communion without any evidence of piety; but we believe it is now becoming more and more a means of conversion and salvation to our rising membership." (1864,55.) At Altoona, 1881, the same committee presented the following report, which Synod adopted: "Ministers, from every quarter, report with delight that catechization is regularly practised and grows in favor. We are foolish to throw away this noble heritage. It affords, as nothing else, an opportunity for the children of the Church to become professing Christians. The pastor can train, educate, and indoctrinate them through it. By its help our churches, every year, can have a healthful growth, and not depend alone upon special seasons, or revivals of religion. We, therefore, may expect in the future still larger accessions—accessions which, trained by a godly and devoted ministry, should be, not nominal, but living Christians, understanding the great truths and doctrines of the Word of God." (60.) In the following decades, as related, revivals decreased rapidly within the General Synod. A thorough and permanent cure of the Methodistic infection, however, can be effected only by the doctrine of grace, the Gospel of unconditional pardon and truly divine power, as taught by the Lutheran Church.

"AMERICAN LUTHERANISM."

52. A Misnomer.—Essentially Americanism signifies liberty of thought, speech, press, and assemblage, based on democracy and national independence, religious freedom and equality being its most precious gem. Lutheranism, therefore, standing, as it does, for the complete separation of State and Church, as well as liberty and equal religious rights for all, is inherently American; while the Reformed confessions, inasmuch as they advocate religious intolerance, civil legislation favoring their own religious tenets, etc., are in conflict with the principles of American freedom. A Reformedist, in order to become a true American, must sacrifice some of his confessional teachings, while the Lutheran symbols are in need of no purging to bring them into harmony with American ideals. Indeed, in the atmosphere of American liberty the Lutheran Church, for the first time in her history, on a large scale was able to develop naturally and normally by consistent practical application of her own innate principles, without any corrupting or dwarfing coercion on the part of the State whatsoever. Yet the very man, Dr. Walther, who did more than any other theologian in America towards the building up of a Church at once truly Lutheran and truly American, was stigmatized by S. S. Schmucker and his compeers as a "foreign symbolist," neither Lutheran nor American. But the brand of American Lutheranism proposed and propagated by the leaders of the General Synod was, in reality, a counterfeit American Lutheranism. The new school movement, headed by Schmucker, Kurtz, and Sprecher, and constantly prating "American Lutheranism," was essentially Calvinistic, Methodistic, Puritanic, indifferentistic, and unionistic, hence nothing less than truly Lutheran. From his professor's chair and in the press Schmucker denied and assailed every doctrine distinctive of Lutheranism. In every issue of the Observer B. Kurtz ridiculed and attacked what was most sacred to Luther and most prominent in the Lutheran Confessions. In this he was seconded by Weyl in Lutherische Hirtenstimme and other publications in the General Synod. Thus, while professing and pretending to Americanize the Lutheran Church, the leaders of the General Synod, in reality, were zealous in denaturing, corrupting, and inoculating it with views and ways prevailing in the Reformed churches ever since the days of Zwingli, Bucer, Calvin, and Wesley. The coryphaei of the General Synod, in order to impart to the Lutheran Church, as they put it, "the warmth of Methodism and the vigor of Presbyterianism," disemboweled their own Church of heart and lungs, and filled the empty skin with sectarian stuffings. American Lutheranism, according to Schmucker, was not Lutheranism in sympathy with American institutions and the English language, but abolition of the Lutheran symbols and rejection of the Lutheran doctrines (absolution, real presence, baptismal regeneration, etc.) in favor of the corresponding Reformed tenets and the nine articles of the Evangelical Alliance. Reynolds said in a letter of January 7, 1850: "The fact is, there is a large body of men in our Church who have no knowledge of her history, no sympathy with her doctrines, no idea of her true character, and whose conception of the Church is that of a kind of mongrel Methodistic Presbyterianism, and of this party Drs. S. S. Schmucker and Kurtz are the coryphaei." (Spaeth 1,179.) In 1873 Lehre und Wehre wrote: "So-called American Lutheranism is but a new edition of Zwinglianism, which, in a dishonest fashion, appropriates the Lutheran name. The more one agrees with Zwingli and disagrees with the 16th century Lutheranism, the more genuine an American Lutheran he is." (29.)

53. Spirit of the Movement.—The true inwardness of the "American Lutheranism" with which the General Synod was infected from its very birth, and which reached its crisis in the Definite Platform of 1855, was revealed in all its nakedness by the American Lutheran, a paper into which the Lutherische Kirchenbote of Selinsgrove, Pa., had been transformed in 1865. Its standpoint is characterized by Lehre und Wehre as being beneath that of the Observer "the hollowest so-called American Lutheranism, a concoction of rationalism and sentimentalism." (1865,61.) When Prof. Sternberg, a fanatical anti-symbolist (opponent of the Lutheran Confessions), had been removed from Hartwick Seminary, the American Lutheran, June 22, 1865, wrote: "The days when compromises with and concessions to symbolism were made are passed. If a clash between symbolism and American Lutheranism is unavoidable within the General Synod, the sooner it comes, the better it is." (L. u, W. 1865, 253.) In its issue of July 20, 1865, the American Lutheran published a number of letters in which the hope is expressed that the day was near when the Lutheran Church in America would shake off the yoke of symbolism and step forward, recognized by the great Protestant world. "The attempt"—the correspondent continues—"to live in one and the same house with the symbolists is useless. We thank God that we have a paper which says in its first year: No compromise any longer with symbolism! Hallelujah! May the whole Church hear it." (L. u. W. 1865, 277.) Revealing both its ignorance and animus, the American Lutheran, Rev. Anstaedt then being the editor, said in its issue of January 24, 1867: "The difference between the symbolists [Lutherans true to their Confessions] and American Lutherans is a radical one, going down to the innermost heart of Christianity and involving eternal interests, the salvation and hope of immortal souls. The American Lutheran believes that religion is a personal and individual matter, while the symbolist believes that it is but a congregational matter. Their articles of faith are: 1. All men are born in sin. 2. The Church must redeem us from sin. 3. The Church consists of the priests and the Sacraments. 4. The priests have the power on earth to administer the Sacraments and to forgive sins. 5. The Sacraments have in themselves the power to save. 6. Baptism regenerates the child. 7. The Lord's Supper nourishes the seed implanted in Baptism. 8. Hence man is not saved by the individual experience of something, but in a mass. I know that our symbolists will say that this is slander. But I affirm that it is a sincere and honest presentation of the matter.... The advocates of symbolism probably have never been converted, or they have backslidden again. This is a severe judgment. So it is. But must we not judge them by their fruits? How many souls have been converted by these symbolists? Go into their congregations and speak to their members on religion; what do they know of it? In 19 out of 20 cases their members, when awakened, seek Christ in other churches. We have held back too long with our testimony. I fear that by our negligence souls have gone to hell. And what have we won by our pusillanimity? The advocates of symbolism have grown and become more impudent by their success." (L. u. W. 1867, 88.) In a subsequent issue the same paper, after boldly defending the baldest Zwinglianism, remarked with respect to the symbolists that, in a way, their success involved a certain blessing, inasmuch as they would serve as "an ecclesiastical sewer into which sooner or later the dead formalism, the cold, heartless ritualism, and the lager-beer Lutheranism of this country would find its way." (L. u. W. 1867, 125.) Even the Lutheran Observer was censured by the American Lutheran for becoming too conservative. (L. u. W. 1875, 375.) But the difference was one of degree only. In its issue of October 3, 1873, the Observer charged the Germans and Scandinavians, because of their adherence to the Lutheran Confessions, with sectarian presumption, enmity against other Christians, foreign bigotry, dead orthodoxy, cold dead faith, etc. "The position," the Observer continued, "which these bigots assume in our enlightened land of churches, where the Lord Jesus is more universally honored than in any other country of the world, is ridiculous.... For while these short-sighted men set themselves against the liberal and enlightened spirit of the General Synod and against the times and the country in which they live, other churches annually lead away thousands of their most intelligent members." (L. u. W. 1873, 375.) Enmity against Lutheranism—such was the spirit of the counterfeit American Lutheranism championed by Schmucker and his compeers. Nor is the assumption warranted that this spirit died with its early protagonists. In 1885 Dr. Butler characterized the Americanization of Lutherans in the Lutheran Observer as follows: "It is a great mission of the Observer to open the blind eyes and to convert our Teutonic people from the fetters of its language and customs to the light and to the liberty of this Bible-loving, Sabbath-keeping, water-drinking, church-going and God-fearing country." (L. u. W. 1885, 120.) As late as 1906 the Observer wrote: The General Synod is in possession of the American spirit in the greatest measure. It is her mission to inject this spirit into the Lutheran Church in America. This spirit embraces: adoption of the English language; acknowledgment and toleration of the lodges; fellowship with the sects. "The American spirit is that of fellowship. Failure to be American in this is sure to bring us into ridicule and even disrepute with the mass of the best Christian people of the land." (L. u. W. 1906, 229.)

DEFINITE PLATFORM.

54. Now or Never!—Believing that the Lutheran Confessions, though not an authority above, or alongside of, the Bible, are doctrinally in perfect agreement with the Word of God, Walther, Wyneken, Sihler, Craemer, and others, since 1840, boldly, aggressively, and victoriously unfurled the banner of Lutheran confessionalism. Gradually, though timidly and rather inconsistently, the same spirit began to enter, and manifest itself in, some of the Eastern synods. A conservative tendency was developing and increasing. Especially since the return of the Pennsylvania Ministerium in 1853 the number of the so-called conservatives in the General Synod, who refused to go all the lengths with Schmucker and Kurtz, was materially strengthened. Among these New School men the powerful growth of confessionalism in the West and the silent increase of the conservatives in the larger Eastern synods gradually began to cause alarm, fear, and consternation. They first despised and ridiculed the movement as chimerical and utterly futile in America, then feared, and finally hated and fanatically combated what they termed "foreign symbolism." They felt the fateful crisis drawing nearer and nearer. To be or not to be was the question. Nor was there any time to be lost in protecting the General Synod against what they regarded as the Western peril. "Now or never!" they whispered. Indeed, Schmucker and his friends had long ago decided that a new confessional standard was needed. As early as 1845, at Philadelphia, the General Synod had appointed Schmucker, Kurtz, Morris, Schmidt, and Pohlman to formulate and present to the next convention an abstract of the doctrines and usages of the American Lutheran Church on the order of the Abstract requested by the Maryland Synod, in 1844. And though, in 1850, at Charleston, the report of this committee was laid on the table and the committee discharged from further duty (27), Schmucker did not abandon the idea of substituting a new "American Lutheran Creed" for the Augsburg Confession. Moreover, the conviction of the dire need of an American restatement of Lutheranism grew on him in the same proportion as confessionalism swept the West and threatened the East. His brother-in-law, S. Sprecher, was of the same opinion. In 1853 he wrote: "I hope that this unhappy condition of the Church will not continue long, and that the churches of the General Synod will do as the churches of the Augsburg Confession did in 1580—exercise their right to declare what they regard as doctrines of the sacred Scriptures in regard to all the points in dispute in the Church. I do not believe that the present position of the General Synod can long be maintained; it will either result in the Old-Lutheran men and synods gaining the control of the General Synod, and reintroducing those doctrines and practises of the symbols which the churches in this country and everywhere ought to abandon and condemn, and say that they do; or the friends of the American Lutheran Church must define what doctrines they do hold, and what they do reject, and refuse to fraternize with, and to make themselves responsible for, and to give their influence as a Church in favor of, men and doctrines and practises which they hold to be anti-Scriptural and injurious to the spiritual kingdom of Christ. I do not see how we can do otherwise than adopt the Symbols of the Church, or form a new symbol, which shall embrace all that is fundamental to Christianity in them, rejecting what is unscriptural, and supplying what is defective. A creed we must have, or we can have no real church union, and we must have a catechism which shall be a standard in the catechetical instruction of our children, in which there shall be no doctrines which we do not want our children to believe, and which shall, notwithstanding, be thoroughly orthodox, so that our children may be made strong in the faith of the Gospel in these times of doctrinal looseness and confusion. As long as the General Synod regards with equal favor, and is ready to receive, the Old Lutheran as well as the American Lutheran Synods, the symbolical men have a vast advantage, and they, no doubt, regard it as a triumph when the General Synod, meeting after meeting, continues to hold out its arms to every Lutheran synod, and recommends as heartily the reviews and institutions which are laboring to upturn its present foundations, as it does those which are known to hold the sentiments which it has hitherto fostered." (Spaeth 1, 347.) Five months before the readmission of the Pennsylvania Synod, Sprecher declared: "I fear there will be divisions, no matter what course is taken. As to the hope of gaining over the Symbolic Lutherans, I consider it altogether delusive. If they ever join the General Synod, it will be with the hope of controlling it eventually into their own views and for their own purposes." (353.) Thus, realizing the giant strides which Western confessionalism had already made, and the steady growth of the conservative element in the East, and, at the same time, fully understanding that Lutherans loyal to their Confessions would give no quarters to a counterfeit substitute of Lutheranism, Schmucker, Kurtz, Sprecher, and others decided on a coup d'etat in order to force the issue, to create a test-question, to separate the parties, to eliminate the "symbolists," and thus forever to make the General Synod immune against genuine Old School Lutheran confessionalism and safe for their own mongrel Puritanic-Calvinistic-Methodistic-American Lutheranism.

55. Casting Off the Mask.—In the early part of September, 1855, leading ministers of the General Synod received a pamphlet: "Definite Platform, doctrinal and disciplinarian, for Evangelical Lutheran District Synods; constructed in accordance with the principles of the General Synod." Spaeth: "The new Confession came without a confessor. It appeared as an anonymous document, proving by that very fact that the men who concocted it were not called by God to lead the Church on this Western Continent to a better, fuller, purer conception and statement of the faith of the Gospel than that of the Fathers." However, it was not long before Schmucker was generally known to be its author. Soon after its publication Krauth, Sr., wrote: "My colleague don't disclaim the authorship, so that it has a daddy." Ten years later Schmucker wrote: "Although my friend Dr. Kurtz and myself passed it in review together, and changed a few words, every sentence of the work I acknowledge to have been written by myself." (Spaeth 1, 357.) Besides a brief Preface the Platform contains two parts: 1. "Preliminary Principles and the Doctrinal Basis or Creed to be subscribed"; 2. "Synodical Disclaimer, or List of Symbolic Errors, rejected by the Great Body of the Churches belonging to the General Synod." Part II was not to be individually subscribed to, but published by Synod as a Disclaimer of the symbolical errors often imputed to her. (Second edition, 2. 6.) Its chief object, as appears from the Platform itself, was to obviate the influences of confessional Lutheranism coming from the West, notably from the Missouri Synod. The Preface begins: "This Definite Synodical Platform was prepared and published by consultation and cooperation of ministers of different Eastern and Western synods, connected with the General Synod, at the special request of some Western brethren, whose churches desire a more specific expression of the General Synod's doctrinal basis, being surrounded by German churches, which profess the entire mass of former symbols." (2.) Part I expresses the same thought, stating that the "American Recension of the Augsburg Confession," as Schmucker called the Platform, had been prepared "at the special request of Western brethren, whose churches particularly need it, being intermingled with German churches, which avow the whole mass of the former symbols." (4.) Furthermore, according to the Platform, Lutherans who believe in private confession and absolution should not be admitted into the General Synod; and Part II makes it a point to state: "By the old Lutheran Synod of Missouri, consisting entirely of Europeans, this rite [private confession, etc.] is still observed." (25.) Accordingly, in order to check the progress of the Missouri Synod's Lutheranism, a more specific declaration of the General Synod's basis was deemed indispensable. In the interest of truth, they claimed, it was necessary to specify, without hesitation and reservation, the doctrines of the Augsburg Confession which were rejected, some by all, others by the great majority of the General Synod. To satisfy this alleged need of the Church, the Platform was offered to the District Synods with the direction, for the sake of uniformity, to adopt it without further alterations and with the resolution not to receive any minister who will not subscribe to it. Thus, in publishing the Platform, Schmucker and his compeers cast off the Lutheran mask and revealed the true inwardness of their intolerant Reformed spirit—a blunder which served to frustrate their own sinister objects. The reception which this document met was a sore disappointment to its author. In the commotion which followed the publication of the Platform the conservative element was strengthened, a fact which, a decade later, led to the great secession of 1866, and gradually also to the present ascendency of the conservatives within the General Synod, and the subsequent revision of its doctrinal basis, completed in 1913. H. J. Mann wrote in 1856: "The Platform controversy will, in the end, prove a blessing. The conservative party will arrive at a better understanding. In ten years Schmucker has not damaged himself so much in the public opinion as in the one last year." (Spaeth, 178.)

56. Viewed Historically.—In explanation and extenuation of the Platform blunder Dr. Mann remarked in 1856: "The more thoroughly we investigate the history of the Lutheran Church of this country, the better we will comprehend why all happened just so. No one is particularly guilty; it is a common misfortune of the times, of the conditions." (Spaeth, 175.) H. E. Jacobs explains: "The ministers, in most cases, did not obtain that thorough and many-sided liberal culture which a college course was supposed to represent, and this was felt also in their theological training. ... It may serve as a partial explanation of the confusion that prevailed that there was not a single professor of theology in the English seminaries in the North who had obtained the liberal training of a full college course, except the professor of German theology at Gettysburg. The controversy connected with the 'Definite Platform,' prepared and published under a supervision characterized by the same defects, may be more readily understood when this in remembered." (History, 436.) The explanation offered by Dr. Jacobs might be reenforced by the report of the Directors of the Seminary in 1839: "It is to be regretted that the students generally spend so short a time in theological studies. But few attend to the full course of studies as laid down in the Constitution. The average time of the stay of the major part is only about two years. Thus the theological education of those who go out from the Seminary is necessarily defective." (23.) C. A. Stork admitted with respect to the students at Gettysburg, notably the scholars of Prof. J. A. Brown (since 1864): "It is true, our young men did not know Lutheran theology thoroughly; on many minor points they were cloudy." (Wolf, Lutherans, 371.) Howbeit, explanation does not spell justification. Nor is it correct to view the Definite Platform as a mere derailment, a mere incidental blunder, of the General Synod. It was, on the contrary, the natural result and full development of the indifferentistic and unionistic germs which the General Synod inherited and zealously cultivated during the whole course of its history. Dr. Neve: "If Schmucker and his friends had not made this mistake, now condemned by history, others would surely try to do so now. These men therefore have rendered our Church a service. We have learned much from their mistake." "Sic non canitur"—such indeed is the lesson which Lutherans may learn not only from the Platform movement, but also from the greater part of the history of the General Synod.

57. Platform Theology.—The Platform charges the Augsburg Confession with the following alleged errors: Approval of the ceremonies of the mass, private confession and absolution, denial of the divine obligation of the Sunday, baptismal regeneration, the real presence of the body and blood of the Savior in the Eucharist. Of the Augustana eleven articles are mutilated and eight (the eleventh and the last seven) entirely omitted. The following declaration takes the place of the Eleventh Article: "As private confession and absolution, which are inculcated in this Article, though in a modified form, have been universally rejected by the American Lutheran Church, the omission of this Article is demanded by the principle on which the American Recension of the A. C. is constructed; namely, to omit the several portions which are rejected by the great mass of our churches in this country, and to add nothing in their stead." (11.) In all the articles the condemnatory sections are omitted. Even the deniers of the Trinity are not rejected. The Apostles' Creed is purged of "He descended into hell." The Athanasian Creed is omitted. The rest of the Lutheran symbols are rejected, on account of their length and alleged errors. (5.) The Platform declares: "The extraordinary length of the other former symbolic books as a whole is sufficient reason for their rejection as a prescribed creed, even if all their contents were believed to be true.... The exaction of such an extended creed is subversive of all individual liberty of thought and freedom of Scriptural investigation." (20.) Part II of the Platform, the "Synodical Disclaimer," contains a list of the symbolic errors with extracts from the Lutheran symbols, "which are rejected by the great body of the American Lutheran Church," to wit: I. Ceremonies of the mass (A. C., Art. 24; Apology, Art. 12). 2. Exorcism (Luther's Taufbuechlein). 3. Private confession and absolution (A. C., Art. 11. 25. 28). 4. The denial of the divine institution and obligation of the Christian Sabbath (A. C., Art. 28). 5. Baptismal regeneration (A. C., Art. 2; Apology, Art. 9; Luther's Catechisms; Visitation Articles, Art. 3). 6. The outward form of baptism (Large Catechism, Smalcald Art.) 7. Errors concerning the personal or hypostatic union of the two natures in Christ (Form of Concord, Art. 8). 8. The supposed special sin-forgiving power of the Lord's Supper (Apol., Art. 12; Catechisms). 9. The real presence of the body and blood of Christ in the Eucharist (A. C., Art. 10; Apol., Art. 7. 8; Smalcald Art., Art. 6; Small Catechism; Form of Concord, Art. 7). According to the Platform, believers in exorcism, in private confession and absolution, and in the ceremonies of the mass should not be tolerated in the General Synod. To believers in the real presence, baptismal regeneration, etc., liberty was to be granted, provided that they regard these doctrines as nonessential, cooperate peacefully with members rejecting them, and adopt the Platform. Dr. Mann was right when he characterized the Platform as "the emasculated Augsburg Confession." (Spaeth, 178.)

58. Spirit of "Synodical Disclaimer."—While the first part of the Platform eliminates the distinctively Lutheran doctrines, the second part emphatically condemns them and teaches the opposite tenets of the Reformed Church. On exorcism the Platform remarks: "In the American Lutheran Church it was never received, and is regarded as unscriptural, and highly objectionable, under the most favorable explanation that can be given it." (23.) On private confession and absolution: "How dangerous the entire doctrine of absolution and forgiving power of the ministry is to the spirituality of the Church and to the doctrine of justification by grace alone through faith in Jesus Christ, is clearly evident." "John 20, 23: 'Whosesoever sins ...' either refers to a miraculous power bestowed on the apostles to discern the condition of the heart, and to announce pardon of God to truly penitent individuals; or it confers on the ministry, in all ages, the power to announce, in general, the conditions on which God will pardon sinners; but it contains no authority for applying these promises to individuals, as is done in private absolution." (26.) On baptismal regeneration: "If Baptism is not a converting ordinance in adults, it cannot be in infants. ... Of regeneration, in the proper sense of the term, infants are incapable; for it consists in a radical change in our religious views of the divine character, law, etc.; a change in our religious feelings, and in our religious purposes and habits of action; of none of which are children capable." Regeneration "must consist mainly in a change of that increased predisposition to sin arising from action, of that preponderance of sinful habits formed by voluntary indulgence of our natural depravity, after we have reached years of moral agency. But infants have no such increased predisposition, no habits of sin prior to moral agency, consequently there can be no change of them, no regeneration in this meaning of the term." "Baptismal regeneration, either in infants or adults, is therefore a doctrine not taught in the Word of God, and fraught with much injury to the souls of men, although inculcated in the former Symbolical Books." (30f.) On the hypostatic union: "The chief error on this subject is the supposition that the human and divine natures of Christ, to a certain extent, interchange attributes. This, in common with all other Protestant churches, we regard as contrary to the Holy Volume." "The supposition that humanity in any case acquired some attributes of divinity tends to give plausibility to the apotheosis of heroes and the pagan worship of the Virgin Mary." The Platform emphatically condemns the doctrine of Article 8 of the Form of Concord: "Hence we believe, teach, and confess that the Virgin Mary did not conceive and bring forth simply a mere man, but the true Son of God; for which reason she is also rightly called, and she is truly, the mother of God. ... He consequently now, not only as God, but as man, knows all things, is able to do all things. ... His flesh is a true, vivifying food, and His blood is a true, vivifying drink." (35f.) The Platform furthermore rejects the doctrine that the Lord's Supper "offers forgiveness of sins," and "that the real body and blood of the Savior are present at the Eucharist, in some mysterious way, and are received by the mouth of every communicant, worthy or unworthy." (38f.) The Platform declares: "During the first quarter of this century the conviction that our Reformers did not purge away the whole of the Romish error from this doctrine gained ground universally, until the great mass of the whole Lutheran Church, before the year 1817, had rejected the doctrine of the real presence." (40.) With respect to the doctrine that the proper and natural body and blood of Christ are received in the Lord's Supper, the Platform remarks: "Now we cannot persuade ourselves that this is the view of a single minister of the General Synod or of many out of it." (42.)

PLATFORM CONTROVERSY.

59. Champions of the Platform.—"The principal effect of the Definite Platform," says Dr. Spaeth, "was to open the eyes even of the indifferent and undecided ones, and to cause them to reflect and to realize the ultimate designs of the men at the helm of the General Synod. A storm of indignation burst against the perpetrators of this attack on the venerable Augustana. Many men who were before numbered with 'American Lutheranism,' and whose full sympathy with the movement was confidently expected, had nothing but stern rebuke for it." (1, 360.) Howbeit, the Platform was not in lack of ardent defenders. To some of the ministers it was not radical enough. Dr. Morris remarks: "Extremely un-Lutheran, un-churchly, and even rationalistic positions were assumed by some who defended the Platform." (Wolf, Lutherans, 364.) In the Observer, December 7, 1855, a correspondent maintained that it was incorrect to speak of the Augustana as "our confession," since of Lutheran theologians not one in twenty was governed in doctrine and practise by this Symbol. (L. u. W. 1856, 28.) In the following year the Observer published a protest of Rev. Kitz, censuring the Platform for granting toleration to believers in baptismal regeneration and the real presence. (L. u. W. 1857, 27.) At Gettysburg Seminary, self-evidently, Schmucker zealously propagated his Reformed theology, while his brother-in-law, C. F. Schaeffer, who had entered 1856, was the exponent of a mild confessionalism. E. J. Wolf: "At Gettysburg, in the same building, one professor in almost every lecture disparaged and discredited the Confessions, while another one constantly inspired his students with the highest [?] veneration for them." (Lutherans, 441.) Jacobs: "The students were soon divided, but the gain was constantly upon the conservative side." (History, 427.) But while thus at Gettysburg conservative influences, in a measure, were counteracting the Platform theology, Wittenberg Seminary, at Springfield, 0., the theological center of the Western synods, was unanimous, decided, and most advanced in its advocacy. Sprecher, the leader of "American Lutheranism" in the West, wrote concerning the Platform: "It is the very thing we have long needed in our Church; it will require every man to declare that he is for or against us, and will secure our American Lutheran Church against the insidious efforts of the Old Lutherans to remodel her." "If the New School brethren do not soon decide whether they will give the Church the positive form which it must take in this country ere long, the Old School will decide it for them by making all their synods stand on the Unaltered Augsburg Confession. I do not see what difficulty can be in the way. If those five dogmas rejected [by the Platform] are errors at all, they are very serious errors, and I do not see why there should be so great a desire to be associated with those who teach them. The difference between the Old School and the New School party is of such a nature that they cannot agree except by being silent or separate. If we did not intend to push this matter through, we should never have agitated it at all." (Spaeth, 1, 359.) It goes without saying that B. Kurtz acted the champion of the new confession. When, in 1855, prior to the publication of the Platform, the Synod of Northern Illinois, in its constitution, declared the Augustana and Luther's Small Catechism a "correct" exhibition of the divine truth, Kurtz wrote in the Observer: "This is certainly a tremendous leap backward to the patriarchs of the American Lutheran Church. In this enlightened country of free thought and action such high-churchism cannot long maintain itself; its most peculiar fruit is bigotry, ostracism, strife, and separation." (Lutheraner, Feb. 13, 1855:) In the same spirit Kurtz edited the Observer after the appearance of the Platform. In an issue of January, 1856, he maintained that the Platform offered nothing new; in the past every member of the General Synod had practised according to its principles; now one merely was to do openly and honestly what heretofore he had been doing with a reservatio mentalis. (L. u. W. 1856, 64.) Several months later Kurtz published the list of rejected errors of the Symbolical Books, and in a number of subsequent articles supported the Platform, and, at the same time, attacked the distinctive doctrines of Lutheranism, misrepresenting them in Calvinistic fashion. (L. u. W. 1856, 140 ff.; 1857,61; 1862,152; 1917,375.) Nor did Kurtz in the following years repent of, or change, his attitude. In the Observer of June 29, 1860, he declared: "We are qualified to formulate a confession of faith not only just as well, but better than those who lived three hundred years ago. We now have men in our Church who understand just as much of the Bible and of theology as our fathers. If this were not the case, we must be stupid scholars, a degenerated generation." (L. u. W. 6, 252.) In the same year: "May those, then, who are opposed to the progress backwards, to liturgies, to priestly gowns, to bands, candles, crucifixes, baptismal regeneration, the real presence, priestly confession and absolution, and all other phases of the half-papists, stand firmly by the old Observer." (L. u. W. 1860, 318.) In the Observer, December 26, 1862, Kurtz said: Wisdom did not die with the Reformers; nor would it die with the present generation. Giant strides had been made in science, history, chemistry, philology. The progress in astronomy enabled us to understand the Bible better than our fathers. Geology taught us to explain the first chapter of Genesis more correctly than a hundred years ago. Even if we were dwarfs compared with the Reformers, with our increased advantages we ought to understand the Bible better than they. A dwarf, standing on the shoulders of a giant, can see farther than the giant himself. A confession of faith, therefore, ought not to be like the laws of the Medes and Persians, but subject to improvement and growing perfection. Luther and his colaborers explained the Bible more correctly than any like number of their contemporaries. But we do not believe that they understood it as well as God's enlightened people of the present. Indeed, an intelligent Sunday-school child has a clearer insight into the plan of salvation, etc., than John the Baptist, the greatest of prophets. Is it, then, to be assumed that since the middle of the sixteenth century no progress was made in Biblical learning? (L. u. W. 1863, 92.) However, always guided by expediency, and hence able also "to do otherwise," the Observer, April 13, 1866, wrote: "We have all agreed that the Unaltered Augsburg Confession is the only general platform upon which all of us can stand. There are some among us, to the number of whom the writer belongs, who have always believed and still think that an American Recension of this venerable document, as presented in the Definite Platform, would give us a faith more in harmony with the Scripture. But where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty, the greatest liberty compatible with the unity of true Evangelical Protestantism. To make concessions within reasonable limitations we have accordingly deemed our religious duty." (L. u. W. 1866, 185.) In its issue of January 17, 1908, the Observer again claims the liberty of revising the confessions. (L. u. W. 1908, 90.) Self-evidently, the American Lutheran was in sympathy with the Platform. In 1873 it declared its standpoint as follows: "We American Lutherans adopt the Augsburg Confession only in a qualified sense, viz., as teaching the fundamental truths of religion in a manner substantially correct, but containing also some inaccuracies with respect to the Sacraments, private confession, absolution, and the Christian Sabbath." (L. u. W. 1873, 29.)

60. Opponents of the Platform.—S. S. Schmucker boasted with respect to the Platform that all intelligent Americans were on his side. However, his opponents proved to be much stronger and more numerous than he had anticipated, though most of them were in essential agreement with his un-Lutheran theology, merely resenting his intolerant spirit and public assault on the "venerable Augustana." Among the men who fiercely denounced the new confession was J. A. Brown, who also followed up his attack with charges for Schmucker's impeachment at Gettysburg, and in 1857, with a book, The New Theology. Yet Dr. Brown's theological views and the views of the Platform were not nearly so far apart as his assaults on Schmucker seemed to warrant. Brown was a Reformed theologian and just as determined an opponent of genuine Lutheranism as Schmucker and Kurtz. Dr. Wolf: "Brown contended with might and main against what he considered the revival of the Old Lutheran Theology." (370.) And Brown's case was also that of F. W. Conrad (professor of Homiletics in Wittenberg College from 1850 to 1855, and part owner and editor of the Observer from 1863 to 1898), who in 1855, when required by the Wittenberg Synod to defend the Platform, resigned as professor and as editor of the Evangelical Lutheran, stating that he, too, considered the "errors" enumerated in the Platform as real errors, but was able neither to find all of them in the Augustana nor to identify himself with the intolerance of the Platform men. (L. u. W. 1856, 94.) Occupying a unionistic position similar to that of Dr. Conrad, H. W. Harkey, in his Olive Branch, published at Springfield, Ill., also opposed the fanaticism of Kurtz, Schmucker, Sprecher, etc., but not their Reformed theology, which, indeed, he shared essentially. (L. u. W. 1857, 313; 1858, 28.) The man who disappointed Schmucker perhaps more than any one else was his colleague Charles Philip Krauth, who made no secret of his aversion to the Platform. In a letter to his son he wrote: "The American Recension of the Augsburg Confession doesn't seem to go down well. It has received many hard blows. ... A more stupid thing could hardly have been originated. Quem Deus vult perdere prius dementat. How will it end? I have thought, in smoke. But I have all along had fears, and they are strengthened of late, that it will divide the General Synod. It is said that my colleague is determined to press the matter to the utmost. ... I regret exceedingly the injury which the Church is sure to sustain. Mr. Passavant's idea of a paper in opposition to the Observer I approve. There ought to be an antidote to the Observer somewhere." In the Observer of February 15, 1856, Krauth, Sr., published nine reasons why he opposed the Platform; the chief grievance, however, its Reformed theology, was hardly hinted at. Krauth's plea was for peace and mutual toleration. "I feel deeply solicitous that our prospering Church may not be divided," said he. "I shall do all that I can to hold it together. I will pray for the peace of our Zion," etc. His main argument against the Platform was that it proscribed brethren who were received with the understanding that they were to occupy a position coordinate with that of others, and asked every symbolical Lutheran to withdraw or dishonor himself. (Spaeth, 1, 372f.) Pacification of the Church by mutual toleration—such was the solution of the Platform controversy offered and advocated by his son, Charles Porterfield. To this Krauth, Sr., agreed. April 2, 1857, he wrote to his son: "I am decidedly of opinion that the General Synod ought to do something effectual for the pacification of the Church. I concur in the views you express, and believe, unless such views prevail, the Church must ere long be rent into fragments. Whilst I am anxious for such an agreement in regard to a doctrinal basis as will embrace all the wings of Lutheranism in our country, I very much wish we could agree on forms of worship in accordance with the liturgical character of our Church, and erect a barrier against the fanaticism and Methodism which so powerfully control some of our ministers and people." (380.) W. M. Reynolds, in the Evangelical Review which he had established 1849 (1870 succeeded by the Lutheran Quarterly), denounced the Platform as a declaration of "separation from the whole Lutheran Church of the past." "We trust," said he, "that no Lutheran synod will be beguiled into the awful movement here so abruptly, yet so confidently proposed to them—to revolutionize their whole previous history, and declare separation from the whole Lutheran Church of the past, and all their brethren in the present who hold to the faith of their fathers, 'the faith once delivered to the saints.'" (360.) Reynolds, who publicly renounced his former un-Lutheran views and withdrew his endorsement of Kurtz, was hailed by many as the leader of the conservatives in the General Synod. But, his confessional endeavors being vitiated and neutralized by his fundamental unionistic attitude, he, too, disappointed and failed the friends of true Lutheranism. He opened the pages of the Evangelical Review to both, liberals as well as conservatives, to the advocates as well as the opponents of the Platform and its theology. Reynolds stood for mutual toleration, and in 1864—turned Episcopalian. (L. u. W. 1857, 314; 1870, 156.) J. N. Hoffmann entered the controversy with his "Broken Platform," and W. J. Mann with his pamphlet "A Plea for the Augsburg Confession," according to Spaeth "the strongest refutation of the Definite Platform." (L. u. W. 1856, 75; 1857, 283.) Dr. Mann wrote, May 7, 1856: "If Schmucker had not the Observer as an ally, he would accomplish absolutely nothing. As it is, however, the two gentlemen fabricate a public opinion, supported by a multitude of uninformed members of the Lutheran Church. The mass of all influential, well-meaning members, preachers as well as laymen, whatever their views may otherwise be, are indignant at Schmucker, Kurtz, Observer, and the whole Platform affair. I would not be astonished if the matter should lead to a breach between us and the General Synod. The consequence will be that involuntarily we shall be brought closer to the strict Lutheranism, all the more so as the Missourians of late seem to become milder." But Dr. Mann was rudely awakened from his optimism when, in the following year, his "Lutheranism in America: an essay on the present condition of the Lutheran Church in the United States," was severely criticized even by Charles Philip Krauth, in the Evangelical Review. And the result? "I have no desire at all to make any further concessions to Old Lutheranism," Mann meekly declared in a letter of April 15, 1857, in which he referred to the cold reception and stern rebuke which his book had received by the press within the General Synod. (Spaeth, 179 f.) Thus even the most conservative men within the General Synod rendered the cause of true Lutheranism but little service in the Platform emergency. Being in the minority and without a clear insight into the nature of Lutheranism, also without an organ, except, in part, the Evangelical Review, they lacked the courage and seriousness to take a determined and open stand against the corrupters and assailants of Lutheranism. They favored a policy of silent, watchful waiting. H. I. Schmidt, who, in the Evangelical Review, had defended the Lutheran doctrine of the Lord's Supper, wrote in a letter dated February 4, 1853: "We Lutherans had better keep perfectly quiet at the next General Synod, and say nothing at all about 'Doctrinal Basis.' ... If all open conflict is avoided, our cause will continue silently and surely to gain ground, and thus the character of the General Synod will gradually be changed and righted." (Spaeth, 1, 349.)

61. "Pacific Overture."—The storm caused by the Platform was hardly brewing, when Old and New School men united in pouring oil on the troubled waters. Instead of holding Schmucker to strict accountability, 41 prominent ministers and laymen published in the Observer of February 15, 1856, a "Pacific Overture," in which they "deprecate the further prosecution of this controversy, and hereby agree to unite and abide on the doctrinal basis of the General Synod, of absolute assent to the "Word of God, as the only infallible rule of faith and practise, and fundamental agreement with the Augsburg Confession." This document was signed by such men as H.L. Baugher, M. Jacobs, M.L. Stoever, S.S. Schmucker, Krauth, Sr., E.W. Hutter, T. Stork, C.A. Hay, W.H. Lochman, M. Valentine, B. Sadtler, and J.A. Brown. The pledge of the "Overture" involved the obligation of abstinence from newspaper controversy. Kurtz did not sign the document, and Schmucker reserved for himself the right of replying to Mann's "Plea," which he did in American Lutheranism Vindicated. This book, according to the Observer, proves that the Augustana does teach baptismal regeneration, the bodily presence of Christ in the Eucharist, private confession and absolution, and denial of the divine institution of the Lord's Day, and that all of these doctrines are errors conflicting with the Scriptures. (L. u. W. 1856, 320.) Thus Kurtz and Schmucker, who had kindled the conflagration, persisted in pouring oil into the flames, while the rest were shouting, "Extinguish the fire!" H.I. Schmidt wrote from New York: "I can see no use in signing that 'Overture'; the compromise which it proposes cannot preserve the peace of the Church or prevent a disruption. Schmucker has got up that 'Overture' simply because he was utterly disappointed in the effect produced by his proposed Platform; because he saw that he had raised a conflagration that was very likely to burn him up. And now, after doing all he could to disrupt the Church, after getting up a platform, the adoption of which would have expelled all of us confessional Lutherans from the Lutheran Church; after laboring with all his might to fasten the charge of serious errors upon our venerable Confession, he very coolly comes forward and asks us to sign a compromise, in which, forsooth, we are to declare the points of difference between us to be non-essential.... No, indeed. Those points are not non-essential: the Lutheran doctrine of the Sacraments is so completely interwoven with our whole view of the scheme of redemption and salvation, that concerning the Eucharist grows so directly and necessarily out of the great doctrine of Christ's Person, that for me to give up those doctrinal points alleged to be non-essential is to give up all, to give up the whole Gospel. And what good would come of patching up such a hollow peace? At the first favorable opportunity Schmucker would break it, and even if he seemed to keep quiet, he would be secretly and incessantly working and machinating against our side of the house. And, what is more, the editor of the Observer refuses to sign the 'Overture'; he will keep his hands unfettered, to knock us on the head right and left, as soon and as often as he pleases." Schmidt added: "Not a soul here in New York is willing to touch the 'Overture.'" (Spaeth, 1, 363.) But no determined action followed on the part of Schmidt and the conservatives in New York who agreed with him.

62. Krauth, Jr., and Schmucker.—The fact that the conservatives failed to take a decided stand against Schmucker and his Platform theology was due, apart from their general policy of silent waiting, chiefly to Charles Porterfield Krauth, who was in complete agreement with the unionistic "Overture," and whose influence soon became paramount in the General Synod. Krauth counseled mutual toleration. On January 1, 1856, he had written to his father: "I have written down a few thoughts on the 'Platform,' but I do not know that I will ever prepare anything for the press on that subject. My thoughts all have an irenical direction." (376.) In the following year Krauth prepared a series of articles for the Missionary (published by W. A. Passavant in Pittsburgh), in which he pleaded the cause of the General Synod, and defended and justified its doctrinal basis, requiring subscription only to the "fundamentals" of the Augustana as "substantially correct." Krauth insisted that, while the Augustana must remain unmutilated and unchanged, liberty should be granted to such as, e. g., deny the real presence in the Lord's Supper. The Lutheran and the other churches of the Reformation, he argued, agree as to the divine institution and perpetual obligation of the Eucharist, the administration in both kinds, the necessity of a living faith for enjoying its blessings, and the rejection of transubstantiation and the mass. And securing these points of the Tenth Article of the Augsburg Confession, Krauth continued: "Let the General Synod allow perfect freedom, as she has hitherto done, to reject or receive the rest of the article." (Jacobs, 431.) Spaeth remarks with respect to the articles published by Krauth in defense of the General Synod: "In looking over the articles, we do not wonder that the leader in the Platform movement was willing to have, and actually proposed and drew up, a compromise on the basis laid down there. For while the articles kept the Confession intact in form, they abandoned it in fact. They absolutely coordinated truth and error on the disputed points and said: 'Tolerate us in holding the truth[?], and we will tolerate you in holding the error.'" "There was evidently," Dr. Spaeth continues, "in those days a singular approach between the leader of American Lutheranism and Charles Porterfield Krauth, which even inspired the New School men with a hope of ultimately 'seeing Charles right,' for whom they personally had nothing but the kindest feelings. 'I think,' wrote his father after the Reading Convention of the General Synod, 'you have become pretty much of a favorite with Dr. S. S. Schmucker. He does not think you so hard a Lutheran, and your zeal for the General Synod was quite to his taste. I hope you will continue, as you have heretofore done, to treat him with respect.'" (1, 409.) What Dr. Krauth objected to was not so much the theology of the Platform as, on the one hand, the intolerance which it demanded, and, on the other hand, the mutilation of the venerable Augustana, the Magna Charta of Lutheranism. Also in the controversy between J. A. Brown and Schmucker, in which the latter's teaching on natural depravity, regeneration, and justification was declared unsound, Krauth, Jr., defended his former teacher with the result that the impeachment proceedings, contemplated at Gettysburg against Schmucker, were arrested. (411.) Thus, as far as the leading theologians were concerned, the commotion caused by the Platform ended in an agreement to disagree.

POSITION OF DISTRICT SYNODS.

63. For and Against the Platform.—Dr. E. J. Wolf, 1889: "The Platform was indignantly and universally rejected by the Eastern synods." (365.) Dr. Jacobs, 1893: "It was endorsed by one of the smaller synods in Ohio, but everywhere else it aroused intense indignation, as a misrepresentation and detraction of the Lutheran Church." (426.) Dr. Neve, 1915: "Only three smaller District Synods in Ohio adopted the Platform temporarily, the East Ohio, the Olive Branch, and the Wittenberg Synods. At all other places it was most decidedly rejected, not only by men of the synods under whose leadership, soon after, the General Council was organized, but just as decidedly by such as remained in the General Synod."—Among the facts in the case are the following. The Wittenberg Synod (organized 1847 in Ohio and led by Ezra Keller and S. Sprecher, professors of Wittenberg College), claiming to be "wholly loyal to the doctrines and interests of the General Synod," adopted the Platform in September, 1855, stating that the General Synod in the past had given the Augustana only a limited recognition without specifying the doctrines which were to be omitted, and that now the Platform, in the interest of truth, had pointed out the five errors of the Augustana which the great majority of the General Synod had long ago viewed as unscriptural and Roman. Synod resolved not to receive any pastor who would not accept the Platform as his own confession. (L. u. W. 1855, 319. 336.) In September, 1855, the Olive Branch Synod of Indiana adopted the Platform unanimously, and, in October of the same year, the East Ohio Synod, with but one dissenting vote. (350. 381.) In June, 1856, the Miami Synod declared its allegiance to the Augustana, with the limitation that they reject as errors contained in this Confession the approval of certain ceremonies of the mass, private confession and absolution, the denial of the divine obligation of the Sabbath, the doctrines of baptismal regeneration and of the real presence in the Eucharist. (1856, 349.) In September, 1856, the Wittenberg Synod recommended the Platform for adoption to its congregations, and at the same time expressed satisfaction and joy that the Platform had been adopted by the English Synod of Ohio, the Olive Branch Synod of Indiana, the Northern Synod of the same State, and by the Kentucky Synod; that the Miami Synod had accepted the Augsburg Confession in the sense of the Platform; and that the Pittsburgh Synod, through influence of the Platform, was now immune against "symbolism." (1856, 380.) The Synod of Southern Illinois (organized 1856, and in 1897 united with the Synod of Central Illinois under the name of Synod of Central and Southern Illinois), in October, 1857, unanimously approved of the Platform as a measure against the insidious tendencies of symbolism. (1857,352.) It was a sore disappointment to the Platform men when the Synod of East Pennsylvania, in 1855, at the motion of J. A. Brown (who was in essential agreement with Schmucker, doctrinally), unanimously condemned, and "most solemnly warned" against, the Platform as a "most dangerous attempt to change the doctrinal basis and revolutionize the existing character of the Lutheran churches now united in the General Synod." (1855, 337.) The Synod of West Pennsylvania, urged by the Synod of East Pennsylvania to endorse its resolutions, refused to enter the controversy or pass on the Platform, declaring that they were satisfied with their present constitution and unwilling to add new test-questions. (1855, 320.) It came as a relief to Kurtz and the Platform men when the Synod of Central Pennsylvania, in May, 1856, unanimously and solemnly, by a rising vote, adopted the Platform. (1856, 223.) In October, 1856, the Synod of Maryland declared that every member was at liberty to accept or reject the alleged errors of the Augsburg Confession, enumerated by the Platform, provided that thereby the divine institution of the Sabbath was not rejected, nor the doctrinal basis of the General Synod subverted. (1856, 382.) In October, 1856, the Allegheny Synod declared its adherence to the doctrinal basis of the General Synod, but, at the same time, rejected the doctrines enumerated by the Platform as errors contained in the Augsburg Confession. (1856, 27; 1857, 156.) A similar compromise was adopted by the Pittsburgh Synod. The knock-out blow to the Platform came from the older, larger, and conservative synods. In May, 1856, the Ministerium of Pennsylvania, then numbering 98 pastors, condemned the Platform and reaffirmed its own basis of faith. (1856, 224; 1857, 252.) The New York Ministerium instructed its delegates for the convention of the General Synod in 1857 to vote against the Platform. Whence the wind was blowing was apparent also from the fact that representative men of both the New York and Pennsylvania synods participated in the Free Evangelical Lutheran Conferences (1856-1859), advocated and led by Walther (1856, 348).

64. Pittsburgh and Hartwick Synods.—In the Observer, February 15, 1856, Kurtz suggested with respect to the Platform controversy that a District Synod adopt a resolution to the effect that the Augustana did not contain the errors charged with by the Platform, and that respecting these doctrines every member of Synod was at liberty to follow his own judgment. In accordance with this advice the Pittsburgh Synod, in the same year, compromised the differences of the Old and New School men in a number of resolutions framed by Charles Porterfield Krauth, who then was still spending his efforts in trying to mediate between the adherents and opponents of the Definite Platform. Among these resolutions are the following: "II. Resolved, That while the basis of our General Synod has allowed of diversity in regard to some parts of the Augsburg Confession, that basis never was designed to imply the right to alter, amend, or curtail the Confession itself." "III. Resolved, That while this Synod, resting on the Word of God as the sole authority in matters of faith, on its infallible warrant rejects the Romish doctrine of the real presence of transubstantiation, and with it the doctrine of consubstantiation; rejects the Mass, and all ceremonies distinctive of the Mass; denies any power in the Sacraments as an opus operatum, or that the blessings of Baptism and the Lord's Supper can be received without faith; rejects auricular confession and priestly absolution; holds that there is no priesthood on earth except that of all believers, and that God only can forgive sins; and maintains the sacred obligation of the Lord's Day; and while we would with our whole heart reject any part of any confession which taught doctrines in conflict with this our testimony, nevertheless, before God and His Church, we declare that in our judgment the Augsburg Confession, properly interpreted, is in perfect consistence with this our testimony and with Holy Scripture as regards the errors specified." "IV. Resolved, That while we do not wish to conceal the fact that some parts of the doctrine of our Confession in regard to the Sacraments are received in different degrees by different brethren, yet that even in these points, wherein we as brethren in Christ agree to differ, till the Holy Ghost shall make us see eye to eye, the differences are not such as to destroy the foundation of faith, our unity in labor, our mutual confidence, and our tender love." "VI. Resolved, That if we have indulged harsh thoughts and groundless suspicions, if we have without reason criminated and recriminated, we here humbly confess our fault before our adorable Redeemer, beseeching pardon of Him and of each other," etc. "VII. Resolved, That we will resist all efforts to sow dissensions among us on the ground of minor differences, all efforts, on the one hand, to restrict the liberty which Christ has given us, or, on the other, to impair the purity of the 'faith once delivered to the saints,' and that with new ardor we will devote ourselves to the work of the Gospel," etc. (Spaeth, 1, 378.) A stand similar to the one of the Pittsburgh Synod was taken in the same year, 1856, by the Hartwick Synod, in declaring, on the one hand, that they adopt the fundamental doctrines of the Augsburg Confession, other articles of this Confession, however, only when rightly understood and interpreted, and in rejecting, on the other hand, the doctrines enumerated in the third of the Pittsburgh resolutions. (L. u. W. 1856, 349.) On the part of the Franckean Synod this caused a declaration to the effect that they would not have withdrawn (1837) if Hartwick had taken this stand earlier. Hartwick answered, 1857, that they had not adopted a new platform, but merely the General Synod's "interpretation of the Augustana." (L. u. W. 1857, 352; 1864, 314; 1866, 119.)

65. The Pittsburgh Compromise.—The Pittsburgh resolutions, notably the third (adopted also in 1864 at York by the General Synod, and since known as the York Resolution), breathe a unionistic and, in part, a Reformed spirit. Conspicuous among their un-Lutheran features are the following. With respect to the Lutheran doctrines rejected by Schmucker and his compeers, the Pittsburgh compromise declares in general: "We as brethren in Christ agree to differ." The theological attitude of the notorious union letter of 1845 was thus practically reaffirmed and the doctrines distinctive of Lutheranism declared irrelevant. Every Lutheran synod, according to the Pittsburgh agreement, was, indeed, to recognize the Augustana unmutilated, but, on the other hand, grant complete liberty to deviate from its doctrines in the manner of the supporters of the Platform. In addition to this unionistic feature the Pittsburgh compromise, at least in three important points, makes concessions to the Reformed tenets of the Platform theology. It does not only fail to confess the Lutheran doctrines of the Lord's Supper, absolution, and the Sunday, at a time when these doctrines were universally denied and assailed also within the General Synod, and when, accordingly, a failure to confess them was tantamount to an open denial, but itself rejects them. Concerning the Sunday, Article 28 of the Augsburg Confession declares: "For those who judge that by the authority of the Church the observance of the Lord's Day instead of the Sabbath-day was ordained as a thing necessary, do greatly err. Scripture has abrogated the Sabbath-day." Over against this plain teaching the General Synod always held that "the observance of the Sunday is binding on all by divine requirement." (Lutheran Observer, Oct. 1, 1915.) Siding with this un-Lutheran position, the third of the Pittsburgh resolutions declares: "We adhere to the divine authority of the Sabbath as the Lord's Day." Again, absolution by Christians, and especially the minister of a Christian congregation, was one of the doctrines abhorred by the Platform men. As late as 1864 even C.P. Krauth regarded the Eleventh Article of the Augustana as excluded from the confessional subscription of the General Synod. The Pittsburgh compromise rejects "priestly absolution" and maintains "that God only can forgive sins" on earth, thus openly disavowing a specific Lutheran doctrine and coinciding with Schmucker and Kurtz, Zwingli, and Calvin. Furthermore, the Lutheran Church most emphatically teaches "the real presence" of the body and blood of Christ in the Lord's Supper. And in the days of Schmucker, and later, this doctrine, openly assailed and denied by the leaders of the General Synod, was generally, though erroneously, identified with, and termed, "consubstantiation," without as well as within the General Synod. The Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, of 1854, edited by J. Newton Brown, describes "consubstantiation" as "a tenet of the Lutheran Church respecting the presence of Christ in the Lord's Supper. Luther denied that the elements were changed after consecration, and therefore taught that the bread and wine indeed remain, but that, together with them, there is present the substance of the body and blood of Christ, which is literally received by communicants." As late as 1899 Philip Schaff wrote in his Creeds of Christendom: "The Lutheran Church, as represented in Luther's writings and in the Form of Concord, rejects transubstantiation, and also the doctrine of impanation, i. e., a local inclusion of Christ's body and blood in the elements (localis inclusio in pane), or a permanent and extrasacramental conjunction of the two substances (durabilis aliqua conjunctio extra usum sacramenti); but it teaches consubstantiation in the sense of a sacramental conjunction of the two substances effected by the consecration, or a real presence of Christ's very body and blood in, with, and under (in, cum, et sub) bread and wine. The word consubstantiation, however, is not found in the Lutheran symbols, and is rejected by Lutheran theologians if used in the sense of impanation." (1, 232.) Down to the present day the Lutheran doctrine of the real presence has been universally designated by its opponents as "consubstantiation." (L. u. W. 1856, 33. 115. 255.) Respecting this use of the term outside of the Lutheran Church, compare also Worcester's Dictionary; Cyclopedia, Harper and Brothers, 1894; Century Dictionary, 1906; Heyse, Fremdwoerterbuch; etc. And as to the use made of the term within the General Synod, S. S. Schmucker, B. Kurtz, B. Sprecher, and the rest of the Platform theologians always designated the Lutheran doctrine of the real presence as consubstantiation. As late as 1880 Dr. Helwig wrote in the Lutheran Evangelist: "The Missouri Lutherans adhere as closely as possible to the doctrines of Martin Luther, even his consubstantiation theory with respect to the Holy Eucharist according to the words: in, with, and under the bread." (L. u. W. 1880, 246.) Viewed, then, in its historical context, the third of the Pittsburgh resolutions, instead of plainly stating and boldly confessing the Lutheran doctrine of the real presence, disavows it, at least indirectly, declaring: This Synod "rejects the Romish doctrine of the real presence or transubstantiation, and with it the doctrine of consubstantiation." To cap the climax, the compromise proceeds: "Before God and His Church we declare that in our judgment the Augsburg Confession, properly interpreted, is in perfect consistence with this our testimony and with Holy Scripture as regards the errors specified." How Charles Porterfield Krauth was able thinkingly to write as he did is a problem which still awaits a satisfactory explanation. Thus, then, though formally acknowledging the Augustana and denying the right "to alter, amend, or curtail the Confession itself," the Pittsburgh compromise cannot but be viewed as a distinctly unionistic and anti-Lutheran document. It was a surrender, if not to the Platform as such, at least to its theology.

GENERAL SYNOD'S ATTITUDE.

66. Ignoring Platform, But Endorsing Its Theology.—No formal action was taken by the conventions of the General Synod with respect either to the Definite Platform itself or its authors, abettors, and endorsers. Apart from the doctrinal indifference prevailing within the General Synod also among the conservatives, this was chiefly due to the articles published by Krauth, Jr., in defense of the General Synod in the Missionary. "Silently," says Dr. Spaeth, "yet no less surely, the brethren gave the most unmistakable evidence that the views therein expressed met their concurrence." (1, 409.) However, Krauth himself, in advocating mutual toleration, merely acted on the old principles of the General Synod. His policy was in keeping with its unionistic traditions of "agreeing to disagree and not to settle disputed points, but to omit them and declare them free—quieta non movere et mota quiescere!" Well satisfied with the course of the General Synod at its conventions in 1857 and 1859, the Observer wrote: "The convention at Pittsburgh has strengthened the bond of our union and shown that no question of doctrine or discipline can disrupt us. We are one and inseparable. Our union is based on mutual concession. We have learned a lesson which our fathers could not learn: to give and to take." (L. u. W. 1859, 285.) Officially and directly, then, the General Synod neither approved nor condemned the Platform. Nor could she consistently have taken a different course, as Schmucker had but acted on previous suggestions of Synod herself. In 1844 the Maryland Synod had appointed a committee to prepare an "Abstract," which, in a way, was to serve as a substitute for the Augsburg Confession. This "Abstract," though not adopted by the Maryland Synod, was a forerunner of the Definite Platform. Schmucker, says Dr. Spaeth, "was so much pleased with the 'Abstract' that he referred to it again and again in his lectures and articles, and even made his students commit to memory its principal statements. In an article on the 'Vocation of the American Lutheran Church' (Ev. Review II, 510) Schmucker said: 'With the exception of several minor shades of doctrine, in which we are more symbolic than Dr. Baugher, we could not ourselves, in so few words, give a better description of the views taught in the seminary [Gettysburg] than that contained in his 'Abstract of the Doctrines and Practises.'" (1, 114.) Also the General Synod, in 1845, at Philadelphia, following in the steps of the Maryland Synod, authorized a committee to formulate the doctrines and usages of the American Lutheran Church. Schmucker, then, in preparing and publishing the Definite Platform, was certainly not so very much out of tune with the sentiments then prevailing in, and encouraged by, the General and some of the District Synods. Consistently they could not rebuke Schmucker without condemning themselves. Accordingly, the convention of the General Synod in 1857, at Reading, took formal action neither with respect to Schmucker, nor the Platform, nor the synods which had endorsed the Platform. And while the motion of Schmucker that the Board (which had published Mann's "Plea") should not publish any writings on the existing controversies was adopted, the motion of Kurtz for a "liberal platform" found no support. (L. u. W. 1857, 218.) But, while painfully avoiding any reference to the Platform as such, the General Synod more than tolerated its theology. The convention of 1859 cordially admitted the Melanchthon Synod, which charged the Augustana with teaching the alleged errors of regeneration by Baptism, of the real presence, private confession and absolution, and the denial of the divine institution of the Sunday. At Lancaster, 1862, Synod evaded a deliverance on the question whether the Augsburg Confession contains the errors with which it was generally charged; indirectly, however, it affirmed the question by electing B. Kurtz as President. (L. u. W. 1862, 217.) In 1864 the Franckean Synod was admitted with a confession of her own making, from which the distinctive Lutheran doctrines were eliminated. And in order to conciliate the protesting conservatives, the General Synod in the same year passed the resolution, adopted 1856 by the Pittsburgh Synod, which served the contradictory purposes of condemning Lutheran doctrines plainly taught in the Augustana, and, at the same time, acquitting the Confession of harboring these doctrines. Thus the General Synod, though unwilling to commit herself to the Platform as such, directly and indirectly approved of its theology.

67. Admitting Melanchthon Synod.—In 1857, on the principle of "elective affinity," and for the purpose of resisting the confessional trend in the General Synod, and encouraging and strengthening the Platform men, the Melanchthon Synod was organized in the territory of the Maryland Synod, under the leadership of B. Kurtz. In its "Declaration of Faith" this Synod stated: "II. We believe that the fundamental doctrines of the Word of God are taught in a manner substantially correct in the doctrinal articles of the Augsburg Confession: 1. The divine inspiration, authority, and sufficiency of the Holy Scriptures. 2. The unity of the Godhead and the trinity of Persons therein. 3. The deity of our Lord Jesus Christ. 4. The utter depravity of human nature in consequence of the Fall. 5. The incarnation of the Son of God and His work of atonement for sinners of mankind. 6. The necessity of repentance and faith. 7. The justification of a sinner by faith alone. 8. The work of the Holy Spirit in the conversion and sanctification of the sinner. 9. The right and duty of private judgment in the interpretation of the Holy Scriptures. 10. The immortality of the soul, the resurrection of the body, the judgment of the world by Jesus Christ, with the eternal blessedness of the righteous and the eternal punishment of the wicked. 11. The divine institution and perpetuity of the Christian ministry, and the ordinances of Baptism and the Lord's Supper. But while we thus publicly avow and declare our convictions in the substantial correctness of the fundamental doctrines of the Augsburg Confession, we owe it to ourselves and to the cause of evangelical truth to disavow and repudiate certain errors which are said by some to be contained in said Confession: 1. The approval of the ceremonies of the mass; 2. private confession and absolution; 3. denial of the divine obligation of the Christian Sabbath; 4. baptismal regeneration; and 5. the real presence of the body and blood of the Savior in the Eucharist. With these exceptions, whether found in the Confession or not, we believe and retain the entire Augsburg Confession, with all the great doctrines of the Reformation." (L. u. W. 1858, 28.) In spite of this attitude toward the Augustana the General Synod, in 1859, on motion of Krauth, Jr., passed the resolution: "Resolved, That we cordially admit the Melanchthon Synod, and ... we would fraternally solicit them to consider whether a change, in their doctrinal basis, of the paragraph in regard to certain alleged errors would not tend to the promotion of mutual love, and the furtherance of the great objects for which we are laboring together." (Proceedings 1859, 11.) The vote for the admission of the un-Lutheran Synod, registering the victory of the liberals and the defeat of the conservatives, stood 98 to 26, the entire delegation of the Pennsylvania Ministerium and the three Scandinavian delegates being recorded in the negative. Without further protest on the part of the conservatives "the credentials of the [Melanchthon Synod] delegates were then presented and their names entered upon the roll of Synod." (12.) Confirming their doctrinal position, the Melanchthon Synod, in 1860, by formal resolution, approved of a sermon delivered by B. Kurtz in which he denounced baptismal regeneration as "a part of papistical superstition" and the real presence of the body and blood of Christ in, with, and under the bread and wine as "consubstantiation," and "just as untenable and absurd as transubstantiation." (L. u. W. 1860, 384.) Considering the Constitution of the General Synod together with the fact that the Platform synods had not been molested, the admission of the Melanchthon Synod, advocated by Krauth, cannot be construed as inconsistent. It must, however, be regarded as an indirect approval, on the part of the General Synod, of the Platform theology. Dr. Mann remarked, "he doubted not that there was much good in the constitution of the Melanchthon Synod; but he would not eat poisoned bread, though there was much good flour in it." (L. u. W. 1859, 196.)

68. Synod's Position Explained.—In 1859 the General Synod resolved that S. W. Harkey publish, in German as well as in English, the sermon delivered by him as President of Synod at the opening of the convention. (Proceedings, 48.) Harkey was an opponent of the Platform on the order of Brown and Conrad. In 1852, in his inaugural address as professor of theology at the Illinois State University in Springfield, he had declared that we must take a firm foothold in the Augsburg Confession as a whole without binding the consciences of men to its unessential individual determinations; and that the doctrine of the symbols on the Sacraments belongs to the points concerning which they had agreed to differ. (Lutheraner 9, 99.) Reaffirming this position in the sermon, endorsed by the General Synod in 1859, Harkey said: "We want love as much as orthodoxy, yes, a thousand times more than what some men call orthodoxy." (6.) "The General Synod cannot and does not require perfect unity or uniformity in all points of doctrine." (10.) "The General Synod adopted it [Augustana] as to fundamentals, and to these she requires unqualified subscription." (12.) "Objections have been urged against the expression 'fundamental doctrines,' as meaning one thing in the mouth of one man and a different thing in that of another—that to some everything is fundamental and to others only a few points. Now I cannot reply to this at length, at present, but have only to say in few words that there are fundamental doctrines in Christianity, and everybody not spoiled by his theory or philosophy knows what they are [the doctrines held in common by all evangelical denominations]. Indeed, I feel like sternly rebuking the infidelity which lies concealed beneath this objection, as if Christians had not been able to determine, in eighteen hundred years, what are the fundamental, chief, or great doctrines of their holy religion. Down on all such quibbling! Others have objected to the words 'substantially correct,' as meaning anything or nothing, at pleasure. This, like the other objection, is a quibble. None can err here, unless it be wilfully.... The amount of the whole is, 'In necessariis unitas, in dubiis libertas, in omnibus caritas.' This is as far as the General Synod has gone or could go; but it does not interfere with the liberty of the District Synods. Any District Synod may go beyond this, and adopt the Augsburg Confession in an unqualified manner; or it may state the points in which it dissents from it, and if not 'fundamental,' no objection can be made to its admission into the General Synod; but no body adopting a different Confession, or the Augsburg Confession less fully than as containing 'the fundamental doctrines of the Word of God in a manner substantially correct,' could be admitted into the union of the General Synod." (13.) "Does any one say doctrinal 'tares' are found in it, growing among the pure wheat of God's truth, and that he is anxious only 'to pluck up the tares'? I answer, 'Nay; lest while you gather up the tares, you root up also the wheat with them.' Let the venerable Confession stand just as it is, especially since you are bound only to receive it as containing the fundamental truths of God's Word." (14.) "Cease, O! cease from your controversies and disputes about non-essential points of doctrine and practise, and labor with all your might for the conversion and salvation of immortal souls!" (27.) In agreement with Harkey, Dr. Reynolds had declared in the Evangelical Review, July, 1858, that within the General Synod every one was privileged either to reject or to accept the doctrines enumerated as errors by the Platform. (L. u. W. 1858, 274.) And prior to, and in agreement with, both, Krauth, Jr., had maintained in the Missionary, April 30, 1857, that such men as Schmucker and Kurtz formed a legitimate variety in the General Synod. (Spaeth, 1, 397.) "The Church in the United States," said Krauth, "wants neither Symbololatry nor Schism, neither a German Lutheranism, in an exclusive sense, nor an American Lutheranism, in a separatistic one, but an Evangelical Lutheranism broad enough to embrace both, and to make each vitalize and bless the other, and supply the mutual defects of each. She will abide by the essentials of her Scripture-doctrine and of her Christian life, but she will use her liberty to adapt herself to her new position on this continent. She will neither be juggled out of her faith by one set of operators, nor out of her freedom by another. She will hold fast that which she has, and those who strive to take her crown from her will be remembered only by their utter and ignominious failure. The General Synod cannot take a higher position as to doctrine than her present one; she cannot take a lower one; therefore she must remain where she is." (401.) "That Church, then, is not Evangelical Lutheran which officially rejects the Augsburg Confession, or officially rejects, or requires, directly or indirectly, on the part of its members, a rejection of the Augsburg Confession, or a connivance at such official rejection." (407.) Doctrinally, then, the General Synod, as such, had not advanced beyond the union letter of November, 1845. The scheme and dream of the New School men, however, of officially substituting a new confession for the Augustana was doomed to oblivion.