OTHER REPRESENTATIVE THEOLOGIANS.
112. Dr. Wm. Julius Mann (1819—1892) was born at Stuttgart, Wuerttemberg; graduated at Tuebingen, 1841; active as teacher till 1844; came to America in 1845, influenced by his intimate friend Ph. Schaff at Mercersburg, who had left Germany in 1844; 1846 assistant pastor of a German Reformed congregation in Philadelphia; 1850 assistant to Dr. Demme, pastor of Zion Ev. Luth. Congregation, Philadelphia, to which H.M. Muhlenberg had been called in 1742; in 1851 he was received into the Ministerium of Pennsylvania; served as president of this body from 1860 to 1862 and 1880; from 1864 to 1892 he was professor in Philadelphia Seminary. From 1848 to 1859 Dr. Mann cooperated in editing the Deutsche Kirchenzeitung, established by Schaff as "an organ for the common interests of the American German [Reformed and Lutheran] churches." The Kirchenzeitung, of which Mann in 1854 became editor-in-chief, was a paper for theologians, not for laymen. It bore the motto: "In necessariis unitas, in dubiis libertas, in omnibus caritas." Its object was "to prepare the way for the Lord, and add a few stones to the dome of the Church of the future." It served the Lutheran and Reformed churches by antagonizing revivalism. From 1863 to 1866 Dr. Mann was editorially responsible for Evangelische Zeugnisse, a German homiletic monthly, also established by his friend Ph. Schaff. In 1856 Mann opposed the Definite Platform in his Plea for the Augsburg Confession, and 1857 in his Lutheranism in America. In 1864 he translated the New Testament Commentary of the American Tract Society into German for this society. In 1886 he edited Hallesche Nachrichten (Vol. I); 1887 he published the Life and Times of H.M. Muhlenberg; 1891 the same in German. Apart from quite a number of other books, Dr. Mann wrote articles for various German and English periodicals. "I always prepare myself closely," said Mann in a letter of February 14, 1866, "for the recitations in the seminary, write every week for the Lutheran, more for the Lutherische Zeitschrift of Brobst, continue the translation of the Tract Society's Commentary on the New Testament, keep up some correspondence, and at the same time perform my various and burdensome duties as a pastor and, find yet a little, a very little, time for light reading." Mann, for many years a bosom friend of the arch-unionist Ph. Schaff, whom he admired as "the presiding genius of international theology," gradually became a conservative confessional Lutheran theologian, opposed also to the unionism as practised by the General Synod. On April 7, 1892, Schaff wrote to his friend: "What right had the sixteenth and seventeenth century to prescribe to future generations all theological thinking? We are as near to Christ and to the Bible as the framers of the confessions of faith." Dr. Mann answered: "In the air in which this letter breathes I cannot live…. What right had the framers of the American Constitution to lay down a basis for the administrative side of the life of this nation?" As to the General Synod, Dr. Mann's love for it gradually turned into aversion, because of its utterly un-Lutheran features. He charged the General Synod with living "in a concubinage with the Presbyterians and Methodists." In 1853 he wrote: "I have rejoiced over the union of our Pennsylvania Synod with the General Synod, and now I rejoice still more." (173.) Mann still failed to see that no one can truly love the Lutheran Church who despises, ignores, and denies her doctrines and usages. In 1855 he said of Missouri: "They have no patience with their weaker sister," meaning the General Synod. (176.) But in the immediately following years Mann himself began to attack the Definite Platform and its American Lutheranism. With respect to the doctrines controverted within the Lutheran Church of America, however, Dr. Mann never occupied a clear, firm, and determined Lutheran position. He revealed no interest in the discussions on the Four Points. Of the Missouri Synod Dr. Mann wrote in 1866: "These theological scratchbrushes (Kratzbuersten) of the West do an important work. They discipline thousands of Germans ecclesiastically, as otherwise only Catholic priests are able to do. Most of them lead a rough, self-denying life. They defy effeminate, sentimental, hazy ecclesiastical Americanism. There is a firm character here. They will not always remain as rugged as they are now. The coming generation will be English and milder in many respects. The Missourians are a power in the West, where the Germans generally are becoming a power, the longer the more. They will obtain an ever stronger elementary influence. The German [?] blood will make its influence felt for a long time." (Spaeth, W.J. Mann.)
113. Passavant, Schmucker, Seiss, etc.—Other names well known beyond the General Council are Drs. Passavant, B.M. Schmucker, Krotel, Seiss, Spaeth, Weidner, etc. Dr. W.A. Passavant (1821—1894) was born of Huguenot ancestry at Zelienople, Pa.; graduated in Gettysburg Seminary; was pastor in Baltimore till 1844 and in Pittsburgh till 1855; published the Missionary in 1845, which in 1861 was merged with The Lutheran, Passavant remaining coeditor. He established The Workman in 1880, which he edited in a conservative, confessional spirit, while in the Missionary he had been a fiery advocate of New-measurism. Cooperating with Pastor Fliedner of Kaiserswerth, Passavant introduced the first deaconesses in America; founded hospitals, orphanages, and academies; presented, in 1868, the ground for the Theological Seminary at Chicago; organized the home missionary work of the Pittsburgh Synod (whose founder he was) and of the General Council. Passavant was preeminently a missionary and philanthropist—the "American Fliedner." Dr. G.W. Sandt, in Lutheran Church Review 1918: "Passavant was educated in a Presbyterian college, where revivals were a fixed part of the curriculum. He prepared for the ministry in a Lutheran seminary at a time when Lutherans were more 'anxious' about the 'bench' than they were about the faith. It is not to be wondered at that his early ministry reflected the fitful and unstable emotionalism of the 'Anxious Bench' religionism, which he later outgrew and disowned." (442.)—Dr. Beale Melanchthon Schmucker (1827—1888), though a son of S.S. Schmucker, did not agree with the Definite Platform. He was secretary of the English Church Book Committee, a member of the German Kirchenbuch and Sonntagsschulbuch Committee, and of the Joint Committee on Common Service. He was regarded as the greatest liturgical scholar of the Lutheran Church in America and admired as a parliamentarian. He was a passionate lover of the Reformation and its literature. The Church Book of the General Council has been said to be "his lasting monument." Through it he laid the foundation also for the Common Service. "Next to Dr. C.P. Krauth," said the Kirchenblatt of the Iowa Synod (1918), "there is no man to whom the General Council owes so much as to Dr. B.M. Schmucker." B.M. Schmucker published articles on liturgical, hymnological, biographical, and other themes, and wrote the preface to the Common Service, first published by the United Synod of the South, 1888.—Dr. G.F. Krotel (1826—1907) studied theology under Dr. Demme; was renowned as pulpit orator; succeeded Krauth in the editorship of the Lutheran; repeatedly served the Pennsylvania Synod and the General Council as president.—Dr. J.A. Seiss was pastor in Philadelphia from 1858 till his death in 1904; he also served as president of the Pennsylvania Synod and the General Council. Seiss was one of the most prolific Lutheran authors in America. "There was a strength, a stateliness, a dignity, and an artistic finish to all his greatest pulpit efforts that compelled a hearing." (Luth. Church Review 1918, 90.) His style is oratorical rather than churchly. His Lectures on the Gospels and Epistles are the fruit of many years of careful sermonizing and study. In his lectures on the Last Times, 1856, and on the The Apocalypse, 1866, Seiss championed the cause of a chiliasm which the General Council refused to reject.—Dr. Adolph Spaeth (1839—1910) graduated at Tuebingen; active in Wuerttemberg, Italy, France, and Scotland till he accepted a call as Dr. Mann's assistant in Philadelphia in 1864; served as professor at the Seminary from 1867 till his death; was president of the General Council from 1880 to 1888, and of the Pennsylvania Synod from 1892 to 1895. He wrote the biographies of W.J. Mann, 1895, and of C.P. Krauth, Vol. I, 1898; Vol. II, 1909.—Dr. R.F. Weidner (1851—1915), president of the Seminary of the General Council at Chicago since its opening in 1891, reproduced in the English language a number of modern German theological works.