49. Reports on Revivals.—To what an extent over a long period revivals were indulged in by the congregations of the General Synod appears from its minutes. The Committee on the State of the Church reported in 1857: "Revivals have been enjoyed in every quarter, many souls have been added to the Lord, and whilst the congregations have thus been largely increased, there is every reason to anticipate that the addition thus secured for the ranks of the ministry will not be a small one." (30.) In 1859: "The most extensive and powerful revivals of religion ever known among us have been enjoyed by a very large number of our churches during the past two years." (59.) In 1864: "Frequent and extensive revivals and numerous additions to the Church are reported by the brethren." (55.) In 1866: "Many of our churches are rejoicing in special seasons of grace, refreshings from on high, revivals of religion, in which sinners are converted, whilst God's people are awakening to new life." (42.) In 1869: "Revivals of religion have been quite general during the year, and many have 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.