mpared with the German, as
impregnated with the spirit of rationalism and infidelity. Riding, as it
were, on the language, rationalism had made its public entry into the
New York Ministerium. The real cause, however, was not the language, but
the indifferentism and unionism prevailing within this body, which long
ago had paved the way for, indeed, had itself bred, religious unbelief.
However, mistaking what was merely accidental and a concomitant for the
chief and real cause of the calamity in the New York Ministerium,
prominent German ministers of the Pennsylvania Synod, in order to guard
against a similar turn of events in their own midst, frantically opposed
the use of the English language in the Synod and her congregations, and
placed such emphasis on the German as made it an end _per se_ peculiar
to the Lutheran Church rather than a means employed wherever and
whenever the conditions call for it in order to attain her real and
supreme object--the saving of souls. Men like J. H. C. Helmuth and J.
F. Schmidt, in a way, identified English and Rationalism, German and
Lutheranism (that is to say, unionistic Evangelicalism). Lamenting the
inroads that Rationalism was making also in Lutheran congregations, they
wrote: "But now the Protestant churches are threatened by a terrible
storm, which is not the mere consequence of the natural course of
things, but a _sign of this time_, and it will soon despoil them of the
treasures of their Church together with all their happiness, unless
teachers and parents will counteract it with united strength. Almost
universally, especially in the cities and at the boundaries, they are
beginning to educate the children exclusively in the English language,
and, in a manner for which they will not be able to answer, to neglect
them as regards the German services. This is the consequence of the
indifference and the disregard of sound doctrine which, in the present
hour of great temptation, is spreading over the face of the earth." But
instead of stemming the tide of Rationalism by returning to Lutheran
faithfulness, they ignored the Lutheran Confessions and intrenched
themselves behind the German language and the "brethren" in the German
Reformed and German Moravian churches. The general church-prayer of the
Agenda of 1786, universally introduced in the congregations of the
Pennsylvania Synod, contained the passage: "And since it has pleased
Thee [God] to transform this State [Pennsylvania] into