ffer, 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 Pl