fanatical sects, denounced as spiritually dead formalists all who adhered to the old ways of Lutheranism. In its issue of March 21, 1862, the _Lutheran Observer_ declared that the "Symbolism" of the Old Lutherans in St. Louis meant the death of the Lutheran Church, which nothing but revivals were able to save. (_L. u. W_. 1862, 152; 1917, 374.) Muhlenberg's Pietism had helped to prepare the way for this Methodistic aberration. MUHLENBERG'S HIERARCHICAL TENDENCIES. 49. Government of and by the Ministers.--A clear conception of the doctrines of the Church and of the holy ministry was something Muhlenberg did not possess. Hence his congregations also were not educated to true independence and to the proper knowledge and exercise of their priestly rights and duties. Dr. Mann says of Muhlenberg and his coworkers: "These fathers were very far from giving the Lutheran Church, as they organized it on this new field of labor, a form and character in any essential point different from what the Lutheran Church was in the Old World, and especially in Germany." (Spaeth, _C. P. Krauth_, 1, 317.) The pastor ruled the elders; the pastor and the elders ruled the congregation; the synod ruled the pastor, the elders, and the congregation; the College of Pastors ruled the synod and the local pastor together with his elders and his congregation; and all of these were subject to, and ruled by, the authorities in Europe. The local congregations were taught to view themselves, not as independent, but as parts of, and subject to, the body of United Congregations and Pastors. The constitution for congregations simply presupposed that a congregation was a member of, and subordinate to, Synod. (499.) This appears also from a document signed by the elders of Tulpehocken and Northkill (Nordkiel), August 24, 1748, two days before the organization of the Pennsylvania Synod. In it the elders, in the name of the congregations, state and promise: "In this it always remains presupposed that we with the United Congregations constitute one whole Ev. Lutheran congregation, which acknowledges and respects as her lawful pastors all the pastors who constitute the College of Pastors (Collegium Pastorum) and remains in the closest connection with them, as being our regular teachers. . . . Accordingly, we have the desire to be embodied and incorporated in the United Congregations in Pennsylvania, and to be recognized and received by them as brethren and members of a special congregation of the Ev. Lutheran Church, and consequently to share in the pastoral care of the College of all the Rev. Pastors of the United Congregations. In accordance herewith we most publicly and solemnly desire, acknowledge and declare all the Rev. Pastors of the United Church-Congregations to be our pastors and ministers (Seelsorger und Hirten); we also give them complete authority to provide for the welfare of our souls, how and through whom, also as long as, they choose. We