78. Dr. Samuel Sprecher (1810-1905) was the brother-in-law and most devoted and enthusiastic supporter of Schmucker. From 1849 to 1884 he was president of Wittenberg College in Springfield, O., which was most advanced in the advocacy and development of Schmucker's brand of American Lutheranism. Again and again Sprecher urged the necessity of making a bold and honest statement setting forth the exact tenets of American Lutheranism. "I do not see," he said, "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 un-scriptural, and supplying what is defective." (Spaeth, 1, 347.) Determined in his blind opposition to "symbolism," Sprecher insisted that the General Synod refuse admission to such as adhered to the Lutheran symbols and their doctrines, and declined to subscribe to the Platform. In 1858 the _Religious Telescope_ said in praise of Sprecher: "He is a Bible-Lutheran and does not cram the heads of his students with baptismal regeneration nonsense and similar semipapal imbecilities." (_Observer_, Feb. 25, 1858; _L. u. W._ 1858, 126.) Toward the end of his life Sprecher receded from his former position. In the _Lutheran Evangelist_, January 15, 1892, he wrote: "I can now say, as I could not formerly, that, like Spener, I can for myself accept the symbols of the Church without reserve.... It is true that I did once think 'The Definite Synodical Platform' (that modification of Lutheranism which perhaps has been properly called 'the culmination of Melanchthonianism') desirable and practicable, and that I now regard all such modifications of our creed as hopeless. In the mean time an increased knowledge of the spirit, methods, and literature of the Missouri Synod has convinced me that such alterations are undesirable, that the elements of true Pietism, that a sense of the necessity of personal religion, and the importance of personal assurance of salvation, can be maintained in connection with a Lutheranism modified 'by the Puritan element.'" (Jacobs, 369; Neve, 113.) In 1906 the _Observer_ remarked: "It was Sprecher's fear that true evangelical piety and the certainty of faith could not be maintained so well under a strict orthodoxy that made him hesitate to embrace all of the symbolical books of the Lutheran Church in his system of faith.... This was one of the effects upon him of the New England theology with which he came in contact largely in his early life." (_L. u. W._ 1906, 277.) But even after his manly retraction Sprecher was not completely cured of the virus of Reformed subjectivism. Sprecher was among the first who, within the General Synod, declared that "inspiration does not make a book free of ... grammatical errors, rhetorical faults, and historical inaccuracies in minor and secondary matters." (_L. u. W._ 1871, 126.)