88. Light Coming from the West.--In 1845, at the convention of the General Synod in Philadelphia, Wyneken, a delegate of the Synod of the West, made a bold, determined, and consistent stand for genuine Lutheranism against the prevailing unionistic and Reformed tendencies of the leaders of the General Synod. Wyneken, who, in his pamphlet _The Distress of the German Lutherans in North America_, had characterized the General Synod as Reformed in doctrine, Methodistic in practise, and Lutheran in name only, demanded at Philadelphia that Synod either renounce the name Lutheran, or reject as utterly un-Lutheran Schmucker's _Popular Theology, Appeal, Portraiture of Lutheranism_, etc., Kurtz's _On Infant Baptism, Why You Are a Lutheran_, and the _Lutheran Observer_, as well as the _Hirtenstimme_ of Weyl. But on floor of Synod not a single voice was heard that understood him, and was in sympathy with him. On the contrary, in _Lutherische Hirtenstimme_, July 1, 1845, Rev. Weyl began to decry Wyneken as a masked Romanist, an enemy of Lutheran doctrines, usages, books, and periodicals, and to ridicule his zeal for true Lutheranism at Philadelphia as a "ludicrous motion (_spasshafte Motion_)" which the General Synod had tabled "good-naturedly." (_L._ 1845, 96; 3, 32; 7, 133. 153.) Wyneken was a strange figure on the floor of the General Synod--without predecessors, without successors. Down to the Merger in 1918 there was not found a single prominent General Synodist walking in his steps. In an address delivered March 10, 1846, Dr. Philip Schaff (Schaaf was his original name) declared that it was impossible to build a confessional Lutheran Church (not to speak of the exclusive Lutheranism of the Form of Concord) on the Reformed English soil of America. It would be easier to direct the course of the Mississippi to Bavaria and to convert the Chinese through German sermons. The emissaries from Germany would soon be convinced of the folly of their undertaking, etc.--This was the view also of the leaders of the General Synod. But, though fully aware of the difficulties ahead, nothing was able to daunt the courage of the men of the West, or shake their faith in the truth and final success of their cause. And their faith did not fail them. Throughout the United States and far beyond its bounds the fact of Missouri's powerful rise was felt as an encouragement and incentive to true Lutheranism everywhere. Indeed, the confessional influence of the West on the East was much greater than is usually acknowledged. As early as 1846 Dr. Walther felt justified in stating in the _Lutheraner_ (Sept. 5): "No doubt but God has arisen in order to remove the rubbish under which our precious Evangelical Lutheran Church was buried for a long time, also here in America." (3, 1.) The _Observer_, reporting on the organization of the Missouri Synod in 1847, ridiculed: "This new Synod is composed of genuine Old Lutherans, the true, spotless orthodox ones, whose theology