is as strong and straight as the symbolical books can make it, and whose religious usages are as stiff as such thoroughbred old-school men can wish them." (_L._ 4, 30.) But while B. Kurtz and his compeers indulged in mockery and ridicule, the men of Missouri were clear-sighted, serious, and determined. The consequence was that a decade later the hearts of the General Synod's anti-confessionalists were filled with fear and consternation. Schmucker's chief object in writing the Definite Platform, as appears from this document itself, was to stem the tide of the confessional wave coming from the West, and to make the General Synod immune against Misouri. [tr. note: sic!] 89. Cloud, like the Hand of a Man, in the West.--Admitting the tremendous influence of the Lutherans in the West, the _Observer_, February 19, 1864, wrote, in his usual subjective fashion: "There was a time when our Church had peace. From 1830 to 1840 she enjoyed a universal peace and flourished greatly. This flourishing condition extended far into the following decade. In these days, and already somewhat earlier, the transition from the German into English caused some friction. Nevertheless, it was a time of revivals and of great bloom. The number of our churches increased. Our seminary at Gettysburg was filled with students.... Between 1845 and 1850 a change took place with a part of our Church. A little cloud, like the hand of a man, appeared in the West. The Germans came in ever greater multitudes and in more rapid succession. They no longer joined the American Lutheran congregations generally. An Old Lutheran in Bavaria [Loehe] turned his eyes on this country, sending colonies of hyper-Lutherans. These opposed the revivals. Some of them were pious men, but their religious type differed from the American. They were surrounded by influences which hindered their amalgamation with American Christians. They had been imbued with mistrust against the General Synod. Their system was such as not to encourage spiritual life and progress.... These children of a foreign soil had been sent over with a bitter prejudice against the liberal Lutheranism of America. In the year 1845 there were probably no more than one or two dozen old-Lutheran congregations in this country. Now there are perhaps no less than 700 symbol-Lutheran congregations of the old school in the country, whose preachers--numbering almost 500-- are all symbol- and hyper-Lutherans who profess to believe that the real body and blood of Christ are orally received in the Lord's Supper, and that the unbelieving communicant as well as the believing partakes of the true body and blood of the Savior. They also believe in regeneration by Baptism, and some of them also in private confession, in exorcism, in beautifying the church with pictures and crucifixes; some of them also, in bright daylight, light wax candles at Communion.... This German, anti-Biblical, anti-American element could have been checked and