absorbed by the American Church if another element had not been added. But during the rise of the great revivals of the fourth decade of this century in our own Church unfortunately a class of people arose who are far more dangerous and more powerful for mischief than the European preachers. These American preachers became disloyal to the basis of the General Synod, and began to raise a banner against the revivals and against a spiritual Lutheranism.... They began a systematic persecution of the most prominent men of the General Synod. In order to execute their plans, they began to curry favor with the German symbolists. They succeeded in adding tenfold bitterness to the prejudice and suspicion in the hearts of the foreigners, until finally an almost unsurmountable abyss seems to be fastened between the foreign high-church party and our General Synod.... Every Lutheran of this country should have endeavored to lead our foreign brethren to the General Synod, showing them that the pure spiritual Lutheranism of this land is so much better than the leather-bound symbolism of the Bavarian autocrat, as our political institutions are better than those of the old Fatherland. But, instead of this work of love, our benighted symbolists have strengthened the prejudices of the foreigners in saying to them that the Lutheranism of the General Synod is a pseudo-Lutheranism."--The origin, then, of the confessional commotion within the Lutheran Church of America must be traced chiefly to such men as Wyneken, Sihler, and especially to Walther, who since 1839 had been zealous in unfurling the banner of true Lutheranism, seriously, determinately, aggressively, victoriously. If the confessional movement was wrong, Missouri, above all, must be condemned as the great disturber of the peace, but Lutheranism itself must go down with it. (_L. u. W._ 1864, 59.) The sincerity, seriousness, and determination of the men of Missouri in applying the principles of Lutheranism as they saw it, commanded the admiration even of an opponent like S.S. Schmucker, who wrote in the _Observer_, September 21, 1860: "Would it not reveal a lack of self-respect if the General Synod were to receive men who seem to believe that she has departed so far from the Lutheran doctrine that she could no further lay any just claim to the name Lutheran? The opposite way of the Missourians is much more honorable and has won the respect not only of the General Synod, but of the Church everywhere."(_L. u. W._ 1860, p. 353.)