20. Exaggerated Estimates.--After what has already been said, the following evaluations of the General Synod will be received with a grain of salt. In the "Pastoral Letter" of the General Synod, written in 1831 by David F. Schaeffer, we read: "No church had to contend with so great difficulties as we have overcome by the help of God. As the English language is the language of our fortunate country, the untiring endeavors of our fathers to retain the knowledge of the German language among the youth were futile. Many who spoke German were not able to read this language. The consequences of this state of affairs were pitiable. The religious books of the parents were of no use, and in many cases true piety was gradually lost as well as the love for our Zion. In the mean time some Christian denominations who held their service in the English language were ardently endeavoring to promote the interest of religion and the growth of their churches. But the God of an Arndt, Spener, Francke, and of many other renowned founders and benefactors of our Church still lives. In this most critical moment, when our Church, which is distinguished for the simplicity of its service, the purity of its doctrines, and the excellency of its church-discipline, was about to sink into oblivion, just at this important moment the General Synod was brought into existence, and through this body the Theological Seminary and College grew up which now are in efficient operation and in a flourishing condition. Now our children may be instructed in all the different branches of the sciences by pious and well-trained teachers of our faith. Now, by our Seminary, the Church may be supplied with learned and pious preachers, who are able to instruct their hearers in both languages. And from this institute they will always go forth as brethren, inspired by the same spirit and led by the same principles." (_Proceedings_, 1831,22.) In 1857, Krauth, Jr., defending the General Synod, said: "She is the offspring of a reviving Lutheranism, born in the dawn that followed the night which fell upon our Church in this land, when the patriarchal luminaries of her early history had set on earth to rise in heaven. When the General Synod came into being, Rationalism still was in the ascendant in Europe. The names of Gabler and Bretschneider, of Wegscheider and Roehr, were names which had been held high in honor in the Lutheran Church in Germany. That Church had become what such men might have been expected to make her. Where their influence prevailed, she had become rotten in doctrine, destitute not only of the power of godliness, but even of the decencies of its forms, and ready, at the command of a royal devotee of Dagon, for a conjunction which she once would have regarded as the adding of a scaly tail and fishy fin to the fair bust of woman; but the bust was as fishy as the tail now, and they were frozen into happy conjunction. But this was not