The Church consists of the priests and the Sacraments. 4. The priests have the power on earth to administer the Sacraments and to forgive sins. 5. The Sacraments have in themselves the power to save. 6. Baptism regenerates the child. 7. The Lord's Supper nourishes the seed implanted in Baptism. 8. Hence man is not saved by the individual experience of something, but in a mass. I know that our symbolists will say that this is slander. But I affirm that it is a sincere and honest presentation of the matter.... The advocates of symbolism probably have never been converted, or they have backslidden again. This is a severe judgment. So it is. But must we not judge them by their fruits? How many souls have been converted by these symbolists? Go into their congregations and speak to their members on religion; what do they know of it? In 19 out of 20 cases their members, when awakened, seek Christ in other churches. We have held back too long with our testimony. I fear that by our negligence souls have gone to hell. And what have we won by our pusillanimity? The advocates of symbolism have grown and become more impudent by their success." (_L. u. W._ 1867, 88.) In a subsequent issue the same paper, after boldly defending the baldest Zwinglianism, remarked with respect to the symbolists that, in a way, their success involved a certain blessing, inasmuch as they would serve as "an ecclesiastical sewer into which sooner or later the dead formalism, the cold, heartless ritualism, and the lager-beer Lutheranism of this country would find its way." (_L. u. W._ 1867, 125.) Even the _Lutheran Observer_ was censured by the _American Lutheran_ for becoming too conservative. (_L. u. W._ 1875, 375.) But the difference was one of degree only. In its issue of October 3, 1873, the _Observer_ charged the Germans and Scandinavians, because of their adherence to the Lutheran Confessions, with sectarian presumption, enmity against other Christians, foreign bigotry, dead orthodoxy, cold dead faith, etc. "The position," the _Observer_ continued, "which these bigots assume in our enlightened land of churches, where the Lord Jesus is more universally honored than in any other country of the world, is ridiculous.... For while these short-sighted men set themselves against the liberal and enlightened spirit of the General Synod and against the times and the country in which they live, other churches annually lead away thousands of their most intelligent members." (_L. u. W._ 1873, 375.) Enmity against Lutheranism--such was the spirit of the counterfeit American Lutheranism championed by Schmucker and his compeers. Nor is the assumption warranted that this spirit died with its early protagonists. In 1885 Dr. Butler characterized the Americanization of Lutherans in the _Lutheran Observer_ as follows: "It is a great mission of the _Observer_ to open the blind eyes and to convert our Teutonic people from the fetters of its language and customs to the light and to the liberty of