Church History, Volume 3 (of 3)Kurtz, J. H. (Johann Heinrich)
History
Church History, Volume 3 (of 3)
Kurtz, J. H. (Johann Heinrich)
Church history
§ 180.5. The conflicts in Schleswig Holstein also caused
considerable excitement. Pastor =Kühl= of Oldensworth had
published an article at Easter, A.D. 1880, entitled, “The Lord
is Risen indeed,” in which the resurrection was made purely
spiritual. He was charged with violating his ordination vow,
sectaries pointed to his paper as proof of their theory that
the state church was the apocalyptic Babylon, and petitions from
115 ministers and 2,500 laymen were presented against him to
the consistory of Kiel. The consistory exhorted Kühl to be more
careful and his opponents to be more patient. In the same year,
however, he published a paper in which he denied that the order
of nature was set aside by miracles. He was now advised to give
up writing and confine himself to his pastoral work. A pamphlet
by Decker on “The Old Faith and the New,” was answered by =Lühr=,
and his mode of dealing with the ordination vow was of such a
kind as to lead pastor Paulsen to speak of it as a “chloroforming
of his conscience.”
§ 181. DISPUTES ABOUT FORMS OF WORSHIP.
During the eighteenth century the services of the evangelical church
had become thoroughly corrupted and disordered under the influence
of the “Illumination,” and were quite incapable of answering to the
Christian needs and ecclesiastical tastes of the nineteenth century.
Whenever there was a revival in favour of the faith of their fathers,
a movement was made in the direction of improved forms of worship. The
Rationalists and Friends of Light, however, prevented progress except
in a few states. Even the official Eisenach Conference did no more than
prepare the way and indicate how action might afterwards be taken.
§ 181.1. =The Hymnbook.=--Traces of the vandalism of the
Illumination were to be seen in all the hymnbooks. The noble poet
Ernst Moritz Arndt was the first to enter the lists as a restorer;
and various attempts were made by Von Elsner, Von Raumer, Bunsen,
Stier, Knapp, Daniel, Harms, etc., to make collections of sacred
songs answerable to the revived Christian sentiment of the people.
These came to be largely used, not in the public services, but
in family worship, and prepared the way for official revisal of
the books for church use. The Eisenach Conference of A.D. 1853
resolved to issue 150 classical hymns with the old melodies as
an appendix to the old collection and a pattern for further work.
Only with difficulty was the resolution passed to make A.D. 1750
the _terminus ad quem_ in the choice of pieces. Wackernagel
insisted on a strict adherence to the original text and retired
from the committee when this was not agreed to. Only in a few
states has the Eisenach collection been introduced; _e.g._ in
Bavaria, where it has been incorporated in its new hymnbook.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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