one time during the meeting it was found necessary to invite the
mourners to withdraw from the church and remove to the parsonage that
the synod might have an opportunity to proceed with the transaction of
business before it." (Neve, 97.) Dr. Kurtz wrote in the _Observer_ of
November 17, 1843: "The so-called 'anxious bench' is the lever of
Archimedes, which by the blessing of God can raise our German churches
to that degree of respectability in the religious world which they ought
to enjoy." (Neve, 95.) The _Lutheran Observer_ of March 21, 1862, while
defending revivalism and misrepresenting the "symbolism" of the
Missourians as the doctrine according to which one is saved by the
Sacraments _ex opere operato_, without repentance and faith, condemns
the Lutheran system of baptizing, catechizing, confirming, communing at
the Lord's Supper, etc., as Romanism and Sacramentalism, as unbiblical
and not at all the religion of Christ and His apostles, as fundamentally
wrong and utterly ineffective, and disgusting also to Lutherans, as
soon as they were enlightened by the Spirit of God. The _Observer_
continues: The success of Methodists, Baptists, Presbyterians, and even
of the Congregationalists among the Germans is due to revivals. "The
Lutheran Church in Germany and in this country is in need of religious
revivals. Nothing else will save them." (_L. u. W._ 1862, 152.) In 1900,
reporting numerous conversions in consequence of revivals held in
congregations of the General Synod, the _Observer_ remarked: "If half a
dozen of our best preachers would turn evangelists--no greater blessing
could come to our Church." (_L. u. W._ 1900, 179.) The _Lutheran World_,
January 17, 1901: "In our own General Synod any of our churches came to
look upon the Catechism as unfriendly to vital piety, and they cast it
out. Today even there are still those among us who oppose and resist the
use of the Catechism under the false notion that it is the enemy of
practical religion. Their idea of religion is the Methodistic notion.
Fitness for church-membership, according to their view, comes through
the pressure and appointments of the big meeting. Sinners must come to a
bench for mourning, or they must stand up in the congregation, or they
must hold their hands, or they must send in their card asking for the
prayers of the church. Human devices and appointments are fixed on as
requisites for having a genuine conversion and being filled with the
Spirit of