on minor matters, and that without
compunction they themselves deviated in various points from the
Confessions farther than he did, it being sufficient to adhere to the
great fundamental doctrines; this advice had suddenly given comfort to
his heart and made the Lutheran Church dearer to him than before; and
ever since he had boldly told his catechumens that he did not believe
what the Catechism teaches of Baptism and the Lord's Supper, etc. Thus
Kurtz's Lutheranism, like that of Schmucker's, deteriorated as the years
rolled on. Kurtz was a fiery advocate of "new measures," revivals,
protracted meetings, Sabbath- and temperance-reform, etc., and an ardent
champion of "American Lutheranism" and the Definite Platform. He
violently opposed every effort at Lutheranizing and confessionalizing
the General Synod. Through the _Lutheran Observer_ he wielded a
tremendous influence, weekly filling it with ferocious attacks on the
Lutheran symbols and the "symbolists" who opposed the Reformed theology
of Schmucker and his compeers, and ridiculing in the coarsest fashion
everything distinctive of true and historic Lutheranism. In its issue of
November 23, 1849, Kurtz wrote, revealing the spirit that moved him:
"The Fathers--who are the 'Fathers'? They are the children; they lived
in the infancy of the Church, in the early dawn of the Gospel-day. John
was the greatest among the prophets, and yet he that was the least in
the kingdom of God, in the Christian Church, was greater than he. He
probably knew less, and that little less distinctly, than a
Sunday-school child, ten years of age, in the present day. Even the
Apostle Peter, after all the personal instruction of Christ, could not
expand his views sufficiently to learn that the Gospel was to be
preached to the Gentiles, and that the Church of Christ was to compass
the whole world. A special miracle was wrought to remove his prejudice
and convince him of his folly. Every well-instructed Sunday-school child
understands this thing, without a miracle, better than Peter did. Who,
then, are the 'Fathers'? They have become the Children; they were the
Fathers compared with those who lived in the infancy of the Jewish
dispensation; but, compared with the present and advanced age, they are
the Children, and the learned and pious of the nineteenth century are
the Fathers. We are three hundred years older than Luther and his noble
coadjutors, and eighteen hundred years older than the primitives;