chsenford
explains in _Documentary History of the General Council_: "The
difficulty lay in the fact that some synods demanded that that should be
done at once[?], regardless of consequences, which others felt could be
done with much better results by following an educational method,
leading in the process of time all the synods and congregations, among
many of which in certain portions of the Church there existed peculiar
difficulties, to the same lofty eminence of purity in doctrine and in
practise, and so true unity in both. The older synods had difficulties
in this respect, of which the more recently formed synods had no true
conception. These difficulties could not be eradicated at once and by
the fiat of any organization; but as they had grown up gradually, so
they must be removed by a process of education." (164.) Dr. Spaeth gives
the following explanation of the situation, and apology for the attitude
of the General Council at Fort Wayne: "There appeared at this point a
wide difference, especially between the Eastern and Western synods,
which was in the first place the natural result of the historical
development, through which those various sections of the Church had
passed which now endeavored to form an organic union. The Lutheran
Church in the Eastern part of our country, having been founded about one
hundred and fifty years ago, had passed through all the different stages
of church-life, suffering, and death, by which the history of the Church
and theology of the German Fatherland was characterized in that period.
We need not be surprised to find that during this time many things crept
in which were in conflict with the spirit and Confession of our Church.
Over against those things the renewed appreciation of the Lutheran
Confession and the honest return to the same was of comparatively recent
date. It was therefore not to be expected that there should have been on
all sides at the very outset a thorough insight into all the
consequences and obligations of a decided and consistent adoption of the
Lutheran Confession. On the other hand, most of the Lutheran synods of
the West had been founded at a much more favorable season. Out of the
very fulness and freshness of the revived Confession, partly even in the
martyr-spirit of a persecuted Church, have their foundations been laid
and their structures raised. Accordingly, their whole congregational
life could much more easily and more consistently be organized on t