THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
by them to the authorities in Berlin was flatly refused, and the cabinet orders of Mar. 9 and 10, 1834, in which the State had prepared for the struggle, were now executed. The first was directed against " conventicles," and the second against the " unauthorized administration of spiritual official acts "; while the third referred to the obligation of all Evangelical parents to send their children to Evangelical schools. The church services of the Lutherans were suppressed, the official acts of their clergy were declared invalid, and no child was permitted to leave school before he had been confirmed by a clergyman of the Evangelical State Church. These and other oppressive measures only spread the movement. In 1835 another synod was formed at Breslau, but all clergymen participating in it were imprisoned. Some congregations even found themselves compelled to emigrate; a part of them went to Australia under the leadership of their pastors Kavel and Fritzsche and formed the nucleus of the Lutheran Church of Australia; others followed Grabau to North America where they entered the Buffalo Synod (see below, III., 5, § 2). The king was deeply grieved at the outcome of his measures, yet he could not make up his mind to annul them and grant the Lutheran congregations their right of existence.
It was only after Frederick William IV. had ascended the throne in 1840 that conditions became more favorable for the Old Lutherans. One of the new ruler's first measures was to release the imprisoned Lutheran ministers, and at the request of the government, after some preliminary negotiations, the Lutherans presented a memorial on the conditions under which the Evangel- 3. Acces- ical Lutheran Church was to be acsion of knowledged as legal by the Prussian Frederick State. Before an answer had arrived,
"William however, the first public Old-Lutheran IV- General Synod met on Sept. 15, 1841. It established a comprehensive church order which is still in force in all essentials. The government of all churches was entrusted to a board of clergy and laity. A General Synod, meeting every four years, was to form the supreme court of appeal, to which the ecclesiastical board was also responsible. In 1841 the first attempt was made at a synodical constitution of the Lutheran Church upon German soil, and this organization found a certain measure of recognition by the State in the so-called general concession of July 23, 1845. The dissenting congregations were freed from taxes payable to the State Church, and the official acts of their clergy were recognized by the State, but their places of worship were not recognized as churches. In a special concession of Aug. 7, 1847, the board in Breslau was also officially recognized, and twenty-one congregations in the provinces of Silesia, Brandenburg, Pomerania, Prussia, Posen, and Saxony were granted corporate rights. At the meeting of the General Synod in 1860 the total number of 18,644 members in 1845 had increased to 55,017 in sixty-two parochial districts, with sixty-three ministers, thirty-four Lutheran schools, and forty-four teachers.
At the same synod a discord arose which shook
the Lutheran Church in Prussia to its depths and led to a fatal schism, the question concerning the
importance of church government.
4. Schism Several ministers were not willing to
of 1860. recognize church government as an
organic part of the Church. The General Synod of 1860 did not fully decide the question, but referred it to a committee for further investigation. Diedrich, the schismatic Old-Lutheran pastor at Jabel, with his congregation soon renounced the supervision of the ecclesiastical board. A conference in Berlin in Oct., 1861, tried in vain to remove the difficulties in the doctrine of church government. A number of preachers sided with Diedrich and accused the ecclesiastical board of false doctrine. The rupture became irremediable when, on July 21, 1864, these preachers under the leadership of Diedrich organized a special body, the Immanuel Synod (see below). In a " Public declaration concerning the disputed doctrines of the Church, the church government and the church orders," issued in 1864, the ecclesiastical board stated that the external institutional side of the Church could not be separated from its essence and conception, although the church government with regard to its special formation is based upon human right. In recent times the Lutheran Church, subject to the ecclesiastical board in Breslau, has recovered from the shock of the schism caused by the separation of the Immanuel Synod. In 1883 there was established a theological seminary. The Church possesses also its own institution for deaconesses, a pension fund for old pastors, for the widows of pastors, and 140 churches. It numbers about 51,600 members in sixty-four parishes with seventy-five ministers. The Evangelical Lutheran Immanuel Synod was formed in 1864 at Magdeburg, by Ehlers, Diedrich, and other preachers in consequence of the disputes on church government that had arisen within the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Prussia. Its leading idea is that the pastors as the sole incumbents of the spiritual office are bound to care for the church orders, and that the laity can freely take part in synods, with no restriction in number; the synod has properly no power of discipline over the ministers. The general concession of the State did not apply to the congregations of the Immanuel Synod, because they no longer were under the board of dissenting Lutherans recognized by the special concession of 1847. Consequently they had no corporate rights, and the official acts of their pastors had no validity before the State, but the civil law of 1874 removed the latter disability. The synod numbers about 5,300 persons, with thirteen ministers.
2. Elsewhere: The Independent Evangelical Lutheran Church in the Hessian lands originated in the opposition of the strictly Lutheran clergy to the new united church constitution introduced into the grand duchy of Hesse-Darmstadt Jan. 6,
1874. It is true, the Union had been
1. Churches practically introduced into several
in Hesse, parts of the country since 1822, but
the pastors of a stricter confessional tendency had united since 1851 for the defense of their old rights. A synodical constitution pub-