Of Keyl's call to Wisconsin, and of the motives which made him glad to accept this call, we have already said something in the preceding chapter. But it is also important and interesting to learn under what prevailing circumstances and conditions he was called there; for this reminds us of a period in the history of the American Lutheran Church and its doctrinal disputes, which have had very significant consequences.
Until Keyl's appointment, the congregations of Freistadt and Milwaukee had belonged to the Buffalo Synod, which liked to call itself "the Evangelical Lutheran Synod of the Church Emigrated from Prussia". This name already expressed the arrogant, dissenting, papist spirit of this synod, which was clearly evident from the beginning in its false doctrine and priestly practice. One of the preachers of this synod, by the name of L. F. E. Krause, had previously served the above-mentioned congregations. Recently, however, they had felt compelled to dismiss their preacher and sever their connection with the Buffalo Synod. The congregation in Freistadt gave the following reason for the dismissal of their preacher in their letter of vocation: "We have renounced the pastoral care of Pastor Krause for almost a year now, for the reason that the aforementioned Pastor Krause led false teachings and an unpleasant life and did not heed the admonitions of the congregation and the ministry."
Whether this accusation was really true, we must briefly examine here; for it will depend on this whether Keyl had a legitimate profession in Freistadt and Milwaukee, or whether he was a red-bait preacher, as the Buffalo Synod liked to call him. For this, however, it will be necessary for us to go back to the beginning of the dispute that broke out in 1840 between the Buffalo Synod and the Saxon preachers in Perry County, Missouri.
The beginning of this controversy was as follows: It was, as already mentioned, in the year 1840, when Pastor A. Grabau in Buffalo sent out a so-called "pastoral letter" addressed to the Christians who had emigrated with him from Prussia, which he sent to the Saxon preachers Keyl, Löber, Gruber and Walther living in Missouri for examination. But when these men, on reading through Grabau's product, were shocked and saddened to find that the same erroneous, hierarchical doctrinal principles were set forth and defended as pure divine truths, which they themselves had previously held in Stephanism (and to great harm), they humbly drew Pastor Grabau's attention to this and informed him in writing of their concerns in a thoroughly Christian-brotherly manner. In particular, they showed him that his teaching on the church, on the preaching ministry, on the call to the preaching ministry, on ministerial authority, on ordination, on the spiritual priesthood of all true Christians, on Christian freedom and on banishment was not in accordance with the model of wholesome teaching. They urgently asked him to carefully re-examine his doctrinal principles according to God's Word and the symbols of our Church; in this way he would - they confidently hoped - come to the conviction that a correction was necessary in some points.
But how mistaken these men were in their good opinion about Grabau's attitude! For it soon turned out that Grabau was an incorrigible heretic who would not accept even the most reverent and friendly reminder of his hierarchical doctrinal principles, much less improve them; but in a dictatorial manner demanded unconditional acceptance and approval of his papist principles from the Saxon preachers. But because they had to reject such an excessive request out of conscience, Grabau, out of anger, dragged the hitherto hidden dispute out into the open, and he and his synod, consisting of about three preachers, began to publicly denounce and curse the Saxon preachers, and finally to formally banish them.
The Buffalo congregations in Wisconsin had now learned of this dispute. Not only had Grabau made it known to the congregations through printed publications, but their own preachers, who professed Grabau's false doctrine and condemned the teaching of the Saxon preachers as heretical, had also brought this controversy into their congregations. In almost every sermon, even in funeral sermons, they tried to drag this controversy by the hair, so that the congregations, which had initially sided with Grabau, became fed up.
In this way it happened that some of the members of the congregation, seeing the fruit of the false teachings of their preachers and feeling the consequences of their tyrannical treatment, came to a better understanding, and as a result they opposed the false teachings and the priestly behavior of their preachers. So it came to pass that the congregations in Freistadt and Milwaukee (the former was the mother congregation, the latter a branch) dismissed their pastor Krause from his office for false teaching and objectionable behavior. In the neighboring congregation of Kirchhayn, where the Buffalo pastor G. A. Kindermann stood, a number of members had also renounced their false-teaching preacher.
It was obvious that these people could not and should not seek relief from the Buffalo Synod. So they turned to the Evangelical Lutheran Synod of Missouri, Ohio and other states, which met for the first time in Chicago in April 1847.
As is well known, the founders of this synod included the Saxon preachers in Missouri, who until then had been alone in the momentous doctrinal dispute with the Synod of Buffalo. Pastor Grabau and his fellow ministers had also been kindly invited to this synod in Chicago, as it was hoped that a verbal discussion would perhaps lead to an agreement on doctrine. Pastor Grabau and his comrades had also promised to come; however, they did not come, but soon afterwards appeared in public with a synodal letter, in which they twisted and distorted the previous dispute in a very impudent and shameless manner, and defended their false doctrine and godless practice.
The congregations of Freistadt and Milwaukee had each sent a delegate to the Synod of Missouri, etc., which was meeting in Chicago, to bring their matter before it and have it investigated. Because Pastor Grabau and his comrades had not appeared, the synod could not, of course, enter into a closer investigation of the matter; but it could testify to the congregations in Wisconsin that their former pastor Krause was an obvious heretic who had confessed and defended all of Pastor Grabau's errors, and that they had therefore done right to remove such a murderer of souls from his office. But because these congregations asked for an orthodox preacher, they were advised to appoint Pastor Keyl of Frohna, which they did; and, as it says in the beautiful letter of appointment, "in the good hope that Your Reverence will, by the grace of God, remain faithful to the doctrine and life of the Evangelical Lutheran Church". We also already know from the previous chapter that Keyl recognized a divine call in this vocation and followed it.
But before we talk about our blessed friend's work in Wisconsin, we need to get to know the ecclesiastical conditions as he found them there a little better. At that time, the now flourishing state of Wisconsin was still a territory, and its now fertile fields were for the most part still in impenetrable jungle, where the wild animals lived. The city of Milwaukee, which is described by all who visit it as the most beautiful city in the West of America because of its beautiful location, its cleanliness, etc. (and the writer of this agrees with this judgment from his own experience), and which currently has a population in the second hundred thousand, had only nine thousand inhabitants at that time, and its trade and traffic was still very insignificant. From that time on, however, immigration to Wisconsin increased greatly, and the population of Milwaukee grew significantly from year to year. Among the immigrants from Germany, the Pomeranians were particularly well represented. As is well known, they are (or used to be) mostly church-minded by nature, and although they come from the Prussian-United Church, they have not yet forgotten that they are children of Lutheran fathers, which is why they are more easily won over to the Lutheran Church in this country than, for example, the southern German peoples. In this way it has happened that Wisconsin, and especially Wisconsin's most beautiful and largest city, Milwaukee, has become a rich field of work for the Lutheran Church.
When Blessed Keyl took office in Milwaukee, he was confronted with a picture of terrible ecclesiastical discord. There were quite a number of parties there, all claiming the name "Lutheran". And indeed, as far as the name is concerned, Milwaukee has long been a stronghold and foundation of Lutheranism. Besides Keyl's congregation, there was a Buffalo congregation, "the remnant of the Lord", as Grabau liked to call it in his fatherly way; furthermore the congregation of the eccentric Pastor Klügel, the congregation of Pastor Mühlhäuser, the founder of the Wisconsin Synod, the congregation of Pastor Dulitz, the congregation of Pastor Romanowski, the Roggenbuck party and a few others who called themselves the Silesian Lutherans. Even though some of these parties knew very little about true Lutheranism and possessed even less of it, they had it written on their banners and were not ashamed of the Lutheran name; therefore, one could at least draw hope for the future from it. And in fact, as we shall hear later, things turned out quite differently.
After a 14-day journey, Keyl and his family arrived in Milwaukee on October 7, 1847. Under this date, his diary reads: "Today (Thursday) at 9 o'clock in the morning I arrived here with my family under God's protection on the steamship Saratoga from Chicago and found my temporary home with the church warden M. Bruß." Here, in Milwaukee, Keyl took up residence, from where he served the Freistadt congregation, as well as those in Kirchhayn who had broken away from Pastor Kindermann.
On the 19th Sunday after Trinity he preached his first sermons in Milwaukee on the Sunday pericopes.
Both services were so well attended that the church could not hold all the listeners for a long time. In the morning sermon he testified to the congregation that he was happy to take up his office among them because he was certain that they had rightly deposed his predecessor as an obviously false teacher, and that his appointment was therefore a divine one. He also repeated this the following Sunday at the beginning of his sermon in Freistadt. When he was preparing for his first sermons after his arrival in Milwaukee, and was very zealous, his landlord, who had observed him, said to him, "Our former pastor did not prepare much for his sermons; with him everything went as if from the boot stock, but it was also afterward."
Since Keyl could not have been officially introduced to his congregations because there was not yet a brother minister in the then Wisconsin territory who was in brotherly fellowship with him, Grabau wrote to the world that Keyl had been ordained by a deposed schoolmaster and a ship's carpenter. He was prompted by the following to make this tasteless slander: According to the laws of Wisconsin, no preacher was allowed to perform a marriage ceremony unless he had first filed with the Clerk of the Circuit Court a certificate of his lawful appointment and installation to the office of preacher. Now Keyl could have presented his certificate of ordination in Latin, which he possessed from Germany, and his diploma of vocation in German from his congregations in Wisconsin; However, because all judicial documents had to be in English, a letter was drawn up in English by a man familiar with the law, in which it was attested that Pastor Keyl was an ordained and duly called preacher, which letter was then recognized in all the forms of law by a congregational meeting called for this purpose and credibly signed by the chairman and secretary of the same. And because the chairman of the meeting in question was the ship's carpenter M. Bruß and the secretary was a schoolmaster who had been dismissed by Grabau, Grabau based his tasteless slander that Keyl had been ordained by a ship's carpenter and a dismissed schoolteacher on this event. Of course, Keyl himself did not reply to this ludicrous tirade; later, however, Pastor Lochner found himself prompted to denounce this and many other Münchhausiades of Grabau as pure fabrications plucked out of the air and to pillory them in the "Lutheraner" and in the fine "Notwehrblatt". We are only reporting this event here for the amusement of our readers; incidentally, however, one can also see from it what a mean, angry spirit towards the Missouri Synod once animated Pastor Grabau.
During his time in Milwaukee, Keyl lived outwardly in fairly good peace. It was probably Pastor Klügel who caused him the most trouble. This eccentric came to this country as a candidate with the Saxon emigrants, where he stayed with his parents and siblings until after Stephan's exposure in Perry County, but had fallen out with everyone. He was one of those who, after Stephen's removal from the settlement, sought to destroy everything; who, with a bold, crude hand, dug into the deep wounds of the poor, deceived immigrants instead of helping to heal them; who sought to trample the already so deeply humiliated and crushed preachers into the dust instead of raising them up again. When Klügel saw that his insolent and arrogant spirit found no place here, he left Perry County and went to Wisconsin, where he gathered a small congregation in and near Milwaukee on his own initiative, but which later separated from him because of his false teachings and because of his frivolous walk and joined other congregations.
Klügel taught falsely about conversion and the election of grace, and - in order to give his false teaching an appearance - misused Luther's writings against Erasmus and the doctrine of Christian freedom, and pretended that he alone taught the true doctrine of Luther, thereby scolding the Missourians and causing much confusion. Because Keyl, as a false teacher and frivolous man, resolutely resisted him, he was hated by Klügel and ridiculed in every way. The two once met on a walk. It was at a time when Keyl had just introduced a new church constitution, which had also been unanimously adopted by his congregation. When it was to be signed by every single member of the congregation, unexpected difficulties arose when a number of them refused to sign. The reason for their refusal was not that they had anything against the new constitution, but that they were afraid to sign. While the dear people had been under Grabau's church rule, they had often been treated badly because of their signatures, so they were as afraid of it as a burnt child of fire; and since dear Keyl, in his zeal, might have insisted a little too strongly on signing, the matter seemed all the more precarious to them. Klügel, however, had heard of Keyl's embarrassment and, as a true Ishmael, rejoiced at it, and had his mockery of him and the Missourians, as those who wanted to rule the church with laws; for in Klügel's congregation everything could live without law. When the two met once and Klügel immediately began to ride his hobbyhorse, namely, to argue about the election of grace, Keyl said to him: "You want to work everything out," to which Klügel replied: "And you want to work everything out." With that, they parted company.
There is ample evidence that Keyl's work in Milwaukee was a blessed one. Outwardly, the congregation did not grow and expand much under his leadership, but inwardly it strengthened greatly. The foundation in Lutheran doctrine and the expansion of the congregation clearly showed the traces of his blessed work. Pastor F. Lochner, who became Keyl's successor in 1850, wrote to us in response to the question addressed to him: "Did the blessed Keyl work in Milwaukee in blessing?
"Certainly, in great blessing. His gift, however, did not consist in gathering, but rather in founding and organizing. The congregation, then numbering some 50 voting members, grew hardly noticeably outwardly in the three years of his ministry there, but all the more inwardly in the knowledge of the truth. It was only through Pastor Keyl that the congregation became familiar with Luther's writings and learned to understand and appreciate them. One of Luther's postillas was in almost every home. Keyl was also particularly diligent in promoting the catechism in his sermons, catechizations and private pastoral care. He also organized the congregation in the best possible way as far as the order of the service and the rules were concerned. Therefore, when I took up my ministry in Milwaukee in 1850, I was left with a well-organized and well-supported congregation of Keyl, whose greatest treasure was pure doctrine, and in which I could be sure of victory in any disputes that arose in matters of doctrine and life, if I could only prove that such and such was the case in the Word of God, in the symbols and in Luther. When I took leave of dear Professor Walther on my way to Milwaukee, he said: 'Go on, take care of this church without expecting it to grow. Your sole task will be to care for it. But God's advice was different. Already in the first months of my existence, the church began to grow in members and has continued to increase ever since. But this congregation would never have become what it became by God's grace in the great growth that followed if Pastor Keyl had not laid such a foundation and left me such a well-prepared trunk."
35 years have now passed since Keyl came to Milwaukee, and during this time great changes have taken place there. Milwaukee itself has since become a big city, and the church conditions there have taken on a different shape. At that time the Trinity congregation had only a poor, wooden church building, which, however, was considerably enlarged in Pastor Lochner's time; but now it has a large, splendid brick church, which is an ornament to the city, but even more an ornament to the Lutherans of Milwaukee. The congregation currently has 400 members with voting rights. It also has 4 large sister congregations, some of which are its daughters and are members of the Missouri Synod. If we now add to this the fact that the Wisconsin Synod, which is connected with the Synodical Conference, also has just as many and just as large congregations in Milwaukee, we must admit that this city has become a stronghold of true Lutheranism. And if we now claim a small part of this blessing for our blessed Keyl and add it to his account, we will not be called to account: What are you doing? but it will have to be admitted that we are right to do so. But to the Lord and Head of the Church, Christ, alone be the glory!
Keyl's effectiveness in Milwaukee was not of long duration. On December 7, 1849, he received an appointment from the Evangelical Lutheran St. Paul's congregation in Baltimore, Maryland, which had become vacant due to the removal of its pastor Wyneken to St. Louis. In this matter, Pastor Keyl and his congregation in Milwaukee turned to the then ministry in St. Louis for an expert opinion, which they received. It read as follows: "Since Pastor Wyneken and his congregation expressly desire Pastor Keyl as their successor, so that he may establish the Baltimore congregation in doctrine and constitution, as he had succeeded in doing in Milwaukee; and since the sphere of activity in Baltimore is larger than in Milwaukee, the latter congregation should be persuaded to let its pastor leave." As difficult as it was for the congregation in Milwaukee to dismiss their beloved pastor, they finally gave their consent on the condition that he would not be allowed to leave until a successor had been elected and would soon arrive.
As a result, Keyl's move to Baltimore was delayed until the middle of the following year, as the pastor elected to succeed him, Mr. F. Lochner, was unable to decide to accept the appointment he had received for a long time, nor could he obtain the consent of his congregation. It was not until the 4th Sunday after Trinity, June 23, 1850, that Keyl was able to preach his farewell sermon in Milwaukee. He spoke on 1 Cor. 1:4-9 and his voice was often choked with tears. On June 27, deeply moved, he took his leave of Milwaukee. An old Christian comforted him and spoke hopeful words with regard to his new sphere of activity - Baltimore.