# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1852 03 16_S114
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

114

come up. While our American brethren believed they must emphasize the rights of the congregations on the basis of the spiritual priesthood of all Christians, it seemed to us as though it were most needful, not merely for us in old Germany, but also for the congregations across the sea, to bring out quite distinctly, on the basis of the doctrine of the Office, the boundaries between Office and congregation. Congregations free from the State, or become free, seemed to us unable to arrive at any peaceful and prosperous condition before those boundaries were recognized and acknowledged. Now while we, our American brethren and we, each party followed its own conviction, it could not be otherwise than that here and there we affected one another unpleasantly. Indeed, the importance of the matter at times came forward so strongly that the apprehension that under these circumstances we might no longer be able to work together hereafter began to take possession of our hearts. Many an essay in these pages, as our readers know, betrays this apprehension not indistinctly. Yet there was on both sides so much love present that our concern for unity in truth became truly tormenting to us.

As it went with us on this side, so it went also with our brethren across the sea. Through the synodical proceedings of the year 1850 the brethren over there had become only the more certain of their conviction, and their conviction wrestled with their love for us all the more painfully, as they believed us to be on a wrong path, and indeed on a Romanizing one. They hoped for much toward the healing of the damage from a visit which one of us would make to them over there, and for that reason caused an invitation to that effect to go forth to the Synod of Missouri, to which we, however, being ourselves in heavy struggles with our conditions at home, could give no response. — Upon our unfortunately quite necessarily declining answer, the Synod of Missouri, Ohio, etc., in a love that shames us, resolved to send two messengers of peace across the sea, who were to lay before the various Lutheran churches their convictions concerning the holy Office and also to grant us the benefit of personal negotiation. In truth, a holy and noble mind, worthy of the Lutheran Church, a proof that the right God is in Zion. Where, when differences are present, men do not flee from one another but hasten to one another, resisting Satan, who stirs up strife and would make the stirred-up strife into a mighty, dividing fire, by clasping the hands of brotherhood the more firmly in one another, — where men do not let rivers, forests and prairies, nor the ocean hinder them in such a work; there JESUS speaks blessing and peace, He establishes peace in the heart even before understanding and knowledge have become of one accord, — and with this almost the best has already happened. To the mind of love, to the desire of peace, the Spirit comes to meet, who leads into all truth. — With such a mind there is no need of haste or hurry in coming to agreement in formulas and propositions. Hand in hand one goes into the school of the Holy Spirit, at whose gate for such pupils the inscription stands: "The longer, the dearer; the longer, the more united and faithful!"

Under the prayers and blessings of the Synod of Missouri, Ohio, etc., assembled at Milwaukie, there went then across the sea the former President, Prof. Walther of Concordia College at St. Louis, and the present President, Pastor Wyneken of St. Louis, while Prof. Dr. Sihler of Fort Wayne went to St. Louis in order, during the absence of the two named, to take their place in the government of the church. . . (In ten days the brethren Walther and Wyneken traveled from North America to England, in two more from Hull to Hamburg, where they arrived on the 12th of September. On their arrival, by a fair ordering of God, they met some departing messengers of our love, (the missionary K. Diehlmann, Pastor Deindörfer, destined for Frankenhilf, etc.) who were also conducting a goodly little band of Franconians to the colonies in Michigan. The East and West of the Lutheran Church thus greeted one another at Harburg with hearty joy, and our arriving brethren were thus able to receive, on the shore of Europe, pledges of our fidelity sent to meet them, witnesses of our vanishing misgivings.)

Letters, splendid ones, had hastened on ahead of the two Presidents, for example from our venerable friend Sihler, which, the more they entered into the doctrine of the Office, put us so much the more in a position to see that our convictions on both sides stand in genuine Lutheran kinship, and that misunderstandings had prevailed. We wrote hopes of peace, and sincerely meant assurances of love, across the sea, even before we saw our brethren face to face.

Now we have seen them, spoken with them, weighed what was spoken, and we may well say that our hopes of peace have not deceived us. In the conversations it seemed at times as if we were setting out from wholly different points, but when we had gone toward one another for a while, it turned out that we met, and that in peace. Quite different circumstances often teach us to look at, to grasp, and to present one and the same common truth from different sides, and these presentations then suffer at times from a certain one-sidedness. But when the views, conceptions, and presentations are compared with one another, and no passion, no peculiarity clouds the vision, then one arrives at the right, all-sided, ecumenical apprehension — and the voices step out of the opposition of one-sidedness into that of harmony, of unity in diversity. Surely it will go so with us also in matters of the Office. Professor Walther will have an exposition of eighteen theses printed, which were adopted at the Synod of Milwaukie; the exposition will be examined, discussed, and appraised. Neither we nor our American brethren desire to conclude *) before the matter is ripe for decision. We shall find our way, the longer the more, to the full truth, find its presentation suited to all circumstances, and the Church will rejoice at it. Have we not one and the same fundamental view of the Church; are we not one in the acknowledgment of a divine pastoral office; — and is not the practice of our American brethren, according to all that we recognized earlier and are now able to recognize still more, so thoroughly recognized by us as right and good that we gladly will and shall deliver our pupils into these and no other hands! Everything further will be found, especially as the points just named are not even the only ones in which we agree. We often met in the assertion that we are at bottom united.

In giving this testimony of unity, of peace and of love hereby publicly before our brethren on this side and on that, we permit ourselves still simply to name those points in which, for our American brethren, in our opinion, an advance toward perfection might be striven for:

1. The relation of the invisible Church to the visible, the necessity of the expression of life and formation of life of the invisible Church in the visible world;

2. The connection, willed by God, of the individual congregation with the whole Church, the presentation of the doctrine of the body and its members in the pilgrim Church;

3. The distinction between law and apostolic order, and the full appreciation of the latter for the guidance of the visible Church;

4. The right appreciation of the progress and victories of the Lutheran Church in Pietistic and other related controversies of the last century.

We believe that it lies in the power and knowledge of our brethren to give already now a satisfactory explanation also on the points named, especially as regards the first two points, on which so much depends. But we are in no haste; on the contrary, satisfied with the unity actually present, we wish that it might not be concluded too quickly, that in mutual exchange of our knowledge we may still longer let ourselves be led by the Spirit of peace, and not make the conclusion sooner than until we can say together: Now the right word has been found for the matter, which we hand down to posterity like a symbol, to which the Church of the coming time may fall in with us, as we fall in with the measure of knowledge which is expressed in our ecclesiastical, traditional symbols.

*) We have since conferred about these words with Pastor Löhe, and have had to assure him that we have indeed already concluded, in the firm conviction that the doctrine on the points in question is already decided in the Symbols of our Church.

Note of the Editor of the "Lutheraner."