# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1852 03 30_S121
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Der Lutheraner.
"God's Word and Luther's doctrine shall pass away now and nevermore." (Rev. of John, ch. 14, v. 6, 7.)
Published by the German Evangelical Lutheran Synod of Missouri, Ohio and other States.
Edited by C. F. W. Walther.
Volume 8.  St. Louis, Mo., the 30th of March 1852.  No. 16.
Terms: Der Lutheraner appears once every two weeks at the yearly subscription price of One Dollar for out-of-town subscribers, who are to pay the same in advance and bear the postage. — In St. Louis each single number is sold for 5 cents.
Only those letters which contain communications for the paper are to be sent to the Editor; all others, which contain business matters, orders, cancellations, money, etc., are to be sent hither under the address Mr. F. W. Barthel, care of C. F. W. Walther, St. Louis, Mo.

(Submitted.)
A Word for Consideration to Those Who Will Know Nothing of a True Church Unless It Be Visible.

It cannot escape any Christian who pays attention to the religious movements and questions of the present day that it is especially the doctrine of the Church about which people are seeking to gain clarity. It is not Christian speculation alone, nor the understanding striving after clearness, that has made this question a subject of discussion, but a deeply felt inner need that has its ground in the newly awakened churchly life. Thousands of honest hearts, hungering for salvation, have found their way back out of the cheerless wanderings of unbelief, have returned to faith in the Word, and with heartfelt love confess the LORD whom they had before either not known or even denied. And because with the first awakening of spiritual life there arises at the same time a longing for Christian fellowship, they joined themselves at first to those from whom they had heard the message of life. The question concerning the Church receded for the time being into the background; for the existing visible churches presented a repellent picture of corruption. The souls that had come to Christian consciousness could regard their church in no other way than as a fallen, apostate mother, who had neglected and left her children to ruin. People contented themselves with gathering together into little companies of awakened Christians, and by private edification enjoying the pasture which the public ministry denied them; they trusted in the whole, full power of the promise of Jesus Christ: "Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them;" and the need of Christian fellowship found itself not only satisfied, but also strengthened and exalted to the sweetest enjoyment. But the times have changed. The more members in the ruling church parties were awakened, and the more the life of faith strove to advance from the first sensations of grace to a higher stage of Christian knowledge, the more necessarily the old contrasts of doctrine, especially between the Lutheran and Reformed Church, had to come to the fore again. The way out which people attempted, namely to blur the contrasts by a fusion of the two churches, satisfied least of all those who, with clear knowledge of the difference, held fast the truth with conscientious fidelity. A separation took place between brethren and brethren. While the one part gathered around the confession of the Fathers, to preserve it in its purity and sincerity, and in this decided adherence to the confessional writings of the Lutheran Church obtained a uniting bond, the other brethren remained standing irresolute, and must now feel all the more painfully that a firm uniting bond is lacking to them. No wonder that the question of the Church gives vent to itself among them in the most melancholy lamentations. They see nowhere unity, but everywhere disruption. As it looks in their own interior, so it seems to them that everything is which they see elsewhere of churchly life. Nor can they withdraw themselves from the faith-weakening influence which this uncertain unchurchly position must have upon their inner life.

If we, on the other hand, have reason to rejoice that amid the confusions of faith of our time we have gained in the dear, unadulterated confession of our Lutheran Church a firm point of union; if we feel under our feet a firm churchly ground, and find our churchly need, which with so many others remains an unfulfilled longing and pining, satisfied; we must nevertheless guard against a view which obscures to us the true nature of the Church, however much it may seem to give the most fitting satisfaction to the churchly need; namely, the idea of a true visible Church, whose exclusive realization is supposed to be the fellowship of those who, on the ground of our pure Lutheran confession, have an organically ordered and articulated church polity. This idea is now widely expressed and diligently spread in many periodicals *), not an-

*) See Grabau's Informatorium. No. 1. Ed.