# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1852 09 28_S17
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Der Lutheraner.

"God's Word and Luther's doctrine shall pass away nevermore." (Rev. John, ch. 14, v. 6, 7.)

Published by the German Ev. Luth. Synod of Missouri, Ohio and other States.

Edited by C. F. W. Walther.

Volume 9.  St. Louis, Mo., September 28, 1852.  No. 3.

Terms: Der Lutheraner appears once every two weeks at the yearly subscription price of One Dollar for subscribers living at a distance, 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 addressed 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.

Preface of the Editor

to the Ninth Volume of the "Lutheraner."

(Continuation and Conclusion.)

Had Pastor Grabau accepted the proposal of our Synod for a friendly oral discussion of the doctrinal differences pending between the latter and himself, we do not doubt that agreement would at last have been reached. Even if a complete concord had not been brought about immediately after the first conversation, yet the foundation for it would surely, by God's grace, have been laid. The slightest signs of yielding on the part of Pastor Grabau and his adherents would have moved us to give up our official opposition to them. Finally, then, it would certainly have come (given an honest will on both sides to hold fast nothing of our own, but only the jewel of the pure doctrine of our Church) to full consent in doctrine; and then it would have been an easy matter to undo the congregational divisions that arose during the strife, and to order everything as it ought to be ordered where doctrine is harmonious according to God's Word. Never would we have taken up the cause of such separated persons, if they, perhaps from personal aversion, from implacability and obstinate distrust, had been unwilling to consent to a reunion. God, who looks into the heart, is our witness how sincerely and heartily we have longed for agreement, and that no sacrifice would have been too great for us which we ought to have made, and with a good conscience could have made, for the furtherance of such unity, and which we would not gladly have made.

But now that all our attempts to bring about unity in the truth by peaceful means have failed, failed through the sensitiveness and harshness of Pastor Grabau, who cannot for a single moment look away from the fact that we have received persons expelled by him: what shall and can we now do?*)

*) We know of no example from the history of the Church in which orthodox teachers refused to confer orally with their adversaries when these desired it, or in which they laid down the condition that the adversaries must first confess their wrong and first do penance! But examples of the opposite are found in abundance. Thus Luther, as is well known, in the year 1529 agreed to a friendly conversation about the differences that had arisen even with a Zwingli, who for a series of years had slandered Luther and Luther's pure doctrine in the most abominable manner and had carried on a horrid rascality. But Luther, the humble Luther, could readily forget what he had been insulted with; God's honor and the welfare of the Church stood highest with him. That overcame the distrust which he personally had of the measure of a colloquy.

Shall we, perhaps, purchase the peace of the Church by throwing ourselves at his feet (as Pastor Grabau demands of us)? Shall we perhaps confess: We have sinned in receiving people whom he expelled, he, a man who has condemned our doctrine and still condemns it, and whose own doctrine we recognize as false, un-Lutheran, unscriptural, and those people who with us have perceived the false doctrine of this man and confess the doctrine publicly maintained by us? Would not such penance, if we did it for the sake of peace, be a horrid and abominable denial of the known truth? Would that not, therefore, be for us a repentance unto damnation, an ungodly humility? And what fruit could we therefore expect for the Church from such penance? — No! — however Pastor Grabau may twist and turn to deceive his public — every impartial person of sound understanding sees: this we cannot do; everyone sees: first the controversy over the doctrine must be fought out, before a retraction on our part regarding the reception of the separated can reasonably be so much as thought of, since we received these separated persons on account of the false doctrine (of Pastor Grabau); so long, therefore, as Pastor Grabau has not proved that he is pure in doctrine, and that the charge of false doctrine made by us against him is unfounded, while that made by him against us is well founded; so long, then, as Pastor Grabau does not