# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1855 06 19_S171
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

171

to him the ambiguity that is perhaps in his manner of speaking, or that one suspects under it: the other defends it, for contentiousness, together with the conceit that begets it, lies very deep in our corrupt nature, and then the war of words breaks out. Parties form, the arsenal of hell opens, envy, strife, slander, evil suspicion, hatred and bitterness and whatever else of shameful passions Satan finds in the heart are brought forth as weapons, and used with great zeal, to work misery, wretchedness and death. And where is the end? First schism, then heresy. For before one is aware, the devil pushes the contenders onto the field of the lie. From a strife over a word it becomes a strife over the doctrine. Rather than let go of an expression once used as false or suspicious, one prefers to take the false doctrine along with it, and to defend it, which was imputed by the opponent to an expression perhaps innocent in itself or at least not used in an evil sense, in order to show the danger of its use; and here also adherents are found, for to what error and what lie does not the great multitude fall more readily than to the truth? then the Foe exults. He has succeeded in what he wanted. The brethren once so closely united stand against each other as enemies. The Church, the poor torn and bleeding Church, would howl and cry out over the wounds which are dealt her by her own children, born with pain, who do not care that it is their own mother in whose bowels their murderous hands are rooting. —

This, then, is the first thing to which we also must give heed, if we would remain together in concord. Let none among us, especially among those whom the Lord has set as shepherds and watchmen in his flock, let himself be led under any pretext to depart from the manner of speech established by the Church, customary, and generally acknowledged, as we find it in our Confessions, and in the writings of acknowledged orthodox Fathers. Rather let us direct our diligence and zeal to studying them ever more diligently, to raising the rich treasures of their deep knowledge, and to putting ourselves ever more in the position to set before our congregations the wholesome and abundant heavenly food in the clean, neat and goodly dishes and cups of their profound and expressive language. So shall we not only happily avoid that which is a chief cause of divisions, but also with God's help bring ourselves and our congregations to such a ripe, full, sound, well-established and well-grounded knowledge, which fears not the devil himself, much less the sons of Anak of the present time, but victoriously combats them and strikes them to the ground, to the profit and benefit of those who let themselves be intimidated by them and kept from the joyful grasping of the truth. Here, to be sure, besides study, we must also vigorously trample under foot the conceit which, once for all, cannot refrain from stepping out of the common way, and from contriving something singular, in which it pleases itself, and which also in this point would gladly spread its peacock's tail and have it admired. Of human good opinion and plausible pretext there is no lack. It thinks by the new expression to hit the matter still more rightly, to make the truth still more palatable and impressive to Christian people, and to uncover new depths, and thereby to bring the full content and wealth better to light.

It is of importance especially now, when under the deafening, though hollow cry of scientific learning, often alas under the Lutheran name also, the whole swarm of the old heresies, long since exposed and condemned by the Church, advances against her in a many-colored, glittering, pompous and dazzling array of new, lofty, wonderfully splendid but Christian-sounding phrases, haughtily and impudently thrusting aside the old gray Fathers. Then one would like to throw a little mantle over the dear Savior also, with his spittle, and welts and wounds and crown of thorns and cross, which at least somewhat hides his shame, and to present the Holy Spirit, the preacher of the simple and the childlike, the comforter of the afflicted and despised, as one who also could well look into the depths of modern science, and speak its language. One feels, in such genteel company, in one's old, though very dear-grown attire, all too threadbare and ragged. One thinks one must only strip off the old expressions and phrases, sought by the Fathers under prayer and sighing and in great fear of God's Word, and found in the armories of the Holy Spirit, in order to meet the enemy on his own ground, to combat him, perhaps even to win him; if one stays with the old manner, one will not even be looked at and noticed by the great lofty spirits, much less listened to, and whatever more of pretexts there are to spare the old Adam the mortification and to let him also have a little honor and standing.

Now it is indeed desirable, if not exactly absolutely necessary, that suitable men, equipped with the needful gifts, make themselves acquainted also with this field; were it only to reconnoitre, as it were, and to report to the Church what actually lies hidden under this strange show. But, beloved brethren in Christ Jesus, let us well consider in this that the cross of Christ is all too easily put to shame, and the Holy Spirit most wretchedly reviled, when one puts human tinsel upon the eternal divine truth, and presumes to grasp its bottomless ocean depths with the hollow hand of human scientific learning. The haughty spirits who will not come down to hear and to speak the language of the Holy Spirit and of the Church are not won by this, if one places oneself on a level with them; else the Holy Spirit would well have been able to do so before this time. They must first become simple and childlike, yea fools in this world, if they will otherwise be saved. And if One thing must be, it is better that all lofty spirits dash themselves and be shattered, than that divisions break into the Church, or even the least in the kingdom of heaven be offended. May the Lord help us especially in this time, amid the manifold and heavy temptations to the contrary, that in right simplicity of heart we obey the admonition of the holy Apostle, that we all speak the same thing.

But many might yet object: is not the spirit thereby forced into shameful fetters, every lovely unfolding of the manifold gifts which God has given to his Church for edification and adornment violently hindered, every progress checked, and a uniformity brought into the Church which makes her like a desert and a wilderness!

I could simply appeal to the fact that it is an Apostle out of whose mouth, in the name of Jesus Christ, this exhortation comes to us. I could ask where among the prophets and apostles, in the Church of the Old Testament, in the apostolic congregations, such effects were to be perceived. But I will point to our own Lutheran Church. Has she complied with the exhortation of the Apostle? Certainly! yea with great fidelity and conscientiousness. And where is there more free movement? where a grander development of doctrine, as well in its depth as in its extent? where is there a greater variety of gifts, where a fresher, freer, more graceful, more many-sided unfolding of them, according to the particular character of the individual gifts, in such manifold beauty and power? Is she not, to the eye of the beholder, fair as Tirzah, comely as Jerusalem, terrible as an army with banners? Are not her breasts better than wine? And the smell of her ointments than all spices? Her lips drop as the honeycomb, honey and milk are under her tongue, and the smell of her garments is like the smell of Lebanon. Her plants are an orchard of pomegranates, with pleasant fruits, camphire with spikenard, spikenard and saffron, calamus and cinnamon, with all trees of frankincense, myrrh and aloes, with all the chief spices, a fountain of grace, a well of living waters, and streams from Lebanon, a garden whose spices flow out always with the sweetest fragrance, whether the north or the south wind blow through it.

Well then, beloved, if the Lord, according to his great undeserved grace, has led us more or less out of great errors, mostly through hard struggles, back to the faith and the treasures of faith of the Fathers, and has brought us together in concord upon this ground, so may he also now help each one among us to abide in the speech of the Fathers, for the sake of the lovely and blessed concord alone, that we may with them, and among and with one another, all speak the same thing, that discord, as the most dangerous enemy, may not break into the garden enclosed and safely guarded by our concord, and destroy the beauty of its spices and fruits, wherein it otherwise, through the concordant