# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1855 06 19_S173
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

173

let go? Because we cannot let go of the one truth which we have come to know in fellowship with all the saints, which we believe and confess, as it is set forth and testified to the whole world in the Confessions of the Lutheran Church, contrary to all the lusts of Satan, clearly, plainly and powerfully, on the ground of Holy Scripture. And why then do we hold so fast to our Confession, that we would rather endure the hatred of the world, and, what is harder to bear, of the rest of Christendom also, yea, by God's gracious assistance, persecution and death, than give up so much as a tittle of it? Because we have not appropriated the truth laid down therein at our leisure and ease, as other natural or historical truths, but because the Holy Ghost, under heavy distresses of conscience, revealed it to us as our only salvation, and begot faith itself by the Word in a broken heart and an anguished spirit. We sit with our conscience fast in the Word, and therefore in the Confession of the Church. We have learned, as poor, lost and condemned men, to believe in Jesus Christ our Lord and Saviour. The peace of conscience, the peace of our soul, the hope of eternal blessedness, our being and life hangs upon this truth. With it we should have to give up our salvation, ourselves, for time and eternity. And therefore we also cannot let go even the smallest-seeming piece of it, because the whole series of the several articles of faith is for us a chain, which binds not only our understanding to the truth, but our conscience and life. The loosening of a single link of it would break this chain asunder, and we should have to plunge down again, torn loose from Christ, into the abyss of anguish, of despair and of eternal death.

Therefore we hold more firmly to our Confession than to our bodily life, because we have recognized, grasped and experienced every single piece of it as a bulwark with which God has surrounded our distressed conscience on all sides against the assaults of the devil; we can give up none of it without the most shameful treachery against ourselves, against the poor world of sinners, and against Him who has purchased it and us with His own blood. — So long, then, as in daily repentance before the mirror of the divine holiness in His law we take ever deeper looks into the abyss of the wickedness of our heart, so long will the need for certainty of salvation in the knowledge of Christ grow ever more burning, as will our longing to lay hold of Him ever more firmly in true living faith, to cleanse our heart in His blood and to find rest for our souls. Though our station, our gifts and knowledge may be ever so different, at the feet of our Lord Jesus Christ we shall all together, as poor sinners, hold fast to the simple truth of the Catechism as our only true comfort, which, though it unfolds and spreads itself ever more richly before our understanding and conscience, yet remains at bottom always the same. In the daily practice of repentance the conceit and the desire to seek out and bring forth something new pass away from a man; he has enough to do, against the crafty and raging assaults of the devil, to hold fast the old truth, once divinely recognized and grasped as comforting and wholesome, to grasp it more deeply, to turn it to richer account, to establish it more firmly and to defend it. Let us put into practice, faithfully and with great earnestness, what we have learned and teach again from our Small Catechism concerning the meaning of holy Baptism, and then not only the inner life in us, but also the right concord among us will be promoted. And though everyone may then point at us with fingers, as true Ishmaelites whose hand is against every man, and every man's hand against us, in hearty love toward one another we shall find abundant compensation, and in the certainty that we are of one mind after Christ, abundant comfort. And God the Lord will also in His own time make it manifest that we are, like Isaac, children of the promise, born and brought up to our heavenly Father of the true mother, the Jerusalem which is above.

Now, my beloved brethren, we cannot here, for the maintenance of concord, erect a great beautiful altar of stone, like the children of Reuben and Gad. It would also help us nothing, as it helped them nothing, when true faith, and with it true love, had died out in Israel. Neither do we need it; we have already set up an altar in our heart through faith. It is the cross, whereon lies the Lamb of God that beareth the sin of the world, in His sacrificial blood, and consuming itself in the glow of His divine love for poor sinners. To this altar let each one hold, and no devil shall separate us, but we shall hold fast together in Christ Jesus, in one mind, of one opinion and of one speech. And the God of peace will build us up and set us for a blessing, and we will praise Him for ever and ever. Amen.

Prospectus for the Publication

of a

"truly evangelical Exposition of the Gospels for the Sundays and Festivals of the Church Year,

translated and excerpted from the

Gospel Harmony of the Lutheran theologians M. Chemnitz, Polyc. Leyser and Johann Gerhard,

published

by the monthly Pastors' Conference at Fort Wayne, Ind." *)

Penetrated by the high worth and the importance, never sufficiently to be laid to heart, of the public preaching of the Gospel, whereby the LORD plants His Church on earth and extends, nourishes, governs and preserves it, the monthly pastors' conference at Fort Wayne, Ind., has earnestly taken it to heart to become clear about the most serviceable manner of preparing for the composing of sermons. When it had to recognize that, next to the indispensable prayer for the enlightenment of the Holy Ghost, there is needed for this above all a thorough study of the text, a deeper penetration into the understanding of the same, in short a faithful apprehending and perceiving of what the Spirit speaks to us in the Word: it naturally looked about for reliable, capable guides for this most important work. That in this it did not direct its attention first to the pertinent products of the more recent and most recent Lutheran theology, no one will blame who is with us of the conviction that we are still far from living and moving in the Scripture so, from being at home on all sides in the wholesome doctrine so, from breathing, as it were, in a sound churchly consciousness so, as was the case with the dear fathers of our beloved Lutheran Church. Now we can indeed never sufficiently thank the LORD of the Church for the great treasure of excellent, instructive, truly edifying Postils and books of sermons which He gave us in the good old time, and with which He endowed the authors of them, for such godly work, with a special unction of the Holy Ghost. Nevertheless, on careful consideration of the goal we had in view, we had to confess that the otherwise so commendable use of good old Postils does not by any means suffice for the attainment of our purpose, indeed by the nature of the case cannot well suffice. Books of sermons, even were they the unsurpassed Postils of the dear man of God, Luther, give, after all, sermons already finished, which as a rule pursue a definite purpose, bring out this or that doctrine especially, or, as Luther's sermons in particular do, revolve chiefly about the main thought that is laid down in the text. In short, in our faithful fathers they are indeed the finished results of what we wanted, but show the way to them not at all or only seldom, and therefore leave us at a loss in many places.

So our eyes turned to a book once, and with full right, highly renowned in the Lutheran Church, but in our days, alas, to great injury, widely forgotten and unknown, to the excellent Gospel Harmony, written in Latin, by Chemnitz, Polyc. Leyser and Joh. Gerhard. And behold, with these dear authorities we found in fullest measure what we sought and wanted: a deep, comprehensive understanding of the Scripture, yea a living and moving in it, a full, living permeation with the dear Confession of the Church which teaches and testifies through them, a clear, thorough presentation of the saving truths, sharp rejection and refutation of what is false and erroneous, and everywhere the richest application to life, a laying hold of the whole man according to understanding, mind and heart, free from one-sided abstract scholarliness

*) We communicate this Prospectus (preliminary announcement), which appeared in the March number of "Lehre und Wehre," in the "Lutheraner" also, since, as we conclude from the small number of subscriptions received so far, this so important undertaking seems not to have come to the knowledge of many, even of those who read the "Lutheraner." We scarcely believe we may assume that a reader of the "Lutheraner," especially among the pastors, who has learned of that work should not be moved to subscribe for it. Ed. of the L.