# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1850 02 05_S90
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

90

false, one must not hear merely those who are of one opinion, but if one hears preachers of different persuasions, one can best find out the truth.

Gotth. And these different preachers and sects with their different persuasions will in the end make you so confused that you will lose your faith altogether, unless God preserves you out of special mercy.

Gebh. Ah God! who can be rescued and saved in this woeful, rent time; one no longer knows at all what to hold to.

Gotth. To nothing but the eternal, firm, invincible Word of God. That is the bright star and the clear light that lets us not go astray, that is the unfailing and unchangeable rule, by which we can test and judge everything.

Gebh. But do not the sects also have this rule; do they not also claim to believe and to live according to this rule? and yet they believe differently than we; that brings one at times into doubt whether one can decide with certainty in all cases which is the right doctrine of the divine Word.

Gotth. This doubt is refuted by the example of the noble Bereans (Acts 17:11); they took the Holy Scriptures as their rule and tested by it the doctrine of the Apostle Paul. If it succeeded with these in coming thereby to an unshakable certainty of faith, why should it not succeed with every honest Christian? If only one would do as they did, earnestly ask God for the enlightenment of His Holy Spirit, repentantly forsake one's sins, and order one's life according to God's Word, it would not take long to come to a firm and sure conviction of the saving truth. But that is what is lacking in most; they indeed hear a sermon now and then, receive some impressions, praise it; but it goes no further. Thus a firm ground of faith is never laid in the heart; it lets itself be tossed to and fro with every wind of doctrine and depends wholly on momentary impressions. It may well happen that a nerve-shaking Methodist sermon makes a stronger impression upon such an uncertain heart than a sermon of sound Lutheran faith, and the next thought is whether one should not rather go to the Methodists. If it is thus with you too, I advise you to become quite sober for once, and to ground your heart upon the unadulterated doctrine of the divine Word, as you find it quite simple, clear, and thorough in our incomparable Augsburg Confession and in Luther's Catechism. Study that and turn it into sap and blood, and you will soon be ashamed of your running to and fro, and will desire no other food than the wholesome fare which our Church sets before you.

Gebh. Well, the Augsburg Confession and Luther's Catechism are indeed the fundamental confession of our faith; I have never doubted that the doctrine contained therein is the right, pure doctrine of the divine Word.

Gotth. And yet you can still hesitate to join a church that has this fundamental confession? It almost seems as though you were in contradiction with yourself.

Gebh. I do not know why.

Gotth. You profess yourself, as you have now declared, to the doctrine and to the faith of our Church, but this confession you deny again by your deed, in that you will not join the Church whose faith you profess.

Gebh. What has the confession of faith to do with joining the Church?

Gotth. You cannot otherwise confess your faith publicly than by joining as a member the Church whose faith you confess. Who else is to know what faith you have, if you join no church? Then the well-founded suspicion falls upon you that you believe nothing. Even the duty of confession, commanded in God's Word, makes joining the Church for you an unavoidable duty of conscience.

Gebh. In that point I grant you are right, but still I do not see why I must by all means enter into outward, membership fellowship with a congregation. To be a member of the body of Christ, nothing is needed but living faith in Him. If the outward church association were to do it, then the hypocrites and lip-Christians also would have to be members of the body of Christ and of His holy Church, for there are enough of those in every outward church association.

Gotth. You are perfectly right that only faith makes us a living member of the spiritual body of Christ; but tell me, does the body of Christ have only one member or many? and do these members stand outside all connection with one another?

Gebh. A body that has not many members is no body, and where between the members there is no longer any fellowship and living cooperation, it is a dead body.

Gotth. Now see, now I catch you in your own words. You must confess that in a living body there can be no member that does not have dealings and work together with the others; and yet you assert that one can be a member of the spiritual body of Christ without standing in fellowship with the other members!

Gebh. Can I not also stand in fellowship of faith with such members of the body of Christ as I do not know at all? yes, with all true Christians, as many of them as dwell far and wide upon the whole earth?

Gotth. Certainly. But how then do you show the fellowship of faith toward the Christians whom you do know? with whom you live together in one place, and with whom you hear God's Word in one church?

Gebh. Toward these I show it precisely by hearing God's Word together with them, going to the Sacrament, praying, and serving each one with the gifts which God has given me; as the Apostle Paul says: "So we, being many, are one body in Christ, and every one members one of another. Having then gifts differing according to the grace that is given to us." Rom. 12:5, 6.

Gotth. Excellent! You know it right well, and yet will not make the application of it. Now consider, where would preaching and Sacrament remain if Christians did not wish to come together into an orderly congregation and set up the preaching office among themselves? For God does not send the preachers directly down from heaven, but calls them through men. One alone cannot set up the preaching office, but for that several Christians belong, who together according to God's order call and maintain a preacher; and where thereafter a sinner is converted to Christ through the preaching, a blessing from it falls to them also. But as far as you are concerned, if you think it is enough that you are through faith a member of the body of Christ, and need not join any congregation outwardly, the Church might in the meantime decay, public preaching fall wholly asleep, and no lost sinner any more attain to the enjoyment of salvation. All this dreadful damage would lie also upon your conscience; and yet you would still be merry and secure and comfort yourself that you are a living member of the body of Christ?

God grant it! but I fear, I fear —. Consider what St. Paul says to the Ephesians 4:15: "Let us be upright in love, and grow up in all things into Him who is the head, even Christ; from whom the whole body, joined together and each member hanging upon another, through all the joints; whereby one renders service to another according to the work of each member in its measure; and maketh the body increase unto its own edifying; and all this in love."

Gebh. You burden the conscience too much. I have never yet thought so far that I thereby destroy the Church and hinder others from attaining salvation, if I keep to myself alone without joining a congregation.

Gotth. Behind this very "keeping to oneself" lies the hideous selfishness of looking more to one's own than to that which is one's neighbor's. Would to God your conscience were rightly burdened; for it is truly no small sin. Only imagine what would become of it if everyone thought as you do; whether then the public proclamation of the Word would not necessarily cease altogether, and with it faith also be wholly extinguished. We see it, alas, in experience. How many great settlements of German people there are here and there in the