# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1850 06 25_S171
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

171

rather founded Evangelical Lutheran congregations, they cry: Keep thine own mission! Or should the Episcopalians, the Methodists, the Presbyterians and in general the so active Reformed churches do for thee what thou shouldst do? As the Anabaptists cannot do the work of missions for the Reformed church, so no other church can do mission work for the Evangelical Lutheran Church: my faith no one of a different faith can proclaim; the English Reformed church will never found Evangelical Lutheran congregations among the heathen.

Not to jealous zeal against other missions will ye, dear fellow-believers, rise up, but to zeal for taking part in the labor in the great field of work. Among the emigrants sunk in the forests of America, among the savages who dwell there, in the East Indies, in New Holland and other places, the Evangelical Lutheran mission has begun and has pitched its wandering tent. If God will give further grace thereto, and ye will turn your hearts also to this work of faith, then from new congregations, as from sprouting branches, a blessing will flow back again upon the old stem, upon the Church. The consciousness of the Church will be strengthened, a new deep heeding of the "Word" on the part of the worldly-minded members will be the fruit; the congregation will learn that its labor is not in vain in the Lord.

The goal of the Church is that the "free congregation" in faith be made active, as soon as individual congregations arise in faith to activity. As the Church of God is the universal association for all good, founded by God, under Christ, her invisible Head, so should every single congregation also be a "free association" for all that is well-pleasing to God under her earthly leaders. If these are no wolves or hirelings, if they stand in living faith of the Church of God, and have watchful eyes to recognize the sick members, then they will also call upon other members of the congregation who have the gift to tend the bodily and spiritually sick; these will go joyfully to the work at their beck. The congregation, however, with its shepherd, will not cease to give aid with counsel and deed, with prayer and gift. Through the mercy of God, which it experiences, it will let itself be drawn to become merciful brothers and sisters, and with patience in good works seek after eternal life. The drops of time and strength are gathered into one; the congregation with its shepherd becomes a sacrificing priestly people. So then the Evangelical Lutheran Church too, the congregation, and no longer merely an individual, or individuals, can say to those who are without:

"Come and see!"

But son of man, what seest thou? Whithersoever thine eyes turn, thou seest, if thou lookest about with natural eyes, only reproach upon the Evangelical Lutheran Church. And yet one must cry to her in the name of the LORD: "Hold fast what thou hast!", dear Church,

III. keep also thy reproach.

Reproach her very name already bears, because she is called not evangelical in the ambiguous, uncertain sense, but, indicating the pure doctrine, Evangelical Lutheran; the little prophets of our time cannot bear that the name and the faithful doctrinal confession of the great Wittenberg prophet of the last times set a dam or an obstacle in the way of their evaporating and God's Word falsifying nature.

Reproach her Catechism bears. In how many a school and confirmation instruction are Luther's unsurpassable explanations of the Ten Commandments, of the Apostolic Creed, of the Lord's Prayer, of Baptism and the Lord's Supper no longer assigned to be learned, while the most unbiblical and most wretched is pushed into their place.

Reproach her confession bears. Away with the Augsburg Confession! away with all confessions!.... Well, if only your confessions of lies were away; but why should that be taken from the Church? Perhaps because ye say: "We want nothing but the Gospel"? But can there be a true Gospel without the triune God, Father, Son and Spirit, without the doctrine of natural corruption, without Christ, the Son of God, without justification by grace through faith in Jesus Christ, without a real partaking of the real, true body and blood of Christ, as of the second Adam? That and nothing else is precisely the Augsburg Confession.

And because ye will not have this biblical Gospel, therefore the confession of the Evangelical Lutheran Church is with you in reproach! Has not the faithful Bible-true faith in many places become as rare as it is reproachful an appearance? Even many of the "evangelical" pastors who are turning again toward Holy Scripture are too indifferent to approve that holy earnestness of confession, and, with all their talk of love, yet too intolerant to tolerate it.

The Evangelical Lutheran Church urges a progressive experience and living-out of the Chief Parts, that is, of the chief matters, of the Small Catechism.

Its progress requires that in the Ten Commandments we come ever deeper to the knowledge of the holy will of God and of our sin; that in the Apostolic Creed we become ever richer in peace, joy, righteousness; that we learn to pray the prayer of the LORD, the Our Father, with a deeply reconciled and satisfied heart.

Its progress demands that we learn to esteem the grace of Baptism ever more as the highest good, which surpasses all the pleasure and riches of the world; that in the Lord's Supper, during our pilgrimage through the foreign land, we progressively have the blessed certainty that we are flesh of His flesh, bone of His bones; that He abide in us and we in Him, and bring forth much fruit in this communion of life. This Evangelical Lutheran progress, this progress on the path of little children, which the LORD commended so highly to His disciples; this truly biblical and divine progress is in reproach, who will deny it? Let it remain so: "for forward, not backward," is the watchword of the Church of God.

Yes, in reproach is also Evangelical Lutheran love. For she may know no other goal than to love God above all, — and therefore also His Word above all, that is, to prefer it, and to love the neighbor as himself. What she has and enjoys she will, constrained by the love of Christ, also commend to others and let them share.

The manifestation also which proceeds from her inmost being is in reproach; antiquated, it is said, is the confession of sins at the opening of divine service; antiquated the speaking of absolution over the penitent publican in the temple; antiquated Baptism as the sacrament of regeneration by water and the Spirit (John 3, 5.); antiquated Confession, and indeed not only the private opening of the heart and counsel which tends souls, but even the general Confession, this last fence about the mount of God, this last motherly care of the Church to warn her members against unworthy partaking of the Lord's Supper; antiquated the Sacrament of the body and blood of Christ; antiquated the body, in which dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead, and which alone can give back and secure eternal beauty and youth to the perishing human form.

Despised are the confessing children of the Church; despised the number of those who step out of the general world-church under the banner of the confession; despised her Galilean garb, for not many rich, not many mighty and high bear willingly the reproach of the Church.

The outward life of her children also stands in contempt (their inward life is hid with Christ in God); they are suspected as rough, loveless, yea, even decried as hypocrites. So let there sound the more urgently in their temples, houses and families the exhortation (1 Peter 3, 16. 17.): "Having a good conscience, that, whereas they speak evil of you, as of evildoers, they may be ashamed."

And how stands it with her mission? Since she preaches all the words of God — because she honors all alike and makes no improper and harmful distinction, because she simply every natural