# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1850 08 06_S197
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

197

be made. Truly, faith is too serious a matter for one, merely to cover Joseph's disgrace (the reproach of disunity), to practise hypocrisy with it, or even to sell the Evangelical Lutheran Church, like Joseph, to the Egyptians. It would be wretched if two church communions, in order to bring about a deceptive unity, began to bargain and haggle with one another over what each should concede to the other or lay upon the other!

4. But there is yet a fourth way in which men think to unite, and this is the one that will please the great multitude best. That would be a union in which men come together only outwardly, but at bottom do not seek at all to become one in the faith; rather each remains what he is: he who is Lutheran-minded remains Lutheran; he who is Reformed-minded remains Reformed; he who makes his own opinion in religion remains as before. In a union of this stamp they all go to the same communion table, and eat and drink, and each thinks what he pleases: the Lutheran, that he receives the Lord's body and blood; the Reformed, that he receives a sign; the one, that he is offering a sacrifice to God; the other, that he is receiving a grace from God. Each as he likes. — Does it not make you shudder at a church where all this shall be so by right? Shall I say how it strikes me? It is told that in that adulterous generation, where holy matrimony is often only a speculation, the talk sometimes goes: "Go thou thy ways, and do as seems good to thee; — I go my way; only let us take care that there is no scandal." Is that not a merry house, where by right believers and unbelievers dwell together, and where men nicely agree to approve of one another's error and truth, for the sake of dear peace? Oh, the false prophets, who cry Peace! Peace! and there is no peace. Dear brethren, this is the union that is recommended to you! It seems to be such an innocent and easy matter, when men can come together, reach out the hand of brotherhood, and yet remain what they are. — Now, supposing it were honestly meant: do you think it worth the trouble to make so great an uproar, only that everything may remain as it was? Then the safest course is surely to let the uniting alone, or, where it has been done, to go out again from such a union; for, in the second place, such a union does not keep what it promises. Thank God! or rather, God have mercy! we need not first wait for the future to see the fruits of such a union. In several lands of Germany the trial has been made, especially in Prussia, and, now that the thing has already existed thirty years, many have become so weary of it that they are dissolving the fatal bond of union again. This much is certain, that if the union were to be made there today, it would no longer come to pass. Be made wise by the harm of others! There in Prussia they united in such a fashion that the Lutherans should remain undisturbed Lutheran, and the Reformed remain Reformed; but not long after, the beast showed its hidden ear. Reformed preachers came by right into Evangelical Lutheran congregations; an ambiguous communion liturgy was introduced. The Lutherans were persecuted and have emigrated by the thousands to America and Australia. Those are the fruits of such a union! Inquire in Lower Alsace! There to this day former Lutherans come from the united Rhenish Bavaria and Baden, to receive the Holy Supper in our churches according to their faith; for these poor people have become uneasy in many of their churches on account of the new doctrine and the new ways. Many others no longer go to the Holy Supper at all.

But what if in your own churches too it should one day become strange and uncanny to you? if you mourn over new ways, new customs and usages? if you have become distrustful? What then? Or do you believe that, once the union has been brought about, matters will remain as of old with you? Foolish hope! Then laws and ordinances of the church will come, as the majority sees fit. Then the young pastors will be brought up by right in the strange new spirit. Then you will make bitter complaint; but for your sorry comfort you will receive the answer: "The old is abolished, we are now a new church!"

When a pastor now comes to you, you think: he was born and brought up in our church, he is therefore to go on building and working as has been done by the fathers in the faith; — it is only a new person, but he must always bring the old doctrine. To him you confidently entrust yourselves and your children; you think: he will offer us the same spiritual nourishment, the same comfort, the same exhortations, by which our fathers were upheld and strengthened; he will be no deceiver, no novice, no man of fashion in matters of religion.

Now think yourselves into the union: A new pastor comes into the congregation; have you then also the assurance that he is one with the faith of the Evangelical Lutheran Church? No! the united church has no Evangelical Lutheran confession and demands none; it is made up of various opposing opinions; instead of the "Yea, yea, Nay, nay," as the Lord requires, Yea and Nay hold by right! Who knows? the new pastor then thinks quite otherwise than you with your old books! Then you become distrustful. And how can the cure of souls make good progress, how can the teachings and exhortations and consolations bear fruit, where there is no confidence?

Do you know what will then happen? It will become strange to you in your own church pew; you must, for conscience' sake, withdraw, depart from the newly made mixed church, and, while you remain true to the old church, look on as others now rule and manage that which was yours!

Where then is the unity for which so many sacrifices are made? Has the division ceased? No, it has only become worse. Often people have lived long in peace and friendship, until it occurred to them to draw the bond of friendship closer, and to dwell together in one room, and to eat at one table, and to sleep in one bed. Only then did war break out among them; they perceived that they were not united from the bottom of the heart. So it will go in a union that is not one in the truth and in the faith. Instead of concord, discord will arise from it.

Tell me, dear brethren: why should you press for a union? Are you no longer at ease in the old faith? Is our old church so poor in testimony that we must build another? Is our name "Evangelical Lutheran" so dishonorable that we should be ashamed of it and take another? Should we give up the sure good that we have for the uncertain, which is so much less worth? Shall the craving for change then invade the unchangeable sanctuary?

Is it not better that we keep what we have, and take care and strive that the pastors and laity of our church learn to know it again, to believe it and rightly to "have" it? Let them cry out as they will: "The old is of no more use; one must put up a new building, that suits our enlightened age better!" Oh, the dwarflings, who wish to make something other than what the men of God, from the Augsburg Confession onward, have founded, and what has become light and strength and comfort to so many thousands.

Hold fast, brethren, to the jewel of our church; it stands upon the One foundation that is laid, which is Christ; and what has been built upon it faithful to the confession has grown up from this very foundation; what men would remove is not human addition, but the cornerstone and the essence of the cornerstone. But it will prove true what is written: The stone which the builders rejected is become the head of the corner. Whosoever (in the tearing down of the building of faith) shall fall on this stone shall be broken, but on whomsoever "He" shall fall, He will grind him to powder. (Matth. 21, 42. 44.)

One word more in conclusion. You will perhaps say: you have sought to prove not only that a union is not timely now, but that it ought never to take place; which would be against the word of Christ: "There shall be one fold and one shepherd." But he who proves too much proves nothing. To this the answer is: first, the "one fold and the one shepherd" has already come to be through the union of the Gentiles with the Jews, by means of the Evange-