# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Februar 1855_S35
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

On the Doctrine of the Holy Office of the Ministry. 35

...apostle (1:6, 12; 2:2, 2) the assembled bishops, Paul included, had in a prophetic spirit foretold that great things would be entrusted to him, and therefore, promising themselves much good from him, had without doubt, at his investiture, wished him every divine blessing. The question now arises: what, after all, might be the essential thing in this rite — what called down the gift of God upon the one being consecrated? And is this a special power and grace inherent in the office as such, a promise bound solely to the office insofar as it is public? Were the laying on of hands the essential thing, Paul could not have spoken otherwise in 1 Tim. 4:14 and 1:18; the examples of Scripture, however, teach that fathers made use of the same symbolic act in blessing at their parting from their children, superiors in general at the induction into a public office, and the apostolic church in the imparting of the extraordinary gifts of the Spirit; and the latter was not bound to it, as Acts 2:1ff. and 10:44 show, and from Acts 8:15 we learn that prayer, as at the ordination of preachers and deacons (Acts 1:24; 6:6; 13:3; 14:23, etc.), had preceded it. Luke 11:13; Acts 4:31; James 5:16; 1:5 point us to the main thing, as Wucherer himself, on p. 4, does not care to deny. The apostle sets, by metonymy, the signum for the res significata, which comprehends within itself the prophesying, as well as the pronouncing of the blessing in the name of the whole community, as simultaneous outflows of the Spirit praying in those present (and absent). And how could these remain unheard and unfulfilled! The Lord accordingly does indeed, for the sake of His promise, which opens itself ever more richly to the prayer of faith, grant to the ordained servants of the Word the endowment of nature and of grace so necessary for their weighty office, and that indeed in a manifold distribution; yet He does nothing essentially different when He gives to every man what, in his calling, is good and useful to him and to others in body and soul; to the believer, whether he be preacher or layman, are ascribed alone grace, righteousness, sonship, God's inheritance, the light and assistance of the Holy Spirit, which sanctifies and transfigures the soil of nature; but where the ministry of the Gospel, whether public or not, has and brings the saving power, even though the person lack spiritual life, there such power is rooted again only in the word of truth that proceeds from the preacher's mouth, which remains God's Word whether a rascal or a saint speaks it, Matt. 23:2-3; Phil. 1:15ff. A doctrine picked up here and there from others, or gathered together and tied to the tongue, is not yet the fruit by which one recognizes an enlightened prophet; rather, what breaks forth in deed as in word out of one's own innermost constitution of soul, what a man, as a tree of a good kind whose whole nature and powers are permeated by it, puts forth — like the milk which a nursing mother offers of herself — that is what makes the effectiveness of an upright pastor so full of blessing. It