# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juni 1855_S171
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

How Truly Lutheran Congregations Are Founded, etc. 171

virtues and good works, which are done precisely for Christ’s sake toward all kinds of fellow Christians and fellow sinners, especially by showing itself alive in brotherly and universal love; for unfortunately, even today, when the good Lutheran confession has, as it were, once again come to honor and esteem, there are not a few pseudo-Lutherans who drape its signboard over an unbroken, proud heart and wish to be regarded as outstanding confessors, while in fact they deny the confession by their laxity in good works on the one hand, and by their pride, contentiousness, idle chatter, etc., on the other.

And likewise, the Lutheran doctrine of good works is wholly incompatible with that pietism which is found not infrequently today precisely among confessionalist Lutherans, and which is anything but a sound, evangelical, practical godliness and a fruit of justifying faith and of the confession living in the heart. Rather, the situation with these people, who imagine themselves to be the true Lutheran heroes, indeed martyrs, in opposition to the state-church Union, is that their pietism, like their confessionalism, is nothing but sheer works-righteousness—in sum, that despite all their adherence to this or that Lutheran form and formality in confession, worship, and conduct, they either never possessed the Lutheran, that is, evangelical spirit, or have lost it again; that is, they either never truly became poor sinners in Adam and righteous in Christ, or are now in the process of falling away from this.—

But just as the Lutheran manner of preaching treats the doctrine of good works only in connection with that of justifying faith, so it does likewise with the doctrine of the Christian cross, which is hardly treated anywhere more comfortingly, edifyingly, richly, and with greater attention to the most varied outward circumstances and conditions, as well as inward states of the soul and dispositions of mind, than in Lutheran preaching and doctrine. This is also clearly demonstrated by the many sermons, meditations, and hymns on the cross and consolation that have been committed to writing; here the Lutheran, that is, evangelical spirit pours itself forth abundantly in broad and deep streams, healthfully refreshing and fructifying all souls that, from the heat of outward tribulation or inward temptations, begin to be parched and to thirst for fresh water like hunted deer.

It is especially characteristic of the Lutheran manner of preaching to channel, as it were, the rich springs of consolation in the divine Word to thirsty and languishing souls, in order thereby powerfully to revive and refresh their faith and hope, and to show them how it is grace and honor to suffer and die with Christ for a little while, so as one day to live and reign with Him eternally; and how all the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that shall also be revealed in them, provided that beneath the cross of body or soul, of home or office, they become neither soft nor hard, but fight the good fight