# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juni 1855_S175
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Gleanings from the Periodicals of the Old Homeland. 175

[illegible]ists have done, throw out the baby with the bathwater; that is, they must not discard, along with their opponents’ error, the truth that still remains and to which that error clings; furthermore, they must distinguish between the deceivers and the deceived, showing proper severity toward the former and Christian gentleness toward the latter; in combating error, they must also maintain the proper distinction between more and less dangerous false doctrine; apart from its connection with doctrine, they must not display particular seriousness and zeal over church ceremonies, congregational constitutions, and other matters of indifference, as though the essence of the Lutheran Church consisted in these things and as though one necessarily had to begin with them when forming new congregations. And finally, as regards the manner in which this censure of false doctrines—just in itself, and indeed willed and commanded by God—is carried out, it is of the utmost importance that an objective tone and bearing prevail, and that personal bitterness, passion, and malice remain absent. We have a noble example of this, for instance, in Luther’s polemical writings; for although in form they are often directed against individuals as bearers and representatives of false doctrine, they nevertheless maintain throughout a grandly objective bearing and are far removed from that vulgarity and venom which some later Wittenberg orthodoxists and confessionalists displayed toward the Pietists. We have another noble model of sound Lutheran polemics in a more scholarly form, for example, in the works of Joh. Gerhardt and M. Chemnitz. As with Luther, one can see in them that they are concerned solely with the honor of their God and His holy Word and with the benefit and welfare of the Church, even when they censure false doctrines with due severity.

Thus, in this first article, we have attempted to show how doctrine and defense are to be handled in preaching, in order, God willing, thereby to lay the foundation for knowledgeable, believing, confessionally faithful Lutheran congregations active in love, whose establishment and further growth will be discussed in what follows. —

Gleanings from the Periodicals of the Old Homeland.

A number of German Lutheran periodicals from the past five months once again lie before us. In reviewing them, we are struck above all by the observation—comforting on the one hand, distressing on the other—that what has involved us here in conflict with members of our Church is still, indeed almost, the chief subject of controversy within the Lutheran Church of our old fatherland as well. For we find that all the leading voices, though united in acknowledging the importance of the doctrines of Church and ministry, differ in their convictions concerning