# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juli 1855_S210
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

210 Lutheran-Theological Pastors’ Library.

with a Latin translation placed above it. If the text of one Evangelist has a parallel in one or more of the other Evangelists, these various parallel texts are printed one after another, first separately and then combined into a single text, again in both Greek and Latin. Only then does the actual exposition follow; in it, the individual linguistic, historical, archaeological, etc., difficulties that arise are indeed resolved, but within a well-ordered, coherent, living treatment of the entire passage, so that before the reader’s eyes the individual verses unfold like buds into wide-open, fragrant flowers, and finally the entire chapter under consideration, or the passage selected from one of them, spreads out like a beautifully arranged flower bed. The work does not offer a fragmented explanation, but rather an unfolding and exposition of the entire text at hand, just as a merchant unfolds and displays before the eager eye of the buyer the precious wares that lie rolled up in the compartments of his salesroom. Here the exposition is really nothing other than a lovely, colorful garment woven solely from the wool of the text, edged here and there, without vain ostentation, with all manner of learned philological and historical notes. Here one finds an exegesis sought in vain in our age, such as only men like Chemnitz, Leyser, and Gerhard could produce by God’s grace—men who, alongside eminent learning, possessed an equally great childlike simplicity; alongside profound intellectual understanding, an equally rich experience of the heart; and alongside the clearest insight into the coherence of the entire doctrinal content of revelation, an equally firm and unshakable faith. It is impossible to say which of the three laborers on this exegetical work should be preferred to the others. Each has his own distinctive qualities and advantages over the others, but none has anything that would place him below the others. Gerhard does indeed write (see the preface to his Harmony), in his great humility: “As soon as I undertook the work, I found that I was not equal to this task and could in no respect fulfill the expectations I had formed of such great men; hence I came close to withdrawing the hand already laid upon the plow. But because I remembered that I had not been asked to provide a continuation equal to the diligence of Chemnitz and Leyser—for that, as far as I am concerned, would be among the impossibilities—but only to provide whatever continuation I was capable of giving, and because I believed that I ought rather to incur the charge of inadequacy than of disobedience, I therefore preferred to do something rather than nothing, and in this way to encourage others to turn their efforts toward a more elegant continuation, one more in accord with the earlier authors. Daniel’s colossus had a head of gold at the top, but ended in feet of iron and clay, Daniel 2:32–33; the golden shields that Solomon had caused to be made were once replaced with bronze ones, 2 Chronicles 12:10. If anyone should say that this is so in this