# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juli 1855_S215
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Another Fox. 215

we ourselves formerly attached too much importance to the Calvinistic doctrine by looking too one-sidedly at the letter. The issue between the Reformed and Lutheran Churches is not merely a doctrine; it concerns a part of life, and, out of love for the Reformed Church as well, the Lutheran Church must faithfully preserve here the pledge entrusted to it by the Lord. The devotion to the Holy Sacrament that the Reformed Church has retained is due in large part only to its reliance on the Lutheran Church.

We do not shrink from the assertion: “As soon as anyone ventures to attach absolute significance to this opposition between emphasis on the particular confession and union, he thereby in fact denies, in its absolute significance, the common faith in Christ, the sole Savior.” However little one may estimate the differences, faithfulness in small things is in any case also a great matter. Whoever is not faithful in small things is also not faithful in great things, and “whoever breaks one of these least commandments and teaches people so shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven.” The deviations of the kingdom of the ten tribes likewise did not affect the actual foundation, and yet they brought about its downfall, because they were introduced and fostered against better knowledge and branded the conscience.

It would be a misfortune for the Church if the tendency that seeks to bar confessionally resolute individuals from access to influential positions within it were to gain control. The result would be that colorless eclectics, listless and half-hearted people, would take the helm in it. “Do not quench the Spirit.” There can be no doubt that, especially among the younger generation, precisely the most vigorous personalities are animated by confessional conviction. It is here as in Genesis 30:42: “the weak became Laban’s share and the strong (under God’s blessing) Jacob’s.” Where the selection is often so small, it is ruinous if attention is not directed exclusively to the qualities truly essential for the ministry, and if anxious inquiries are made as to whether confessional definiteness may perhaps exceed by an inch the measure preferred by a chance majority.

(For Lehre und Wehre.)

Another Fox.

In No. 4 of the current volume of the “Lutherischer Herold” there is a “submitted contribution” headed “Walther von der Fuchsweide” and signed “also a Lutheran.” The author presents himself as one of the foxes described in the March issue of “Lehre und Wehre,” page 91,