# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_September 1855_S284
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

284 The Lutherophilus.

to take it back, at least in part, since it nevertheless still remains with the one given it. Our Hoyer writes in that letter, among other things, the following, well worth pondering:

"The path, to be sure, which Pastor Keyl himself has taken and proposes to others, will seem to many, at least at first sight, strange and objectionable. Luther, that is to say, is to be read and studied pen in hand to such a degree that he forms the very center of theological study! To ask this of the present generation, to which all authority is repugnant and to which independence, an independent striving according to the inclination of one's own heart, matters above everything, is in any case a bold demand, and many theologians, if indeed they think it worth the trouble to reflect further on the matter, will not be ill inclined to compare the editor of the Lutherophilus to a certain knight, and the theologian who attempts to lend a hand in this work to a certain squire of that knight. Yet, in the first place, is it not altogether necessary that an end finally be put to that disorderly studying and roaming about over the immense field of theology? Must it really be that the student, upon completing his triennium, finds himself compelled to throw the greater part of what he has learned overboard, and then, conscious of his own lack of footing, to attach himself to some particular theological school, to some more considerable mind, who in the end after all speaks only his own word? Have we then still not had enough of the dreadful jargon of today's theology, which, like a bewildering demon, takes possession of the poor student, accompanies him into the ministry, and renders his preaching, if not wholly unintelligible, at least unedifying and charmless? In short, do we not wish at last, in place of the know-it-alls who, for sheer scholarly scruples and mutually conflicting opinions, can never arrive at a firm stance, to see theological personalities in the pulpits and among the leaders of the church — people in whom Christ, with His truth, has gained not merely a place in the memory but a living form? And secondly, there is indeed, alive among us, the most comprehensive theological personality who has lived, labored, and endured in the Christian church since the time of the apostles, Dr. Luther; alive among us in his writings, in which he everywhere gives us not merely isolated pieces of knowledge and experience but rather his whole personality, his heart and his (spiritual) form — he is, among the many teachers, to this very day the father in Christ and leader of the Lutheran church, under whom we, each according to his gifts, may work our way up to become captains over fifty or a hundred: for personality is indeed formed upon personality. To him the pure doctrine of the Word of God had become, as it were, a second nature; those who are under the Law he knows how to sharpen the Law upon, so that a dreadful hardness of heart is needed not to be humbled under it; to the weary and heavy-laden, on the other hand, he brings the Gospel in such sweetness, with such sweet