# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_October 1855_S298
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

298 Lutheran Theological Pastor's Library.

[...bro]ken is the golden vessel that outshone everything in the whole world. Fallen is the crown of the academies. Fallen is the pillar of the learned. Fallen is the refuge of students. The thinkers have lost their theologian, the joyful their bridle, the cross-bearers their comfort, old age its staff, youth its admonisher, poverty its gentle benefactor, wealth its steward, widows their protector, minors their father, the poor the lover of the poor, the brethren the lover of the brethren, the sick their physician, the healthy the keeper of health — all have lost him who became all things to all, in order to win all or some.” Salomon Glassius, Gerhard's successor in office, calls him in his memorial address: “That foremost one (principem) among theologians, that light both of this university and of the whole Christian world, that strong, firm pillar in the house of the Lord, that splendid star in the kingdom of heaven, that most valiant hero in the warring against and overcoming of so many armies of heretics, that manifest and shining example of all godliness and true worship, that pure and unspotted mirror of all the virtues becoming to men of God, that heart precious to almighty God, that darling of all souls devoted to JEsus: Gerhard I mean, whom I need only name in order to speak his due praise.” Joh. Dilherr says in his memorial address: “It is not the academy that has lost one of its doctors, but the doctors who have lost their academy. He was a ‘canon’ of a good man and a standard of a Christian teacher; a man who stood far above all our praises; whom those who knew him could not esteem highly enough, and those who did not esteem him highly enough did not know him well enough.” But we close now with the saying of Buddeus: “No one is unacquainted with the greatest merits of Gerhard for our church, except one who has never heard Gerhard's name.” *) It may seem out of place here that we have allowed ourselves this excursus in praise of Gerhard; yet we could not refrain from bringing out at least this much, so as to give those of our honored readers to whom Gerhard is less known a glimpse into the incomparable significance of this dogmatician

*) Heinsius certainly rightly writes in his church history that Gerhard could indeed not have remained without much cross and tribulation, because otherwise the extraordinary honor which he received from every side would, to him as a poor man, have been unbearable, and it would scarcely have been possible that he should not otherwise have become puffed up. But it was precisely through manifold cross-bearing that God preserved this precious instrument from that. No virtue shines more gloriously in Gerhard than humility. When in 1610 he was to become general superintendent in Celle, he declined it, giving among other reasons this one: “I am but the shadow of a theologian.” When ten years later he was called from Jena to Wittenberg as professor, he declared that he could not exchange the shadows of Jena for the light of Wittenberg, nor compare himself with a Meisner and a Hunnius, let alone set himself before them. The words nervose, solide et copiose which stand on the title page of his Loci do not come from Gerhard but from the man who oversaw the printing at Jena; Gerhard complains of this.