# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_November 1855_S332
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

332 How Are Truly Lutheran Congregations Founded, etc.

...on the whole, even amid the deepest decline of the Church in the Old and New Testament, there have always been upright children of God in the midst of the apostate and adulterous generation — so too, in individual congregations that perhaps resemble those of Laodicea and Sardis, there are still always some true and living Christians who, partly because of outward afflictions, partly because of inward spiritual trials, stand in frequent need of comfort. But even otherwise, in a healthy, vigorous state and a fresh, joyful progress of congregational life, there will never and nowhere be a lack of the mourners in Zion who need beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, and a garment of praise for a spirit of heaviness.

Now, as certain as it is that the sole fountain of comfort and well of salvation, the true elixir of life and only panacea, balm and salve, is the gracious and comforting Gospel of the grace in Christ that is free and can be laid hold of and appropriated only through faith, just as certain is it, on the other hand, that for the right application of this precious and noble remedy, healing from the ground up, it is necessary that the pastor, as a spiritual physician, know in each of his patients in need of comfort the chief seat, root, and source of their sorrow; for although it is indeed true that in every spiritual sorrow faith is weakened and pressed down, and now stands in need precisely of being lifted up and strengthened by the remedy of the Gospel, it is nevertheless needful to know by what cause this weakening of faith and this depressed state of mind, which we call sorrow, has been brought about, in order accordingly to apply the fitting words of comfort.

These causes now are either outward or inward; among the former the chief ones are: a greater or lesser loss of earthly goods; damage to one's civic honor and good name through evil tongues; painful or protracted illnesses, or deaths in the family and kindred, sickness or infirmity in one's own body, the offensive or seductive examples of the world, and other such discipline of God, which the Lord — no longer as punishment, but for the crucifying of the old man and for the exercising and strengthening of faith and of a godly disposition — sends in particular even upon his own dear children, together with the common plagues of the land, such as sword, famine, pestilence, and other afflictions, which come upon the children of this world, and likewise at the same time upon true Christians as well; for just as the all-gracious God also makes his sun rise upon the evil and sends rain upon the unjust, in order, where possible, to lead them to repentance through the overflow of his goodness, so too he lets all manner of misfortune and affliction come upon his upright children, in order to test their obedience and sincere love toward him and to guard them against hypocrisy; in order to put to death more and more the flesh that is still present in them; in order, by refining the gold of their faith in the furnace of affliction, to make them exceedingly precious and proven; in order, in the crucible of tribulation, to