# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_November 1855_S333
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

How Are Truly Lutheran Congregations Founded, etc. 333

...to recognize, in the refined silver, his image — which through the new birth has been newly implanted in them as the true silver-luster — ever more clearly.

Among the inward causes of the sorrow of believers, the most noteworthy are now: the melancholic bent of temperament; further, the lust of the flesh against the Spirit, partly through, partly without the provocation of the evil world; the threatening and cursing of the Law, and the anguish of conscience and fear of death; the crafty assaults and fiery darts of Satan in all manner of temptation from without or spiritual trial from within.

Very often these inward and those outward causes of sorrow also intermingle and work together to produce or intensify this state of mind, so that in part evangelical understanding is darkened, and in part faith is weakened.

It naturally cannot be our intention here, either, to furnish a pastoral manual going into particulars for the comforting of the sorrowful; rather, we wish to content ourselves with pointing out the evangelical spirit that the Lutheran pastor should have here as well.

This spirit should now show itself, first, in the fact that the shepherd is not lacking in heartfelt compassion and the sympathizing love of Christ in the face of his little sheep's sorrow, and that his heart surges out toward him, to help him at once to the best of his counsel and ability.

Then it is incumbent upon him, with friendly sympathy, Christian wisdom, and modesty, to inquire into the cause, seat, and nature of the evil — whether it is of a simpler or more complex kind, whether it has arisen more from without or from within, whether it is rare and extraordinary or temperamentally habitual, produced by transitory causes or by lasting adverse circumstances; for according to the particular origin and character of the sorrow, he will then also have to select and apply, from the great apothecary of Scripture, the fitting, salutary remedies of comfort, which, given the patient's willingness, will indeed also heal thoroughly and completely.

Of course, this guidance presupposes that in this state of sorrow the faith is only weak and beset by trial, but otherwise sincere and sound; for if the sorrow stems from a rebuke of conscience, because the person has given room to false doctrine, or has fallen back into this or that formerly favored and habitual sin, or has consented to provocations to new transgressions of the divine Law and is already engaged in the practice of the same, then of course the pastor must here first reprove, and, God willing, seek by heartfelt and urgent admonition to move his parishioner to expel the foreign element through genuine repentance and conversion — whereupon that rebuke of conscience ceases, the sorrow arising from it yields, and righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit once again fill the heart.

The genuinely Lutheran practice, then, in the above-mentioned comforting — where, accordingly, it is not the