# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Januar 1856_S3
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Preface to Volume 1856.                    3

brother, the "Lutheraner"; but the experiences of the first year fill us with the best hope that the time when our "Lehre und Wehre" no longer eats the "Lutheraner's" bread of grace is probably not far off. But as for the cause of our church in general, particularly here in North America, it seems to us that in just the last months the sky has visibly reddened once again, so as to announce to us fairer days than those just past. Matt. 16:2. When, last September, the Wittenberg Synod of Ohio came forward publicly with its so-called Definite Platform for a so-called American-Lutheran church, with its official renunciation of the Constitution, of the Magna Charta of our church, of the Unaltered Augsburg Confession, and called upon all who shared its views to join in this secession, it seemed as though a heavy, ominous storm were gathering and about to break over the Lutheran church of our new fatherland. But what has happened? — Only three synods *) fell into the temptation and complied with the summons, while almost all the other synods that had occasion to speak on the matter rejected the new basis of doctrine, some as unsuitable, others — with a unanimity scarcely to be expected — condemned and denounced it as the consummation of a shameful public apostasy from the church of our fathers and from biblical truth. No paper claiming to be an organ of the Lutheran church — the "Lutheran Observer" excepted **) — has made the cause of the official alteration of the symbols its own; not even the Gettysburg "Lutherische Kirchenbote" nor the Springfield (Ohio) "Evangelical Lutheran" did so formally, although the latter did give space in its columns to advocacy of the cause alongside counter-declarations; the "Lutheran Standard" of Columbus, Ohio, on the other hand, testified against it with Lutheran earnestness and manly resolve; the "Lutherische Herold" of New York likewise rejected, with righteous indignation, the disgraceful demand that Lutherans dismantle their own fortifications; and the "Missionary" of Pittsburgh openly and without reservation associated itself with the sentence of condemnation which, among others, the East Pennsylvania Synod pronounced upon the project.

This constellation of events fills all of us who love the Lutheran Zion of this land with great joy as well as hope for the future. It has thereby become evident that the number of those who here have not bowed their knees before the Baal of so-called progress and so-called higher enlightenment of the nineteenth century, or who no longer wish to bow them, is without doubt greater than our little faith

*) Namely, the Wittenberg Synod, the Olive Branch Synod, and the English Synod of Ohio.
**) To the Platform Synods the "Luth. Obs." applies Reuchlin's: Exegi monumentum aere perennius!

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