# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Januar 1856_S4
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

4                    Preface to Volume 1856.

and our faintheartedness had supposed. The more this must now strengthen the faith and courage of all faithful Lutherans here, the more urgent a summons, it seems to us, lies therein at the same time: that the unity which God, through His wonderful grace, has already wrought among us should also be cultivated by us with the utmost fidelity and the greatest diligence. We, at least, for our own small part, feel ourselves solemnly obligated to contribute our mite to this end.

Our brethren in Germany, laboring scattered among the various territorial churches, have chosen, for the cultivation of their unity in faith and confession, the means of free conferences, church congresses, and the like. We are convinced that, after a period such as the last century just past, in which the various particular churches had fallen into a deep and general decline in doctrine and discipline, there is for the individual awakening ones in the various ecclesiastical bodies no more fitting means — besides the public written testimony — of furthering and strengthening the churchly unity that is again making itself known, than those means now chosen within our German mother church. But do not similar circumstances hold here as well, and may we not expect that similar joint conferences would, by God's grace and blessing, prove all the more effective here, the freer the church here is from the bonds of the state, and the more mere theorizing runs contrary to the whole of church life here? We do not doubt it. —

So we hereby venture the public inquiry: Would it not be profitable and helpful, toward achieving at last the realization of a united Evangelical Lutheran Church of North America, for the members of the various synods calling themselves Lutheran, who recognize and confess the unaltered Augsburg Confession of 1530, without reservation, as the pure and faithful expression of the doctrine of Holy Scripture and of their own faith, to hold from time to time a joint meeting? We, for our part, would be heartily ready to take part in such a conference of orthodox Lutherans, whenever and wherever it might be held, according to the wish of the majority of those taking part, and we can assure in advance the same willingness on the part of several theologians and laymen here, to whom the welfare of our dear Evangelical Lutheran Church in this our new homeland is no less the deepest longing of their hearts, and to whom we have already communicated the thought here expressed. Since it is a fact that even among those Lutherans here who from the heart adhere to the fundamental confession of our church there still exists considerable difference of conviction, the discussion of which in our journals could easily do more to hinder than to further the union of our church so longed for by all, a personal, spoken exchange and conference can, without doubt, be nothing but