# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juni 1856_S184
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

184 The General Conference and the "Missionary."

...expression of the doctrine of Holy Scripture and of their own faith, without reservation, recognize and confess — in order to discuss, perhaps with better and swifter success than can happen in periodicals, so many a difference of conviction still present among brethren, and to strive for that unity of our Church longed for by all. The latter means seems to us the more fitting, and therefore also the surer and the one promising the most blessing. For since among those who are essentially at one, among brethren, in one's own house, in one's own camp — which is arrayed in the field against everything un-Lutheran, unbiblical, un-Christian — there are, admittedly, still differences, which, however, precisely because One Spirit rules, must yield so far as he rules; what is more natural than that here, first and above all, unity — complete unity — should be sought? If God grants this according to his grace — and he will do it, for he is of great faithfulness — then we can raise our banner with joy and hope for one victory after another. For we, as individuals, will then, on the one hand, be in so much fuller possession of the truth, and therefore all the more assuredly, joyfully, boldly in faith, zealously, and mightily equipped to refute the adversaries from Scripture; and, on the other hand, we will work together not out of misunderstanding against one another, looking discouraged upon our task, but rather fight in godly agreement, worked by the Spirit, alongside and with one another, each furthering and encouraging the other, for the spread of the kingdom of God. When this is achieved, then, it seems to us, conferences such as are proposed in the Missionary would be timely. One might then hope that, where the truth would be confessed so clearly, so convincingly, so joyfully, so unanimously, as it would come to be confessed after a prior unity among brethren, whoever within the General Synod, or among the English-speaking Lutherans, or within the whole Lutheran Church of this land, is of the truth, would all the sooner hear God's voice and follow it. But if one did not seek, above all, a unity of the brethren, then the struggle for the truth — which the Missionary too surely wishes to see fought and crowned with victory — would hardly be waged with the joyfulness, the strength, and the success that it would in the other case. The manner proposed in "Lehre und Wehre" is by no means exclusive, and therefore repellent and an obstacle to those who seek the truth. For exclusive is only a procedure by which those who, by the nature of the purpose, are entitled to participate in a matter are shut out from it on some ground foreign and self-serving to that purpose. Here, however, the point is that brethren should come to agreement, so that they may thereby become the more complete, and afterward, as God grants grace, serve others, and yet many another brother be added. Whoever, then, does not recognize himself as a Lutheran brother in the faith — by which the present writer understands a Christian in whom the faith, that in Christ alone all salvation is comprised, has developed into a knowledge and conviction of the truths set forth in the Augsburg Confession from the Word of God — to him this purpose does not