# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juli 1856_S197
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Sermon Preparation from Dr. Luther. 197

...the difference between Law and Gospel, and the importance of this difference, become clear; that insight is gaining ground that repentance and conversion come not from the preaching of the Law but from the preaching of the Gospel, although the former must precede the latter; that it is recognized as a foolish undertaking to tear individual doctrines out of a structure of Christian teaching such as the Lutheran confession is, and to declare them non-essential; that many, and ever more, are noticing wherein the chief defect of the Christianity of our day consists, namely in the disregard of the Word and of the means of grace generally, whereby faith is built not upon the Word but upon human things, feelings, and so forth; that people are ceasing to separate the Bible from the Church and to set it up, bare, cold, and dead, as a law of faith which one honors only with words, not with deed and truth, and are recognizing instead that the Bible is the foundation of the apostles and prophets, the living foundation of the Church, which is displayed by the Church, full of life and clear, in its scriptural confession; that people are learning to distinguish between doctrine and church orders, and while standing firm on the former, are taking the latter for what they are — human arrangements in the service of edification, and therefore, in their particular forms, non-essential to the Church; that people no longer regard the evangelical doctrine merely as a support for moral conduct, but as the very essence of the whole Christian life, so that they are gradually turning back from the opinion that the pious life is to be set above doctrine and faith. These and many other gifts of knowledge, together with the rich results of philological and other researches, I do not fail to recognize; but neither am I blind to the great weaknesses that we have brought with us out of the more than hundred years' rule of ordinary rationalism. We know and preach the pure evangelical doctrine — well then, where is the evangelical life that ought to proceed from such preaching, that gentleness and kindliness, that freshness and fullness of strength, that steadfastness and joyfulness of faith and of patience, such as Christ has and gives to his own through the Gospel? The lack of truly evangelical fruit is ascribed to the profit-seeking temper of the people of the United States, bent as it is on outward gain, and truly this resists the Gospel badly enough — but should it be stronger than the Gospel? Others have maintained that our congregations are being preached to death: that we preach too much, and have too little of the beautiful, living forms of liturgical worship; but wanting to help congregational life along with church ceremonies and ordinances is churchly quackery, not much better than the effort of the Roman Church to awaken spiritual life through mysterious pomp, or of the Methodists through spiritual intoxication. Let the gentlemen, then, allow preaching to stand as the chief part of all evangelical worship, and get no thanks for it; God grant them soon — and before they carry out their pernicious principles — the insight that never can there be too much Gospel