# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juli 1856_S203
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Sermon Preparation from Dr. Luther. 203

...hearers the Lord Christ, who by virtue of Word and Sacrament wishes to take up residence among us; upon Word and Sacrament, not upon any human emotions, thoughts, feelings, and so forth, does he build his own faith and that of his disciples, and thus gives them the Lord Christ whole, with pure, firm doctrine, as their own possession with unshakeable certainty. Do we not, with all good will, still have an extraordinary amount to learn in this respect — all the more since we live among a people who up to now have had no understanding at all of the truth that we receive Christ and his kingdom through the means of grace, through Word and Sacrament? For Luther, the Bible does not stand outside the Church, like a rigid lawbook, but rather in the midst of the Church's own living faith, as the foundation of the apostles and prophets on which the structure of evangelical preaching and confession is raised; Luther and his followers confess and preach that the Bible is the foundation and rule of faith, in that they declare, brightly and joyfully, what stands within it; the confession of the Church, on the other hand, does not for them stand alongside the Bible, as tradition does for the Romanists, but is wholly and entirely, and without any deception, subject to it, so that both the foundation of the apostles and prophets, and the fellowship of the rightly believing Church that depends on it and is built upon it, are held fast and faithfully preserved. Both — the truth as it exists, independent of human faith and knowledge, in the written Word, and that same truth as it lives in the faith of the Church and is expressed in the confession; both also — doctrine in its establishment by the Church, and the reception of doctrine in the faith of the individual Christian, faith as doctrine and faith as power — come to their full right in Luther's preaching. I am not blind to what I must acknowledge as unfounded in Luther's writings — for example, his judgment concerning James, his spiritual interpretations, his understanding of the deception that Rebekah and Jacob practiced on the father Isaac; I test Luther's writings again and again against the Bible, which is, after all, judge over them as well; but this I know, that no other books, the confessional writings of the Church excepted, can withstand so rigorous a testing against the Bible as Luther's can; that since the days of the apostles no preacher has preached the Law so penetratingly, the Gospel so purely, chastely, sweetly, and winsomely, as Dr. Luther has; and that we, who stand in such great need of instruction in the preaching of Law and Gospel, can find that instruction nowhere so thorough, so engaging, and so clear as in Dr. Luther. A single attempt already leads one to discover how wise it is not to let the matter rest with a single attempt.

(Conclusion follows.)