# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1860_S17
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

— 17 —

...article of justification back to special prominence, as it were,
raised again from the dead one of our spiritual fathers' tried and
tested captains, and set him at our head. Not for church-mongering, for
setting up fine church-government ordinances marching neatly along in
paragraphs, not for drilling and exercising well-uniformed holy
city-soldiers and leggings-heroes, in whose maneuvers of petty
busywork today's piety mostly seeks and finds its particular pleasure
and edification, not for gathering building-stones for the church of
the future hovering in the empty space of idle heads, not for such and
similar things are we called; rather, we are to — so far as He has
marked out the field for us and equipped us for it with degrees and
gifts — in fellowship with those who, like us, have been saved and set
into the blessed freedom of the children of God, hew loose, free, and
bring to the feet of our and their King and Savior a world led astray
by Satan, held captive and lost, so that we may all come to the
salvation, blessedness, and glory determined for us by God, and God in
turn come to His honor — "which honor is this: that He is gracious and
merciful, and that for His Son's sake He will forgive sin and make us
blessed." A holy, blessed calling, in which, for his part, even the
least among believers is not excluded from taking part — indeed, in
which infants and sucklings are to do the greatest deeds. But
everything, as we know, depends on the article of justification being
and remaining truly at the forefront. That is what makes the
difference between mere sky-fencers and devil-fighters, and true
Christians and warriors of God.

The excellent Chemnitz now draws our attention to what we especially
need to watch for if we wish to manage faithfully with the pound
entrusted to us. Alarmed by Luther's prophetic sayings that this
article would not remain pure after his death, he calls out to his
contemporaries and to us: "Shameful and godless, therefore, would our
laziness be, if we were to lose, through careless learning and cold
teaching, or let be torn from us in the struggles through a certain
softness, what has been handed down and shown to us in this article,
with such great labor and such astonishing goodness of God, out of the
prophetic and apostolic source-writings. Nor should one think that
where there is so great a light, no darkness is to be feared. For we
carry this treasure not in vessels of iron, not of bronze, but in
earthen vessels (2 Cor. 4:7), and in this life in which we walk, there
lie on every side many stones of stumbling, against which, in our
weakness, we easily strike." The warning expressed in these words
also contains, at the same time, instruction for the right, conscientious
use of this treasure.

First, then, we are to learn this article diligently. — One might
think this exhortation hardly necessary; that the lost world of
sinners would, from the very first moment the joyful message rang out,
never have let itself be drawn away from the comforting breasts of
divine mercy. Yet experience teaches us how very soon one grows sated
and weary of the Gospel, and how the sweet comfort which the heart,
parched by the