# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Dezember 1856_S374
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

374 A Few Sunbeams over Thuringia.

That our church, in her doctrine of the sacraments so sharply and fully developed, leaves us in no doubt on this question can be certain to us from the outset, and just as certain is the other side of it: namely, that if we boast of the Lutheran doctrine of the sacraments precisely as our shibboleth over against other confessions, then it is also incumbent upon us here to remain faithful and consistent in adhering to our church's doctrine, lest our boast acquire a tremendous gap. — The Lutheran Church now teaches concerning the sacraments quite clearly and simply, as is commonly known: 1. that the sacraments are, in themselves, powerful means of salvation, whose objective reality is wholly independent of the faith of the recipient (so that they do not first become powerful through the recipient's faith). But 2. she teaches just as definitely that the sacraments are, strictly speaking, nothing more than means and instruments, media, organa, of salvation, for whose subjective effect upon men faith is required, and just as no means or instrument is of any use if it is not employed, so also the sacraments, apart from the recipient's faith, have absolutely no effect or benefit. Hence it is said in the Catechism: Baptism works forgiveness of sins, that is, the water of Baptism has in itself, joined as it is with God's Word, the real power to effect this — as a medicine of life powerful in itself — but it can exercise this effect only upon those who yield themselves believingly to its power, that is, upon those who believe it just as the words and promise of God declare, much as a medicine exerts its power only upon those who take it, and a key unlocks doors only for those who use it.

What, then, shall the notion of a body of Christ formed by baptism even out of unbelievers and the unconverted amount to, over against this doctrine of our church? This can lead us either only to vain notions of a mechanically outward, merely dead, not life-giving, merely spatial and bodily, not spiritual communication of the blessings of salvation to unbelievers, or else it must alter, more or less, the doctrine — thoroughly essential, belonging to the foundation-pillars of our church over against Romanism — that without faith no subjective effect of the sacraments (that is, no effect of grace upon the persons who use them) is possible.

Steeden. Brunn.

(From the "Freimund.")
A Few Sunbeams over Thuringia.

Our church life has, in the course of this summer, been a fairly agitated one, although this agitation relates almost solely to the clerical estate within the church; the congregations take no part in it.

Noteworthy for our ecclesiastical progress is the circumstance that