# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juni 1857_S170
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

170 How Are Truly Lutheran Congregations Founded and Raised?

...before Him lack the glory that we ought to have, and, because Law and the word of promise, in unbroken apostolic and prophetic proclamation, work upon us jointly, [before Him lack] the striving to take the path by which that distressing separation might be removed. He is the sure confidence of the heart in Him who knew no sin and was made sin and righteousness for us. So the heart, indeed, for such a moment stands itself between a power of sinlessness — which, in consequence of the reconciliation and forgiveness won through Jesus Christ, is to become its treasure and take up its seat within it — and a power of sin, which still holds nature in its grip and seeks to entice it out of its already altered position: Christ Himself and Belial, old birth and new. But it is moved toward the one and brought into a corresponding disposition through the Father's drawing to the Son, that is, through the warning and persuading voice of the Holy Spirit, who effectively offers peace to the conscience and again seeks His indwelling, so that it give no ear to the motives of the flesh, far weaker by comparison to this voice — which nevertheless many do — and, by the resolving of the will (inclined to act toward both sides), tip the scale. According as the decisions fall, they mutually exclude one another; neutrality, apart from those momentary states, is unthinkable, because the capacity for life does not take place without them; through the repeated recurrence of one of the two, the power driving it gains the mastery; hence it can easily happen to those who have been transferred into communion of salvation and life with Christ, that they fall again from the state of grace that had become theirs. Accordingly the distinction is also determined which is indeed to be made between those who have broken the covenant of baptism and apostates within Christendom, and heathen, Jews, and Turks.

(Conclusion to follow.)

(Submitted by Prof. Dr. Sihler.)

How Are Truly Lutheran Congregations Founded and Raised?

Fourth Article.
Church Government.

(Continuation.)

As we now go on to set forth the evangelical sense and spirit of an upright servant of the Lutheran Church in governing the Church, or respectively his congregation, it will be most illustrative if it is first shown wherein it does not consist. For it is beyond doubt, and the history of our day furnishes manifold evidence of it, that here and there there are honest and zealous pastors of our Church here in America who, though