# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juni 1857_S179
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

How Are Truly Lutheran Congregations Founded and Raised? 179

...brothers in Christ and respects their evangelical rights, so that also in the ordering of those parts of it which fall within the province of things indifferent and are thus subject to the congregation's Christian liberty, "everything be done honestly and in order," that is, that, following prior instruction and the understanding and willingness thereby produced, the introduction of the new and the improvement of the old take place through the harmonious cooperation of the teaching office and the hearers.

Finally, I would like to take the liberty of asking the reverend fellow ministers of the Ohio Synod, of the Eastern and Northern Districts, kindly and cordially, to give their favorable attention and regard to what has been set forth in this section, and not to let themselves be hindered from doing so by any personal or other antipathies;*) for, as at least the most recent synodical report of the Northern District shows, that district stands in danger — partly from an inadequate and in part also mistaken grasp of Lutheran doctrine concerning Church and ministry, partly from a well-meaning but misunderstood and headlong zeal for churchly formation — of making a violent leap from its previous churchly formlessness into a strict churchly formalism, as though, by the establishment of the latter (for which, moreover, their congregations are on the whole rather sluggish or intractable material), true Lutheran, that is, evangelically and churchly minded, congregations would come into being. In this they would succeed just as Emperor Joseph II did in politics, of whose procedure Frederick II said: Emperor Joseph is accustomed to take the second step before he has taken the first.

Would that they consider with all earnestness that the first step for them would be to attain, through earnest and diligent study of the symbolical books, a thorough understanding of the Lutheran system of doctrine in its coherence, since they, like most of us on the whole, did not grow up in the bosom and under the care of the orthodox, confessing, and teaching Church, but stem, more nearly or more remotely, from damp, unionistic Pietism or from churchly indifferentism, if not indeed from rationalism, and were accordingly earlier nourished with loose or harmful food.

Would that the second step, then, be this: that with a demonstration of the Spirit and of power, and with a joyful opening of their mouths, they unremittingly testify to and impress upon their congregations this doctrine of the symbolical books, and especially its kernel and its star, the doctrine of justification, and that at the same time they be faithful, wise, and skillful pastors of souls to their individual parishioners. Were they to do so, then, according to the promise of the Lord in Isaiah 55, congregations would thereby gradually grow up which, with willingness,

*) We do not doubt that the brethren here addressed will take as little offense at our correspondent's friendly reminder as we ourselves took offense at the admonition directed to us by the Missouri Synod, which we did not dismiss with prejudice. — L. u. W.