# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_September 1857_S277
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

"On the History of the Most Recent Theology."   277

...truth, were not only entitled but also bound in their conscience to a serious protest against an alteration of the confessional standing decreed by the state, and finally, if all protesting remained without effect, to separation from the state church" — and of course still more to the refusal of adherence to a state church that had gone over to another religion. "Nevertheless the number of those who under Frederick William III placed themselves in opposition was not so great, and men such as Scheibel and Guericke are here to be named with honor as those who gave the honor to truth and not to power, who understood by Christian duty something other than unconditional obedience to the authorities, a heathen deification of the power of the state. In those days it was indeed not so free of danger to raise the banner of Lutheranism as it is today. In those days Lutheranism was a martyrdom, which today has become an article of fashion; in those days fidelity to the confession was punished with slighting of every kind and with deposition, whereas today it brings in the fattest benefices and the highest church offices; in those days the strict confessors were obstinate heads inconvenient to the men in power, whereas today they are sought out by them and adorned with every honor; in those days the small number of the faithful melted away ever more visibly, whereas today the generation of young Lutherans, shone upon by the sun of the power of the state, shoots up high out of the very soil of the united church, so that even the youngest student of theology, from the swaddling-clothes of scholarship on, if only he understands a little of which way the wind blows, professes an unadulterated Lutheranism. Then, as has been said, was the time of testing, and it was that which called forth the breach between the orthodox state theology and the martyrs of Lutheranism." — Can we ask more than this testimony from the mouth of an opponent as decided as he is honoring of right, truth, and conscience? Does it not sound like the beginning fulfillment of Proverbs 16:7? Be of good cheer! God always lets the upright prosper. Posterity will pass another judgment upon us than those political Epicureans, scientific lickspittles, and pious belly-servers of the eighteen-thirties. Let us only guard, as we guard the apple of our eye, the boundary line between ourselves and the "Neo-Lutherans"! Occasion for the shifting of the boundary stones, which have already become historic, is unhappily to be found in the good nature, forgetfulness, credulity, and — little faith on our own side almost as much as in the obtrusive, boastful, sanctimonious, "neo-Lutheran" activity. Let us indeed mark it well: those who at the time of the "martyrdom" remained standing at Luther's side, and those who now on "the soil of the united church" press boldly up to him, are not one and the same, but in every respect two different sorts of people. If we forget that, we shall fall out of one religious confusion into another, and at last be swept by the inexorable broom of the age into the general rubbish of factions. Our "Lutheranism" is a "martyrdom"; the "young" one is a