# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Januar 1858_S1
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Lehre und Wehre.

Volume IV.    January 1858.    No. 1.

Preface to the 1858 Volume.

When we published the prospectus of this our theological journal a little more than three years ago, we declared in it: "Holy Scripture, and after it the Book of Concord of our Evangelical Lutheran Church, shall be the norm for all essays to be admitted — Scripture the norma normans, the Symbol the norma normata; both understood in their simple sense according to the guidance of the incontestably orthodox fathers of our Church, foremost a Luther, and then a Chemnitz, a Johann Gerhard, and other holy witnesses to the truth." We made this declaration entirely in agreement with our Synod, whose distinguishing character consists precisely in this: that in the most vivid conviction it acknowledges our Evangelical Lutheran Church to be the visible, pure, rightly-believing Church of God on earth, and therefore also holds it to be its sacred duty to be in earnest — in doctrine and defense, in theory and practice — about the confession of the faith laid down in the Symbols of our Church and so thoroughly developed and defended by her most enlightened teachers in their immortal writings.

Just as little as we concealed from ourselves at that time, when we began the publication of the present journal, that with such principles we could count on little agreement in our day, just as little — and even less — do we now cherish the hope of finding great favor, now that we are richer by three years' experience.

It is true that both here and in Germany the name "Lutheran" has, especially in the last decade, come more and more into currency and honor. More and more, therefore, the watchword is heard again: "The Lutheran Church! The Lutheran Confession!" But if one examines even a little the throng of those who go about with this watchword on their lips and who are regarded as champions for the treasure entrusted to our Church, one soon finds oneself, for the most part, more or less disappointed. We are not thinking here of those who nowadays, in great numbers, will indeed on no account let go of the name "Lutheran," but who at the same time wish to have the liberty, even in the so-called distinguishing doctrines, from the

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