# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Februar 1858_S38
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

38 "Luther or Arndt!"

it rises. Let us beware, however, of fanning before its time a fire that is admittedly already smoldering under the ashes; the thin covering that still veils it from many eyes today will in any case soon enough be blown away by the churchly winds blowing so sharply in our century. To draw attention to this outcome in good time, but not to help bring it about, may well, more than almost anything else, be the duty of sincere and well-meaning evangelical theology." —

So much for Ströbel. That is his judgment — after his own manner. Whoever knows him will say: it is the same old man; every word a pound's weight. Others might perhaps vent their hearts in a somewhat different fashion, saying something like: "Why ask so much after the verdict of such a one, who hurls words about as though they were, and had to be, nothing but Reformation boulders?" "Let the zealot rage on!" "Let him play the prophet; the game will soon be up, and he who laughs last laughs best." "If the sign he prophesies does not come, if at the time of 'the rift' it is also said of him: 'I have caused to be left over' — even across the ocean — 'seven thousand men who have not bowed their knee!' — then his eyes will surely be opened!" But openly and honestly — we do not belong to such people. Our hearts laugh within us as often as we hear it rustle and roar in a Lutheran way, even when at times the wind blows sharp and there are gusts. We wish those others well, but we cannot follow them. "Quench not the Spirit." Let each act and testify "according to the measure of faith God has dealt out." Whoever is called to be a zealot, let him be zealous — yes, let him be zealous in a holy and right way.

We do, however, wish to justify ourselves — though only briefly. Many words are not needed here; our esteemed critic has already spoken enough of them before us. And what is more, we are not of those who think that "explanatory words ought to halt, or — alter, the course of events." If poor America, which according to a learned German vision is wholly and hopelessly and irretrievably swallowed up by a dominating Calvinist spirit, is otherwise ill-provided for enough, it still lacks, as far as we know, the dubious distinction of being especially fruitful in producing great heroes of word and mouth. Let our justification, therefore, be brief; in place of words — deeds.

"Who requires this of your hands?" — For this brief justification and vigorous "declaration," which is not at all intended to intervene, operating in the wheel of fleeting time, but rather, though in deepest humility, wishes to let deeds appear in place of words, with Lutheran honesty and forthrightness, the undersigned has all the more inclination, because this is not a matter of a battle on the field of scholarship, but only of a presentation of certain facts, and secondly, because the least man from the opposing camp, in his holy panoply, arrayed against a hero of Lutheran solid substance, against an Elijah-zealot in Go-