# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Februar 1858_S44
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

44 "Luther or Arndt!"

...age of the Reformation. So it is not lacking, and cannot be lacking, after such premises: Dr. Luther's writings are not merely our favorite studies, our "beloved spice-gardens" and earthly heavenly paradises — they are also, for us, a well-stocked armory and arsenal against all our enemies, from which we draw forth one weapon after another. Even though our public organs, "Der Lutheraner" and "Lehre und Wehre," must often and repeatedly endure mockery and petty carping from the newspaper heroes of our day on account of the many citations from Dr. Luther's writings, this troubles us so little that we not only visit our armory ever more diligently, but in this regard also count as splendid and precious the statement of an A. Harless in his preface to his theses on "Church and Office," where he writes on page VIII as follows: "When, then, I cite Luther at length, I ask that this not be regarded as a mere citation or the statement of another. I let Luther speak for me, for he speaks better than I could speak. It also happens with men of such a calling that what they said for particular times seems, by providential arrangement, to have been spoken for all generations. It is in this sense that I bring him in." So too it is said in the book "The Voice of Our Church," right in the preface: "We, the members of the German Ev.-Luth. Synod of Missouri, Ohio, and Other States . . . . . have been intent on giving especially abundant excerpts from Luther's writings; this will certainly not seem strange to any reader who has come, with us, through God's grace, to recognize that Luther, and only Luther" — here you hear our watchword officially declared — "and only Luther, was the Reformer of the Church called by God, after whose name we gladly let ourselves be called, not because we believed in him, but because we have recognized that the doctrine which he preached is not his doctrine, but the pure Word of the eternal God." In sum: so long as, in the public equipping of our office of teaching and testimony, "God's Word and Luther's doctrine" remains current among us, resounds and rings out, and especially so long as the doctrine of faith, after the manner of our dear father and master, sweetens, animates, inspires, and governs everything, everything; so long as Dr. Luther lives among us in his writings, in our sermons, catechizings, in our hymns, in our rebuking, admonishing, and comforting, in our holy struggles and contentions for the Lord's cause: so long there is still no danger that we should, knowingly, shamefully and disgracefully abandon our watchword. "Only Luther!"

In the second place, it has by no means been proven that among us the doctrine of sanctification and good works stands in some unhealthy and un-Lutheran relation to the doctrine of justification and faith. Even if we are charged, in passing, with "an edifying over-busyness," that, according to our plain and unrefined understanding, is still far from proving that everything has thereby been demonstrated; we would rather earnestly ask that this considerate "personifying manner of presentation" be set aside a little, and that instead