# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Februar 1858_S46
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

46 "Luther or Arndt!"

...against Grabau and his associates, as well as against the Union[ist]s; that of the holy sacraments, of baptism against the Anabaptists, of the Holy Supper against the pseudo-Lutherans and all sacramentarian fanatics; the article of holy absolution against the Methodists, the Reformed, etc.; the article of private confession against the unchurchly Lutherans; the article on the authority of the Word against Rationalists both coarse and refined; the article of the last things against the tiresome Chiliasts; the article of Christian liberty against the falsely spiritual haters of ceremonies, the railers against church government, and the free-thinking rabble. Whoever has lived through several years of this, and has thereby grown accustomed to the smell of gunpowder, so that he has often felt as though "Der Lutheraner" were against everyone and everyone against it — such a man does not impute to it a pietistic love of quiet, or a leaning toward the Arndtian direction. Just let a man listen to what a storm breaks out when the valiant "Der Lutheraner" (or our other organs as well) so much as spreads its wings a little and makes a bit of use of that holy weapon of irony — biblically warranted against proud, stubborn enemies of the truth, and so mightily proven in the Reformation. Then come the lamentations, a howling and wailing from both sides, enough to make one's heart fail — were it not firmly fixed. Hebrews 13:8.

Should it still be necessary, after all this, to point to further particulars? For example, to our struggle against conventicle-mongering; our resolutions against "leading in prayer and heart-prayer" by laymen in public worship (see the 4th Synodical Report of 1850); to our endeavor to help private confession here attain its proper churchly standing, as well as more general use; to our free-evangelical manner of increasingly securing entrance for the old-church order of worship; to our mission work, grounded solely on God's command and required by the commandment of love of neighbor, carried on among those in whose ancestral seats we dwell — in doing which we by no means build, in the fashion so fashionable nowadays, an ecclesiola in ecclesia, but act as the Church, still less do we pay homage to the general market-crier's touting of the smallest trifles; or to the spirit that prevails in our catechism schools, in our training institutions, or at the gatherings of our preachers and teachers at synods and conferences; or to the discomfort that German Pietists or Arndtists feel in all our congregations; to our good Lutheran slowness regarding the spread of our Church, etc. — The strongest testimony against that invented "edifying over-busyness," which for the most part arises from a resolute holding fast to the doctrine "of vocation," and which, in a land of the most immoderate speculation and the most senseless chasing and grasping, often costs no small struggle to withstand the whirlpool of the age — or to the testimony of our enemies, which acquits us of the charge brought by our friends?

Whether, then, "the not-yet-fought-out controversy over the ministry and the church" actually