# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_M rz 1858_S67
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Where the Doctrine Is False, There Life Too Is Not Right. 67

Mr. Brown does indeed concede that in Prof. Schmucker's writings passages are also to be found that sound different from, and more orthodox than, those cited; but he complains that a Lutheran professor of theology can make such objectionable statements as those cited and similar ones — statements too clear and definite to be reconciled with the others, and occurring too often to be thought unconsidered.

In doing so, however, he proceeds leniently, in that he testifies to his wish to keep peace with all men so far as possible; attacks not so much the person as the false doctrine; and still allows a certain respect to Prof. Schmucker's external position.

The simple reader might now perhaps think that, upon the appearance of Pastor Brown's article in the Review, Prof. Schmucker did one of the three things which, under the circumstances, seemed the only honorable courses open to him: namely, either confess that he himself did not know what he was saying; or that he himself did not know what he believed; or that, while he indeed knew well enough what he was saying and what he believed, he had until now been stuck in error and unbelief, and had shamefully sought to conceal the same under the pretense of orthodoxy and smuggle it into the poor church. But the simple reader is very much mistaken if he thinks that this is how things go in the camp of "American Lutheranism," as they call it to the disgrace of two good names, and among its representatives. Rather, matters proceeded as follows: Pastor Brown was attacked and made suspect through several anonymous articles in the Lutheran Observer on account of his article, and when at last, with difficulty and through the favor of one of the Observer's proprietors, he obtained the admission of a worthy reply from himself, it appeared, interrupted in many places by asterisks, so that it looked as if here and there something had had to be omitted from it because it had been too strong to be published — whereas in fact not a single word had been left out. The Review, too, was sought to be harmed for having accepted so displeasing an article, and finally, in its October number, there appeared a kind of rejoinder from Prof. Schmucker to Pastor Brown's article, which was afterward also printed and distributed in pamphlet form.

The title of this rejoinder is: Rev. J. A. Brown's New Theology, examined by S. S. Schmucker, D. D., and was, as the author himself states, deliberately chosen; and it gives occasion — while the author perhaps thought thereby to win his readers' applause for his cleverness — to see through both his plan and himself. For Pastor Brown had labeled Prof. Schmucker's divergent and offensive views as "New Theology," and Prof. Schmucker now seeks to twist the whole matter so that Pastor Brown's ill will and incompetence alone were the cause of his having, in his