# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_M rz 1858_S70
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

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

...position — that reason would much rather believe what is harder to believe, namely, that God works the regeneration of little children without means, than that he works it through the means of Baptism, which is easier to believe, since we already hold that God, in all other cases, deals with men through means and lets them share in his grace; and reason commits this perversity only because it takes more delight in its own little pet notion than in what God has revealed.

Further, the present writer misses, in the discussion of the capacity of little children to be regenerated (p. 25 and following), any consideration of the fact that when a person dies believing and blessed, he is also at once redeemed from the body of this death, that is, from the remnant of original sin which he has had to bear and be plagued with during this life. Likewise unclear to him are the words bearing on the same subject on p. 61: "Dr. Schmucker well knew that the writers he cites (Luther, Quenstedt, etc.) speak of the complete sanctification, or entire freedom from all sin, of those already regenerate."

Nor, again, can the present writer approve of the fact that Mr. Pastor Brown, after having cited against Prof. Schmucker the testimonies of Chemnitz, Gerhard, and Hollaz for the regeneration of little children through Baptism, states that he does not consider it necessary to say how far he agrees with these authorities; for if Pastor Brown does not agree with them — which will certainly not be the case — how would it be fitting for him to hold them up to Prof. Schmucker, against whom he takes the field on behalf of the Lutheran church, as witnesses for something that he, Prof. Schmucker, ought to believe? But if he does agree with them, as will certainly be the case, then this was surely the place to confess it, and to remember the word of the Lord: Whosoever shall confess me before men, him will I also confess before my Father which is in heaven.

For the rest, the present writer can only wholeheartedly applaud Mr. Pastor Brown, and earnestly wishes that the Lord of the church may preserve and strengthen Mr. Pastor Brown in the faith, further him ever more in knowledge, and continue to appoint him, as a highly gifted instrument, to be of much blessing to his church in this poor and troubled time.

As for Mr. Prof. Schmucker, however, it is to be wished that he finally recognize how, by his manner of proceeding hitherto, he works not to the church's blessing but to its harm — for the blessing that a teacher confers upon the church is not to be measured by the number of students he has, or the number of books he writes, but rather by whether he teaches divine truth to the former and in the latter, and whether he adorns pure doctrine with an upright walk, including in those particulars that are of special concern for a teacher and writer — and that he take another path; or, should this not happen, that the part of the church to which the theological seminary at Gettysburg is entrusted take notice and act.