# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_M rz 1858_S77
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

On the Divisions in the Lutheran Congregations Here. 77

for the sake of a single article concerning the sacrament, tear apart the Christian love and unity of the churches; they think, therefore, that we should not hold the article — one that does not matter so much, and about which one cannot even be entirely certain, since the apostles have not explained it as fully as would truly be necessary — in such high and great regard that for its sake we should let both the whole Christian doctrine and the common unity of so many Christian congregations come apart, especially since they are otherwise fully agreed with us in all the other articles of Christian doctrine, which are more necessary and matter more.

With this argument of theirs, which indeed has a plausible appearance and sounds well enough in the ears of the common people, they not only cause those who adhere to them to become bitterly hostile toward us, but also thereby persuade many pious people to become ill-disposed toward us and to suspect us of acting out of sheer stubbornness, or else out of some particular grudge, in refusing to go along with them. But these are nothing but the devil's nimble tricks and cunning, by which he seeks nothing else than to overturn and destroy not only this article, but the whole of Christian doctrine.

Therefore we answer their pretense with St. Paul, and say: "A little leaven leavens the whole lump." Just as in philosophy, when one errs a little at the beginning, a very great and immoderate error results at the end: so it goes also in theology, that a small error is bound to corrupt and falsify the whole of Christian doctrine. Therefore doctrine and life are to be very sharply distinguished from one another. Doctrine is not ours, but God's, who has called us solely as servants and ministers over it: therefore we neither should nor can give up or relax even the very least title or letter of it. Life, however, is ours; therefore, as far as that is concerned, the sacramentarians can ask nothing of us that we would not gladly do, suffer, and forgive, etc. — but only so far as nothing is given up in doctrine and faith. For so we always say with St. Paul: "A little leaven leavens the whole lump."

Therefore in this matter we cannot yield so much as a hair's breadth. For doctrine is so precisely compassed about and exactly measured that one can neither add to it nor take anything from it without great and noticeable harm; but with life it is such that it may well take something upon itself, or else yield something, do or suffer, as necessity requires.

When a little speck of dust falls into someone's eye, he cannot bear it, but has it removed, or it does the eye harm. That is why we Germans have a saying about eye medicine: nothing is good for the eyes. And Christ says, Matthew 6:22, Luke 11:34: "The eye is the light of the body; if therefore your eye is sound, your whole body will be full of light," etc., and afterward, verse 36: "If then your whole body is full of light, having no part