# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Mai 1858_S132
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

132 On the Divisions in the Lutheran Congregations Here.

not the Holy Spirit that set them; rather it is the devil who has commanded them to do it, the devil who has bidden them to set up altar against altar. However much one may cover and adorn the thing with fine names, the devil has always adorned himself — whether one calls it: compassion for the poor, driven-out souls who could no longer possibly endure staying in their congregation, because their "holy feelings" (that is to say, shameful self-righteousness) in the church, and their love of peace in the congregational meetings (understand: stubborn insistence on knowing better, and love of domination) were too greatly injured; or zeal in holy, inner mission work; or one may even say: it is everyone's duty to do everything so that one's own dear synod may spread and gain a great name; or indeed: America is a free country, so everyone has the right to do as he pleases, and it is entirely fitting to the American-Lutheran church in its grand new circumstances not to adapt itself to the Word of God, but rather to adapt that Word to American circumstances and to accommodate it. Say and defend and dissemble and lie as one will, this remains an incontestable truth: that just as it is a godly work to break fellowship with those who teach false doctrine, so, on the contrary, it is a godless, sinful business to make divisions and to tear oneself away willfully from orthodox fellowships on account of weaknesses and failings and sins of life on the part of preachers or members of congregations — and woe to the preachers and synods who lend aid to this sin: the blood of those who are thereby lost, the righteous God will require at their hands.—

C. How is this evil to be met, how is this sin to be remedied? First of all, naturally, by bringing it to the congregations' consciousness that divisions, partisan strife, and separations in the congregations are, in general, sin. That the bond between individual congregation members and the preaching office established in the congregation is thus no human bond, but one willed by God, brought about by God, a divine order, a divine bond. That whoever separates himself in a sinful manner from his congregation and his preacher tears himself away not from men alone, but from God himself — for "he that despiseth you," says Christ, "despiseth me" — and that such a one must accordingly be regarded as one who has placed himself under the ban. Then it must, after due instruction, be decisively brought about in the congregations that they abolish the miserable order — or rather disorder — of hiring their preachers for a certain time, or upon three months' notice, for that is a sinful degradation of the holy preaching office to a wretched human con-