# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Mai 1858_S135
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

On the Divisions in the Lutheran Congregations Here. 135

in vain that they extol Christian love so highly. Cursed be the love that is kept up to the abyss of hell with harm and detriment to the doctrine of the faith, to which everything else must rightly yield — be it love, apostle, angel from heaven, or whatever it may be" — and so also brotherliness, unity, one Lutheran church and one Lutheran synod.—

Far nearer at hand stands a true, brotherly bond among the synods that share this one, full confession of the truth in common; only the hindrance still stands in the way that on the one side it is earnestly required that not only the preachers but also their congregations must be truly Lutheran if they are to become and remain members of the synod — for which reason the congregations' constitutions are examined by the synod and the congregations themselves are visited by a visitor — while on the other side, frequently, those preachers and congregations are also recognized as Lutheran and counted as members of the synod who, in their spirit and also in their constitution and their charter, are thoroughly unionistic.—

Would that the merciful, gracious God might grant that here in America a united Lutheran church, founded in all faithfulness and with full earnestness on the whole, so precious confession built upon the eternal rock of the imperishable Word, might develop out of the confusion of the various synods. Then, indeed, the intolerable state of affairs would also cease whereby, for example, several Lutheran preachers often stand in one city who, as members of different Lutheran synods, watch one another with suspicion and, unfortunately, now and again, out of a regrettable eagerness to profit their own synod, do damage to the church itself. Then, at least, all sincere Lutherans who do not dismember the faith of their church would belong to the one synod of their own state; there would come more unity, strength, and joy into the whole work of such a synod, and above all a strong and salutary dam would be set against the divisions and separations in the congregations.

But so long as this goal — namely, one Lutheran church with synods bounded by territory — is not yet reached, at least, in order to establish even in some measure an order pleasing to God, the principle ought to be recognized: that every orthodox congregation must be bounded off from every other orthodox congregation not by preachers and their followers, but geographically or territorially. The apostle Paul calls it his "rule," his standard, κανον (2 Corinthians 10:16), that he does not boast in another man's line of things made ready to his hand; and he says, Romans 15:20, that he made it his special aim to preach the gospel where Christ's name was not yet known, "that I might not build upon another man's foundation." That this principle of the holy apostle — not to build up, in a place where a congregation has already been founded through the preaching of the gospel,