# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_August 1858_S248
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

248 What a Precious Gift of God We Have in Our Synodical Fellowship.

experienced man, well grounded in the confession of the church, who also knows what he ought, and with all earnestness wills what he ought. United under such a head into a organically-jointed whole, how would the brethren, through common searching of the Scripture and living themselves into the doctrine of the church, through common prayer, common discussion of all that happens or is needful in the narrower and wider circle of the church, through common action, carried by one spirit, for the honor of God the Lord, and common standing-up for what is done by them therein, through common brotherly comfort and discipline — how would they, through all this, set up against the rationalistic shallowing, the stunting and dulling and secularizing of their own people, an insurmountable dam! But let us go one step further: let us imagine, over a certain number of superintendents, a district superintendent set as their bishop, standing to them in exactly the same relation as they themselves stand to their pastors, and the whole then united under the general superintendent as the bishop of the church province: then the necessary personal guidance of the church would be an orderly and thoroughgoing one; the age-old apostolic episcopal system would then come forth powerfully, not after the manner of the Roman hierarchy, but in a purity corresponding to evangelical doctrine; the whole teaching estate called to pastoral care would then form a spiritual, well-articulated body. And in this spiritual body, whose head is our Lord: what a living circulation of the blood from the inner parts to the outer, and back from the outer to the inner! What a rising and falling of the powers, a drawing from below, a receiving from above! How fragmentary, how disjointed, how far fallen into subjectivism the present condition appears, by comparison! —

But the more each individual pastor came out of the feeling of isolation and standing alone, attained to a vigorous churchly consciousness, and grew ever stronger within himself in a certain bondedness which is necessary for all fruit-bearing development — the more clearly this would be reflected in his official activity. What has beforehand become flesh and blood in himself must, according to nature, also come to formation in the congregation. A better churchly formation of the congregations would come about. This formation, however, is necessary, so that the root may be cut off from two great evils, dead ecclesiastical liberalism as well as one-sided pietism, and so that the church may regain her sanctifying power in the right exercise of discipline. —

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