# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_August 1858_S251
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Literature. 251

campaigns, they now direct themselves with force toward Oldenburg, where the church still bleeds from many wounds; for partly the pastors there are still, in overwhelming majority, rationalists of the purest water, and partly the achievements of [18]48 weigh upon the conscience of the church. There the Methodists find good soil among people whose longing for salvation cannot be satisfied in their own church. At first they loosened the soil through their colportage, then made individual forays, and now they seek really to gain a foothold in the capital. We must grant the people this much: they have zeal, and understanding in their zeal; they "compass land and sea to make one Methodist" (Matt. 23:15). But we cannot resist the impression that they too carry on their work as a business, and that it matters more to them to make a Methodist than to make a Christian; for they go right into congregations where the Word of God is faithfully preached and where the soul thus has its sufficiency.

What prospects the future holds for the Methodists is not clear to us; they will not grow weary any time soon, since they never lack for money. Besides, they sit firmly established in Bremen, have built themselves a church there, and will not easily be driven out. Yet they themselves seem to recognize that Germany, especially our North Germany which clings so stiffly to the old ways, is too stable for such fanaticism. For our Lower Saxon farmer guards himself against such attempts at conversion, even if he is not yet a conscious Christian, simply by the custom that his father and grandfather and so on had the "old faith" from Luther and found their sufficiency in it. Thank God that "the good old days" — which, to be sure, may have had their share of bad things too — are still, in this respect, an authority for our congregations. May the Lord preserve our church from the excessive allure of Methodism and teach us to hedge his vineyard about with fence and wall! (Saxon Church and School Gazette.)

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Literature.

We call attention to the following valuable works:

1. Luther's Exposition of the Gospels, compiled from his homiletical and exegetical works for students of Scripture, preachers, or readers seeking edification, by C. G. Eberle, pastor in Württemberg. Stuttgart, S. G. Liesching. 1857. XVI and 1016 pp., large octavo.

Dr. Guericke says of this work:

"A rich harvest for exposition, particularly the pastoral exposition of the Gospel pericopes and of the Gospels in general, has already long been afforded by Luther's Church and House Postils. Luther's other still-extant expositions of Scripture, however, have remained beside them, all too much, a buried treasure. They fill, after all, some 24 volumes of the Erlangen