# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Januar 1860_S1
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Lehre und Wehre.

Volume VI.    January 1860.    No. 1.

Preface to the 1860 Volume.

When, a number of years ago, the "Lutheraner" and later the present theological journal made their appearance, the charge was at once raised against these pages that in them — and indeed generally in the Synod of Missouri etc. — too narrow a boundary was evidently being set to orthodoxy, and thus also to church fellowship. Far from letting this trouble us at the time, we hoped rather that at least all those who confess God's Word to be "the one rule and standard by which all doctrines and teachers alike are to be judged and evaluated" would soon think better of it, and would at last gain from our expositions the conviction that members and ministers of the rightly-believing Church cannot act otherwise. But this our hope has not been confirmed. The accusations multiply. From every side voices are raised against the "course" followed in the organs of our Synod and by the Synod itself, and the staff is broken over it [i.e., it is condemned] as a heresy-fostering one.*) Even some of those who formerly spoke in agreement and encouragement have now begun to take up a position against us.

In support of these our observations, let a few examples from recent times find a place here.

Thus, among others, the "Lutheran Observer" of the 18th of November last year writes: "If we may be permitted to judge by what appears in the Alt-Lutheraner and in Lehre und Wehre, we are compelled to assume that they can find or see Christ nowhere but in the sacraments. They presumptuously place all others under accusation who do not share their views, and would exclude from the Lord's Table every Lutheran who may stand in connection with the General Synod. Scarcely

*) Of the Grabau faction, which comes forward against our course as a heretical one, we say nothing here. It condemns itself, in that it has even dared to make our catechism — compiled from Dietrich, the Dresden Kreuzkatechismus, and the symbolical books — into a heretical book, whereby that faction alone has already stamped upon itself the brand of heresy.

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