# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Februar 1860_S47
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Melanchthon's Death-Day. 47

have hitherto counted among the faithful confessors of our Lutheran faith, overwhelmed by the current of the temper of our age, abandon the little watchtower on our walls from which our fathers, now at rest in God, also fought against the "avowed chiliasts" — we cannot go off and away with them. Let them, on the wall of the good old confession, shift this stone and that from where it was originally set, or even take it out altogether as an unnecessary filler-stone, in order to make room for a larger crowd and put to shame the old grumbling prophets who know how to prophesy nothing but ever-worsening times — we cannot take part in such a work, nor help bring it about that the Church bequeathed to us, which emerged united in faith out of hard struggles, should at last become a Babel. Let others one day dare to answer for it before the Lord of the Church — we do not dare to. Indeed, even Melanchthon's own alteration of the Augustana seems to us to have been a far more honest work than the present procedure of so many so-called "decided" Lutherans. Melanchthon laid hands only on the Augustana, which in his self-absorption he could easily regard as his own work, and at least honestly struck out what seemed to him to run counter to his ideas of union in the Augustana; but now people actually want not only an altered Augsburg Confession, but also altered catechisms, altered Smalcald Articles, an altered Formula of Concord, and withal are not honest enough to strike out before all the world the words that do not fit the new faith, but have rather agreed to understand the words differently than they were, as everyone knows, originally meant; and why indeed? — So that people who have long since fallen away from the doctrine of our Church may keep the honor of fidelity and constancy, remain in our midst, and lend our Church lustre.*)

God preserve us from the ever more finely spun snares of the seduction of this wicked age. Ah yes:

In this last troubled time
Grant us, Lord, steadfastness,
That we may keep thy Word and Sacrament
Pure until our end. Amen!

Melanchthon's Death-Day.

(Conclusion.)

We now turn to our actual question: What is our attitude toward the person of M., and especially toward the observance of his death? We have

*) It is remarkable how highly, even by otherwise "decided" Lutherans, men within our Church are now esteemed solely because they distinguish themselves by conspicuous "works," even though such works are mostly child's play compared to the works of, say, earlier Jesuits, such as those of a Xavier! So far has the recognition of the true treasure entrusted to our Church vanished.