# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Mai 1860_S150
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

150 Survey.

the shepherds were lords of the faith and, as such, only sheared the flock but did not tend and pasture it, then they would hold strictly to purity of doctrine according to God's Word, would not tolerate false prophets who teach human wisdom, would drive out all hirelings, all belly-serving priests, all wolves in sheep's clothing, with sweet words of love on their lips and serpent's venom under the tongue and in the heart. And that would be so easy to do in our days, where the voice of the masses has such great weight and power, as one has been able to observe well enough everywhere in the ecclesiastical commotions. But in these very matters they have sought, said, and enacted exactly the opposite of all that has been said. Why, then, have they done so? Because they see another spirit continually rising up, one that stands directly opposed to their own, and of which it is just as undeniable and unmistakable that it has again become a power in our days and, though slowly and amid hard struggles with that sworn hereditary enemy, keeps ever further gaining ground: that is the spirit of faith in the gospel. For forty years this spirit has again arisen among us and has penetrated every class and generation — not so as to fill them, but so that here and there it has sown a little plot and brought forth good fruit, and so that these oases in the wide wilderness have spread ever further and individual furrows have stretched out to meet one another, so that all Germany, just as with a railway network, is now overspread with a network of gospel preaching-places, of societies for home and foreign mission, of Bible societies, young men's societies, rescue institutions, infant schools, day-nurseries, deaconess houses and -societies, all of which do their work, driven by the spirit of faith in the gospel, and whose endeavor is directed toward counteracting, in this way or that, that spirit of unbelief and lack of discipline among great and small, in general and in particular. To be sure, in this way or that not merely as regards outward forms and means, but also as regards the inner current and direction. In one place the current still moves along in broad shallowness as a general Christianity and carries with it much sand of loose doctrine, as in the Gustavus-Adolphus Society and in the Evangelical Alliance; and wherever this current deposits its sand, upright Christian and churchly life cannot flourish there, as I have already shown once by the example of the Hungarian congregations, and shall show further still. Or else it is the gently murmuring current of busy activism, which hops like a little brook over pebbles and winds its way through flowery meadows; that current carries with it many empty, glittering shells of fashionable Christianity, especially where it overflows its banks and presses into every town and hamlet; there it then leaves behind the empty shells in great stagnant pools, which evaporate and turn to swamp when the summer heat comes. Elsewhere, however, the current runs deeper and more toward the bottom; there the banks indeed narrow, but the floods grow stronger and purer, as they cast off mud and sand from themselves onto the banks alongside — and that is the confess