# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Mai 1860_S151
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Survey. 151

confessional current; and however hemmed in and confined it may seem, its waters nevertheless force their way everywhere through the veins of the earth and so secretly water the surrounding fields and meadows far and wide, and make them fruitful and fertile. And just as the currents differ, so too do the directions. Thus the Gustavus-Adolphus Society and the Evangelical Alliance are directed chiefly against the Roman Church; but on account of their broad and shallow current they are not very dangerous to it, since it is so well palisaded and dammed in, and by means of the concordats it seeks precisely to press ever further forward against this current and to win ever more ground from it — here too finding it easiest to succeed. The activist current is directed chiefly toward this: that through works of love and mercy the needy, the fallen, and those not yet come of age should be brought near to a knowledge of the love of Christ and given a taste of his kindliness and friendliness, so that they might thereby be moved to gratitude and thus led to Christ, according to the saying: "Whoever offers thanks glorifies me, and that is the way whereby I will show him the salvation of God." But in this direction they overlook the fact that feeling is an unsure, wavering ground, and because, in their bare regard for love and works of love, they hold the purity of doctrine of little account and very often neglect to give that wavering ground a firm foundation and support through it — to "make the hearts firm" — they must therefore not only very often have sad experiences (since ingratitude is the world's reward), but even in the most favorable case they will draw in few soldiers of Christ who hold firm in conflict and trial, though it is precisely such soldiers that the earnestness of our time above all demands, and many of them will thereby themselves suffer harm. Yet, because their work, where the heart is sincere, has a divine promise, many of them too will be rescued as through fire, unto decisiveness and clarity, when the fire is once kindled. The confessional current, finally, is directed toward grounding hearts in the pure doctrine of God's Word and toward a decided confession of it in word and deed — in word and deed — for which reason the reproach of dead orthodoxy is unjustly brought against it, as its activity in the field of home missions proves, as does the undeniable fact that wherever it comes forward clearly, openly, freely, and faithfully in the office of the Word, devout hearts at once fall to it and grow glad in its light, because it is indeed "a precious thing that the heart be made firm." The reproach of narrowness, too, is unjustly brought against it, for although it walks within confessional bounds, bounds set for it by no other power than that of the Word of God clearly recognized and firmly believed, it is nevertheless free enough in its movement to press ever further into the depths, and with its influence and its blessing to strive ever further abroad as well — to carry along with it and make serviceable to itself whatever true, good, and beautiful thing it meets on its way, wherever it be, and come it from whomever it may. Of this Freimund has already given his readers proof enough