# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juni 1860_S170
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

170 From the Ecclesiastical Present.

It takes, indeed, a great deal of polemical zeal for a pastor and connoisseur of the human heart like Löhe to forget himself so far as to offer such a defense of the "saints" — not an evangelical one, but a poor advocate's plea. For we do not believe that he is otherwise unaware how different a thing it is to bear sufferings self-chosen and sufferings laid on one by God, and how someone can be exceedingly strong in bearing the one and at the same time exceedingly weak in bearing the other. For obedience is better, but also harder, than sacrifice. And a man can bring himself to do anything, so long as he thereby serves his own self-will. —

It remains for us to substantiate with a few words our judgment, expressed above, on the lack of historical truth in the tales of the "Rose Months." It does not, indeed, awaken any favorable prejudice for the critical sifting and for the credibility of the material communicated in the book, when the author himself forewarns at the very outset (p. XIII) that "the whole little book might bear on its brow as motto the well-known words: relata refero, I report what I have read." Whoever therefore seeks anything other than "the narration and simple appreciation of what lies open to everyone in the field of calendar literature" will certainly not be satisfied. We had, indeed, expected no more than a "simple appreciation" of what is narrated; but we know how little the actual appreciation bears the character of evangelical simplicity and clarity. We do not conceal, on the other hand, that we had expected more than a mere retelling of what is already found in the calendar literature; and we believe that one who tells stories of saints "for morning lessons for (evangelical) women and maidens" (p. VII), and thereby "to awaken the sense of discipleship" (p. 96), may rightly be expected to give more. Had the author set himself the task of orienting his women readers concerning the holy women named in the calendar, and had he, in a simple appreciation of what is narrated, pointed out, case by case, now the historically edifying, now the legendary-poetic, now the mendacious and tasteless character of those tales, then we — even if we differed in particular judgments — would have refrained from speaking of this difference.

But the matter stands so much the worse, in that the author, however much the purpose of his book indeed required it, nevertheless makes the attempt actually to separate out the truth-content from the legendary historical material. Has he not, "with a discerning mind, read and retold a good many things that struck him as important and remarkable" (p. XIII)? The result is a jumble of truth and error bearing everywhere the stamp of lack of principle and of arbitrariness — at times a pruning of the old legendary tales where their content went beyond, or seemed offensive to, the author's own belief, but more often still a credulous retelling of unauthenticated tales —