# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juni 1860_S177
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Correspondence from Germany. 177

indeed, I now see in your synodical union the only larger church body of the present day that holds the doctrine of church, ministry, and church government purely and clearly according to the Lutheran confession, and carries it out consistently in practice. I know myself now wholly bound and united to you, while I see our German Lutheran church here split, torn, and driven about by the most manifold leaven of false doctrine — not only in general, but especially by the false state-church notions of church and church government, which, at bottom, are contrary to the nature of the church and to the sole authority of the Word of God in the ecclesiastical realm, and must without doubt be recognized as a chief harm to the church life of today. How heartily glad I am to have come to clarity on these life-questions, so important for the church of our time; how I thank, next to the Lord, also you, my dearest brothers, that you took me up in such great brotherly faithfulness, did not spare my errors, and, by giving me so thorough a testimony of the truth, did not judge me unworthy.

After this confession of mine here made, all the individual differences hitherto between us settle themselves, since at most there could be talk of quite subordinate practical, exegetical, or homiletical missteps — such as always and everywhere occur — over which, truly, across the great ocean, I have neither the desire nor the calling and ability to dispute with you. My inward desire and joy is now, rather, this: to assure you of my full unity with you and with the pure confession of our church. Into this joy, to be sure, there also mixes the equally great sorrow over the pitiful disunity of the church in Germany, which with every year comes to light ever more threateningly and openly. You have doubtless also learned in America how Löhe and his following in Bavaria shut themselves up ever more stubbornly in their false direction, which now centers especially on chiliasm. To a testimony of the truth which, for the sake of our former close connection, I believed I had to bear against Löhe last summer, and in which I especially asked that he see in it not merely my own small voice, but that of the church, of Luther, and of the fathers — Löhe merely answered: "that he regretted that I had trodden the path of Lutheran human doctrines*) and set my trust in Luther; thus would Lutheranism run out into Missourian sand." What deeply saddening state of soul, in a man once so dear to us, these

*) Terrible as this is, it is nevertheless, in this respect, honest, that Löhe here for once freely states outright what he takes the doctrines of Luther and the church in question to be. It remains puzzling only how, holding such a view, he and his followers can still bear the Lutheran name. But what, then, shall one say of the Grabauites, who — at least in their spokesmen — again and again, under the deceptive pretense of combating Missourian errors, attack express doctrines of Luther and the church, and yet do not have the courage to declare those doctrines of Luther and the church to be human doctrines, false and erroneous — let alone are honest enough to renounce the Lutheran name?
The Sender. [D. Eins. — i.e., Der Einsender, "the one submitting this piece"]