# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juli 1860_S197
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Editorial Correspondence. 197

...leads to a school, finds new teachings on the new path, and lets a new structure rise on a supposedly firmer foundation slipped in under the old building, and under the title of a strictly confessional but further-developed Lutheranism, foists a completely different doctrinal system upon the old Lutheran church. Yes, it is said, do you then wish to deny the formal principle of the Lutheran Church, that Scripture is the sole rule and norm of doctrine and of faith? We answer: Far be it! Yet as surely as interpretation is a charism that is not given to everyone, and far less to all in equal measure (Rom. 12:6–7; 1 Cor. 12:30, cf. vv. 4, 10), so surely does it not mean making right use of that principle when everyone wants to find everything out of Scripture by himself, and will not receive as a disciple the treasures of scriptural doctrine already brought up by those to whom the gift of scriptural interpretation was granted in a high degree. Whoever will not let himself be given what the Church has already dug out of the mine of Scripture through God's enlightenment, but wants to fetch everything out of it for himself by his own effort, will indeed find out whether God begins the history of the Church over again with him and grants him once more the gracious visitation of the Reformation era, which he failed to heed in a Luther and others. Sad indeed would it stand with us if we had received the pure doctrine from Luther as from Luther. But that is simply not the case. Herein lies precisely the incomparable gift of a Luther and of God's other lofty instruments: that they not only give the scriptural truth, but also bring the one to whom they give it to the clarity that the truths given are scriptural. Rightly to receive the pure doctrine from our believing fathers therefore does not exclude but rather includes drawing it from the well of Scripture; and whether we have received it so received, or without clear knowledge that and how it has flowed to us from the pure little wells of Israel, that those may judge who have read the testimonies of our faith.

Oh, how I therefore rejoice that God has granted me the high grace to be able to stand in the fellowship of our synod! To the Lord's praise be it acknowledged by me: I see in it the days of our fathers' unity of faith returned. May the gracious and merciful God, whose pure gift of grace this unity is, preserve it for us further. May He make us faithful to guard this precious jewel also for our part. May He, as He has made us intimately one with our fathers already resting in the grave, also make us ever more one with our brothers living and struggling beside us. May He, through our unity, make us ever stronger and more fruitful. May He — and this is my closing wish today — help me, that I may soon step again, newly strengthened, into the circle of my brothers, and continue to enjoy the blessing I have hitherto enjoyed there, until the day of my death, when I hope through Christ to enter into the blessed fellowship of the church triumphant. Amen.

In the Lord, yours,
C. F. W. Walther.