# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_September 1860_S282
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

282

(From Freimund's Wochenblatt.)

Scribes Should Not Write Unjust Judgments.
Isa. 10:1.

God forbids this in his Word; indeed, in the passage cited a "woe" is even pronounced upon such men. But such and similar passages of Scripture may strike one nowadays even in well-meaning, highly placed teachers, when one sees how they pass judgment on the Lutheran Church and on all her most deserving teachers — men who were ready to give up "hide and hair" for their "pure doctrine." This came to our mind on considering a recent work by the highly placed and highly honored Dr. A. Tholuck. The title of the work is: "Signs of Life of the Lutheran Church from All Estates, Before and During the Time of the Thirty Years' War." — And we will name only a few of the best-known names we meet in the interesting, instructive work: Elector Augustus of Saxony, Duke Ernst the Pious of Gotha, Johann Gerhard, Simon Dach, Joh. Arndt, Valerius Herberger, Valentin Andreä, and so forth.

Dr. Tholuck has by this work earned the thanks of all sincere Lutherans; for it is indeed a rich joy prepared for them to see the old warriors of the Lord standing arrayed in battle line in their armor and with the shield of faith, not only against the devil, but also against such people as, with a double-dealing nature and doctrine — like Sanballat of Samaria and Tobiah the Ammonite — wanted to help build on the walls of Jerusalem (Neh. 4:1,3). They had to be answered as Ezra there answered the enemies: "It is not fitting for us and you to build the house of our God together; but we alone will build unto the LORD, the God of Israel" (Ezra 4:3). From a two-sided building plan, where solid stonework is used for the one part and scrollwork ornament for the other, no sensible, well-proportioned building can ever be raised. Hence the sincere Lutheran must also, in turn, dispute what Dr. Tholuck says, in publishing his work, about the Lutheran church-edifice. He says, however, on p. 5:

"I do not deny that, in the course of these studies, the Lutheran Church, in her doctrine, in her institutions, and in many of her representatives, has become very dear to me, and that thereby I have also come to better appreciate the endeavor of those who in our time have taken to heart the rebuilding of the Church upon her historical foundations. Yet in saying this I am far from speaking a word for that Confessionalism which sees the salvation of the present in a repristination of the past, hide and hair, or for that Judaizing particularism which makes 'One is my dove' its motto and fails to recognize the gifts (charismata) given to other churches. It is Stahl of whom the saying has been made: 'It is truly historical,