# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Januar 1861_S1
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Lehre und Wehre.

Volume VII.    January 1861.    No. 1.

Preface to the 1861 Volume.

Pursuant to a resolution of our General Synod at its meeting held in October of last year at St. Louis, Mo., the undersigned joins the previous editor, at the outset of this seventh volume of the present journal, as co-editor at the side of the former.*) This change, or rather this increase in the editorial staff, will result in no change whatsoever in the character of this journal.

In the first announcement of "Lehre und Wehre" toward the end of the year 1854 in "Der Lutheraner," the following was communicated in advance to the public concerning the character which this "theological and ecclesiastical-historical monthly" was to bear: "This paper is to be, not a friend of the church, but a servant of the church; it is to stand not above or beside, but in and under the church. It will not lend itself as a playground even for those who set out to attack the doctrine of the orthodox church and its sanctified institutions, and — though they cannot overthrow it, for not even the gates of hell can do that, let alone the chatter of men who peddle worldly wisdom — nevertheless try their hand and shake at it. Holy Scripture, and after it the Book of Concord of our Evangelical Lutheran Church, shall be the norm of all essays to be admitted — Scripture the norma normans, the Symbol the norma normata; both in their plain and simple sense, according to the guidance of the undeniably orthodox fathers of our church, first and foremost a Luther, and then a Chemnitz, a Johann Gerhard, and other holy witnesses to the truth. As the title states, the material will be both thetical and antithetical, both didactic and polemical. At the same time, in keeping with its title, it will be the task of this journal to give as vivid a picture as possible of the condition of the church here and in the old fatherland — for which purpose, so far as the church's standing in the old homeland is concerned, communications of excerpts from the ecclesiastical journals of the fatherland

*) It is true that the Synod had also appointed Herr Conrector Schick as co-editor; he, however, declined to accept this office, although he declared himself willing to continue contributing to the journal as before, as his strength allows.   The Editors.

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