# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Januar 1862_S2
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

2 Preface to the 1862 Volume.

the LORD's word was precious, and prophecy was rare." (1 Sam. 3.) After the blessed Davidic times, in which the LORD builds the walls of Jerusalem, there always follow again the days of Elijah, when to the few still faithful servants the great decay of the Church wrings out the complaint: "The children of Israel have forsaken thy covenant, and thrown down thine altars, and slain thy prophets with the sword; and I, even I only, am left"; so that God must comfort them with his hidden congregation: "Yet I have left me seven thousand in Israel, all the knees which have not bowed unto Baal, and every mouth which hath not kissed him." (1 Kings 19.) The times in which the word of God increases and the congregations are established in the faith (Acts 6:7; 16:5) alternate with times of apostasy, when men turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside unto fables (2 Thess. 2:3; 2 Tim. 4:4). However necessary and important, in our conviction, the unceasing labor of theologians may be, we do not therefore believe in a continual organic growth of the Church toward divine knowledge, to be brought about by the diligence of theologians. We believe, rather, that pure and deep knowledge in the matters of God's word is a gift of free divine grace and mercy, which is granted to the Church from time to time only through special divine visitations of grace. Here too it holds true: "And to whomever thou givest it, he has it for nothing." Pure doctrine and right knowledge are no fruit of a free human will. Learning and acumen have no more power over them than the lack of both. Man, for all his diligence, may well squander these highest treasures of the Church, but he cannot give them to himself. To give them is a prerogative of the Holy Spirit, of whom, in this respect too, the "Ubi et quando visum est" ("where and when it pleases him," Augsburg Confession, Art. V.) holds especially true. But when God gives the Church an Athanasius, an Augustine, a Huss, then days of great divine visitation of grace have dawned for her, not only for the time in which God fills such consecrated vessels, but for all the times that follow. Then it is said: "Buy, for the market is before the door; gather in, while it shines and the weather is fair; use God's grace and word, while it is here. For this you should know: God's word and grace is a passing rain shower, which does not come again where it has once been."

A time of such divine visitation of grace was without doubt, above all, the time of the Reformation. There God bestowed by free grace, all at once, what more than a thousand years of theological diligence had not achieved and could not have achieved. The apostolic age, with the richness of its gifts, renewed itself there. Immeasurable treasures of pure and deep divine knowledge were then brought forth to light out of the mine of the divine word. There the prophecy concerning the time of the New Testament was most gloriously fulfilled: "The earth is full of the knowledge of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea." (Isaiah 9:11.)