# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Januar 1862_S5
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Preface to the 1862 Volume. 5

life of the Church, and above all, what has been granted us by grace three hundred years ago through the work of the Lutheran reformation of the Church, we ought to become acquainted with, make our own, and hand on. Were we unwilling to do this, were we to let go to waste the blessing stored up, as in full warehouses, in the writings of Luther and his faithful successors; were we to let the rich stores already laid up in them lie unused, and were concerned only to seek what is new — then we should indeed have to fear that the LORD might once more cry out over us: "If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace! but now they are hid from thine eyes. Because thou knewest not the time of thy visitation." (Luke 19.) What God revealed to Luther out of his word three hundred years ago was entrusted and revealed not to him alone, but to the whole Church. It is a pound that has been placed in the hands of us all by the Lord with the charge: "Occupy till I come." Were we now to keep this pound wrapped in the napkin of our libraries, we could truly not hope one day to hear the word: "Well done, thou good and faithful servant; thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things." We should rather have to expect one day to hear the dreadful word: "Wherefore then gavest not thou my money into the bank, that at my coming I might have required mine own with usury?" (Luke 19; Matt. 25.) To let what has already been given to the Church lie unused, in order to be "creative" ourselves, could, on our part, spring from nothing but hateful ingratitude and pride as its motive. That would be to despise prophesyings. 1 Thess. 5:20. There the spirits of the prophets refused to be subject to the prophets. 1 Cor. 14:32. If a Melanchthon, a Brenz, a Rhegius, a Chemnitz, a Johann Gerhard were willing to be only Luther's pupils, and testified publicly that whatever they knew, they owed, next to Scripture, to him, and had learned from him — what are we, that we should deny and conceal our discipleship and wish to play the master! "For all things are yours," says the apostle, "whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world" (1 Cor. 3), and so we too may and must well add: "whether Luther or Melanchthon, whether Chemnitz or Gerhard" — and should we, then, wish to regard and treat this property, given to us by God, as though it were someone else's goods! Or is it perhaps already truly ours merely because we keep it in our bookcases? All the gifts — the gift of speaking by the Spirit of wisdom and of knowledge, the gift of prophecy, the gift of discerning spirits, the gift of interpreting tongues (1 Cor. 14), and so forth — which God distributed in such rich measure two and three hundred years ago, are all given "for the common profit" of the Church in every place and in all the times that follow — and should we, then, wish to keep these gifts locked away unused? Or are we perhaps to seek nothing other than what the orthodox Church has already found, yet still to seek it once more?