# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Januar 1862_S19
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

The Lutheran and Missionary. 19

-it through the bond of peace"? And how earnestly does Luther, too, call us to brotherly love, when he expounds Rom. 12:10, "Be kindly affectioned one to another with brotherly love," as follows: "This is the proof of love in the highest degree, that Christians should have among themselves a special love, beyond the common love shown to other people; for the little word 'kindly' denotes the love that father and mother have toward their children, and brothers toward one another; as if he were to say: You Christians shall not merely love one another, but each shall be, toward the other, cordial, motherly, fatherly, and brotherly. Now what such friendly, brotherly love does, suffers, and bears for one's neighbor, learn from a natural mother toward her child; so has Christ also done for us, and still does, in that he bears with us as unclean, imperfect, frail, sinful people, so that it seems as though we were not Christians at all; but his love makes us Christians, regardless of our failings." Truly, whoever does not burn in his soul for heartfelt, brotherly fellowship, and whom the present division does not weigh upon the heart like a deep pain, is a Christian in name only and a dead, hypocritical Lutheran.

How gladly would we, therefore — and the living God is our witness to this — extend the hand of brotherhood to the editors of the "Lutheran" and to the members of the General Synod generally, in sincerity and warmth; but we cannot, our conscience forbids it, we would make ourselves guilty of a knowing sin if we did so. — If, now, the editors of the "Lutheran" care to come into brotherly fellowship with the Lutherans of the Missouri Synod as well, then we earnestly ask them herewith to help remove what separates us — namely, to show that our conscience is in error, that union with them would not be sin but a work well-pleasing to God. What prevents us from extending the hand of brotherhood to the members of the General Synod is that we are unable to recognize them as Lutherans. They call themselves Lutherans, to be sure, but they are Unionists. That is our conviction, founded on facts. And would it not, then, be shameful hypocrisy, given such an inward disposition, to extend to them outwardly the hand of brotherhood? —

In order to prove that the General Synod and the editors of the "Lutheran" are unionistic, we do not wish to hold up again at length points already often discussed — such as, for example, the unionistic lack of confessional commitment of the General Synod as such, the unionistically ambiguous phrase "substantially correct," the unionistic staffing of its educational institutions, in which professors teach who have publicly rejected doctrines of the Lutheran Church, the whole unionistic composition of the General Synod itself, etc. — but we wish only to shed closer light on a single point, one expressed by the editor, in his "Standpunkt" ["Where We Stand"], as a fundamental principle of American Lutheranism. It reads: "We want no sectarian hedges around our pulpits, nor barriers around our communion table,