# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Februar 1862_S40
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

40 Preface to the 1862 Volume.

lowliest service. We desire no greater renown, but rather hold ourselves unworthy even of rendering the church this service; and we thank God most humbly that He has hitherto, according to His great grace, deemed us worthy of it, and has also — we could, if it were of use, cite many testimonies to this — blessed it, both here and in Germany, beyond our asking and understanding.

But, Pastor Fengler will object to us, we do not so much censure this, that you only reproduce the old Lutheran doctrine, but rather that "you yourselves do not bring forth the old in a new way out of yourselves," but instead almost always let the ancients themselves speak, in a mass of citations.

To this let the following serve as an answer.

It is, unfortunately, a matter of manifold experience that at present, in the very midst of our church, a great number of writers come forward with the claim to be presenting nothing but the old — only in a new garment, in a clearer, more accurate, and deeper development, better suited to the needs and demands of our age, with a more correct, indeed with the only correct "scriptural proof," only just recently discovered, brought forth anew out of themselves; who, however, under this claim, introduce into the church a thoroughly new doctrine, a completely new religion. In some this may rest on self-deception; in others it is evidently the application of a fraus pia. The latter regard the Lutheran church as a beautiful, old, solid Gothic building defying the storms of the age; they therefore think it would indeed be a pity to tear it down and erect in its place a less solid structure in a new style, one not yet resting on the consciousness of the people, and consider it most advisable to keep as much as possible of the old masonry and framework, the old names, the old ceremonies, the old ornaments, the old endowments, only that a better doctrine, a system in which all the sciences are reconciled and which must therefore also finally please a philosophically educated world, should from now on resound from the pulpit of the old, venerable cathedral. With this class of theologians we wish to remain unmingled. We are in earnest when we say that we hold the doctrine of the old Lutheran church to be the doctrine of the true church, and wish to bring no other. This we mean to prove, among other things, precisely by so often letting our fathers themselves speak.

To this is added the fact that at present a dreadful confusion, obscurity, and ignorance prevails as to what is actually Lutheran; hence it would be very unwise, especially on our part — since we are always met with great mistrust as wretched dilettantes — if, in our intention of bringing the true Lutheran doctrine back into currency (a doctrine for which a certain piety has in many quarters remained among theologians, and still more among our people), we were to present it only in our own words, and, out of pride as it were, refuse to let our own witnesses and teachers speak for themselves. We are firmly convinced that, even could we present the pure Lutheran doctrine still more adequately and forcefully our-