# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Februar 1862_S47
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

The New Periodical on Us Poor Missourians. 47

learning and falsely famous art of the newfangled rationalists and pantheistic gnostics, who falsely call themselves theologians and Lutheran ones at that, as well as from the statutes of the Romanizing pseudo-Lutherans, who diligently gather back together the popish rubbish and refuse that our fathers long ago swept out of the church, and carry it back in as newly won grains of gold, in order, if possible, to make a golden calf out of it.

Nevertheless, we are also kept by our dear teaching fathers in the true Lutheran sobriety and caution, so that we do not throw out the baby with the bathwater, but rather test, by the light of our good and eternally true confession, the spirits that presently make themselves known out of the Lutheran church of Germany. And what pride, what ingratitude it would be, if our heart did not leap for joy wherever we hear the voice of our true and one mother church clearly and plainly, be it in doctrine or in defense, indeed even further afield in histories and poems, in this or that form and shape — especially where, in matters of doctrine, it is not a game of hide-and-seek that is played, but the trumpet gives a bright and clear sound.

But of that false, hypocritical, and servile humility which, even within the Lutheran church, idolatrously burns incense and offers sacrifice to natural gifts, to learning, to real or apparent brilliance, to beauty of presentation, and so forth — even where all this stands not in obedience to Scripture as it reads, and not in the service of the churchly confession — of this humility we will have nothing to do; rather we hate and reject it from the bottom of our heart. We know that true theology, which is rooted solely in the ground of Scripture as it reads, at the same time wells up out of the depths of a Christ-believing heart, in which the divine Word lives and is exercised, according to Law and Gospel, in constant experience of sin and grace; and we are no less certain that it will show itself active only under the guidance and oversight of its confession, and will always be only a servant, never a mistress, of the church.

Now if we Lutherans of the Missouri Synod indeed lack much in the way of resources, equipment, and accessories which our church in Germany enjoys, we nonetheless have the advantage that we stand, simply and unanimously, with our theology on the very same ground of Scripture as our orthodox teaching fathers, and testify with them, according to our precious confession, to the age-old and ever-new Christian truth of salvation; and accordingly we also teach and raise our people, so that under God's grace and blessing truly Lutheran congregations may gradually arise and, so long as it pleases God, continue to exist.

"We believe, therefore we speak"; and if this our manner of speaking seems to many ears over there "very sharp and almost shrill," we simply cannot help it, and are of the opinion that this effect