# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Februar 1862_S48
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

48 The New Periodical on Us Poor Missourians.

is produced perhaps less by our manner of speech than by overtender, nervously irritable, and pampered ears. If our brothers over there therefore "lose sight of us somewhat," we are indeed sorry for this on their account; but it must suffice and comfort us that the faithful God keeps us in his sight; and this he will continue to do, so long as we, in simplicity of heart, before and in all works of faith and labor of love, preserve the legacy entrusted to us — namely, the pure Christian Lutheran doctrine of his Word — and do not slide off, neither to the right nor to the left, into the sheer abysses of false doctrine, but rather combat it, according to the ability God grants, with all earnestness.

Furthermore, if "our dialect seems to many to be very Americanized," this can only be so in the ears of the state-church or Romanizing Lutherans. Whoever would take the trouble to read attentively our doctrine of the church, the preaching office, church government, church polity, and similar matters, without prejudice or partisanship, "even if only with a jurist's love of justice," would surely become convinced that it is simply grounded on God's Word and thoroughly in accord with the confession of our church.

We do indeed teach that our Lord Christ has given the office of the keys directly to the whole of Christendom, the communion of saints, as to each individual local congregation in its believing members, together with and in the Gospel, in order that it be established locally for public service and office, on behalf of the congregation, through the orderly call of persons who are orthodox, apt to teach, and blameless. Who could maintain that this is not scriptural and Lutheran? Where is anything "Americanized" here? At the same time, however, we likewise teach that the churchly teaching office, as a continuation of the apostolic office, is of divine institution and appointment, and that its holders are servants of Christ just as much as of his congregation. And by this we guard against the doctrine, often falsely ascribed to us but rejected by us in all earnestness, that the churchly teaching office is merely a human arrangement, meant only to see that everything proceeds honestly and in good order, and that all disorder is prevented in the preaching of the Gospel and the administration of the sacraments. For this would indeed be an unscriptural transferring of local, civil constitutional forms onto the churchly domain; this would indeed be "Americanized"; for it cannot be denied that, at least according to the prevailing practice, within the Lutheran church of this country and outside our Synod, the preachers mostly appear, and conduct themselves accordingly, merely as temporarily hired servants of the people. But we have nothing to do with this folly. We avoid equally the civil-democratic and the hierarchical-papist excess; our preachers are to us stewards of Christ, the master of the house, just as much as of his household's honor, the congregation, whose heavenly and spiritual goods, given to it by Christ, they administer publicly according to Christ's direction. And by holding ourselves to this, the evil is guarded against that no sort of human despotism can arise among us; for neither the body of hearers