# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_September 1862_S267
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Lic. Ströbel on the Revision of Luther's Bible. 267

significant that on their account a wholly new translation of the Bible, or an altered edition of the old one, was attempted to be introduced ecclesiastically. Only since unbelief began to venture forth out of concealment were attempts made to displace the Lutheran translation by another. But attachment to it, and reverence for it, were too deeply rooted among the evangelical people for such attempts to have been attended with success. While the old treasury of church hymns succumbed in most places to unbelief and modern taste-formation, the Lutheran Bible remained in unshaken esteem and use. Even the rationalistically minded clergy and church governments seem either really not to have considered its displacement desirable, or at any rate not feasible. And there is no doubt that an attempt to displace it would have met with more stubborn resistance among the congregations than that which they offered to the alteration of the hymn-books. In the case of the latter, one could always plausibly maintain that these hymns were the work of men. But the German Bible was, to the people, God's Word, which the people knew and possessed only in this form. Had the powers of darkness at that time succeeded in doing away with the Lutheran Bible along with the old hymns, the German evangelical Church would have received a blow from which it perhaps would never have recovered. The water of life, the true fountain of health, would have been made half or wholly unpalatable to the people: how then should they have drunk health from it? This chief means of destroying the Church the enemies of the Church and of her faith at that time let slip, or were unable to put into practice. What they neglected then, they now seek to make up." Let us for once consider the actual promoters of Bible revision: are they friends or enemies of the Gospel? Do not the worst shouters belong to the swarm of Zwinglians, Unionists, Friends of Light, dreamers of a Church of the future, enthusiasts? Do they not, in their undertaking, count on the unconditional applause of all faithless would-be scholars and would-be critics? And may we well doubt that, once the banner of Bible revision has been raised, the whole numerous contingent of free-thinkers and aesthetes, Epicureans and Mammonites, indeed all ecclesiastical and moral liberalism and all religious democracy, would not immediately follow it? A crusade against Holy Scripture, under the flag of "Bible revision" — yes, that would be the long-desired water on the mill-wheel of the spirit of our enlightening millers of progress! And to be sure! The work would bring such masters no disgrace; — our descendants will feel this just as we today still have to chew on the blessing of the hymn revision. — This view of their project, principled and proceeding from the undeniable state of the matter, one which even the Bible-revisers themselves cannot help but involuntarily acknowledge, men attempt to blunt by a twofold objection. First of all, one points to a number of excellent, believing men who have nevertheless likewise declared themselves in favor of the Bible revision