# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_November 1862_S332
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

332 A Brotherly Greeting from Germany, by Fr. Brunn.

human being; therefore let all false love be, and remain, accursed, which for the sake of human favor, or for love of men, would wish to cover up and deny the truth. No — I rather praise God for you, beloved brethren, that up to now, over against the general confusion that prevails in almost all lands even among Lutherans, He has given you the grace to stand, in your whole Synod, pure, faithful, and united in the confession of the Lutheran church; this is the greatest jewel granted to you above all others in the present age: while the church everywhere presents almost nothing but the picture of sorrowful confusion, division, and disunity, your Synod stands there unconfused and undivided, in true unity of faith. Therefore hold fast what you have, that no one may rob you of your crown.

You can already sufficiently perceive from what has gone before that I do not share the reproaches that are frequently made against your churchly congregational constitution. It is, to be sure, indisputably true and easily conceivable that, precisely in America, a democratic spirit may threaten the church too, quite seriously, with a mob-rule against which one must indeed be well prepared. But, on the other hand, this stands firm for me: on the one hand, that one may never, for the sake of avoiding some abuse, put the truth itself under a bushel — that is, refrain from teaching the doctrine of the spiritual priesthood of all believers in its full scope in America merely so that the mob may not misuse it; on the other hand, however, I am convinced that it is precisely the spirit of freedom, which may indeed still be found even in Christian congregations, that is not subdued but rather provoked and irritated by hierarchical tyrannizing of the congregations; whereas, on the contrary, it is most easily guided into the right paths and kept from excesses when we give the congregations the rights and freedoms that belong to them according to God's Word — with all the fuller weight of truth we can then confront them, wherever they overstep this boundary. And whoever is of the truth will then all the more surely bow before the voice of the truth. Here in Germany too we experience, in our free Lutheran congregations separated from the Union, that any churchly dominion not resting on a divine foundation, and thus merely assumed in appearance, comes to a most pitiable end and becomes nothing but a mockery as soon as it is put to the test, or as soon as conflict arises between the supposed masters and subjects; whereas the congregations nowhere trust and follow us more readily than when all mistrust of a false priestly and clerical domination has first been thoroughly removed from them. Indeed, this mistrust haunts every place like a ghost, wherever it is not thoroughly countered with pure and full instruction concerning the rights of the spiritual priesthood of all believers; it is this mistrust of clerical domination that, especially at our Breslau synods, has hitherto always stood in the way of, and thwarted, all improvements to the Prussian Lutheran church constitution proposed by pastors.