# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_November 1862_S344
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

344 Literary Notices.

The work:

Luther, a Sign Which Is Spoken Against. By Chr. H. Ederle, pastor in
Württemberg. Stuttgart, published by Liesching. 1860. 102 pp., large
octavo. Ströbel reviews it as follows: "The author is not of the opinion
that he has erred in no word" — and I am not in the mood to hunt for
possible errors, but I do feel obliged, before my readers, to declare that
I cannot agree with his treatments of orthodoxy and pietism (pp. 51–54),
of the "Christian" state, "state church," the union of state and church,
and what hangs together with this (pp. 65–89 and elsewhere), with the
assertion that one must qualify the statement "that Scripture is
intelligible of itself" by the further statement "that it can only be
understood under the illumination of the Spirit, and that the latter is
mediated through the church" (p. 64), nor with a few other utterances.
But apart from these objections I find in this little book more evangelical
insight, a greater gift for the discernment of spirits, a better
understanding of the age and its signs, a sounder psychology, and a
healthier grasp of the distinction between the evangelical, the reformed,
and the Roman Catholic church than I have found in many highly
celebrated, thick-bodied works of modern scholarship. Nor is the proper
polemical thoroughness lacking anywhere. The author does not share the
opinion that "the confessional strife within the evangelical church" — the
struggle against Calvinism, union, and sectarianism (the "Evangelical
Alliance") — is merely "a theological, not a religious matter, a matter of
the understanding and of knowledge, not of faith." No, he says, "as this
also lies in the language of Scripture, 1 John 4:1–3, it is not a struggle
of opinions or of scientific dogmas, but of spirits," and "the victory does
not depend on the artificial heaping up of arguments, but on the spirit
out of which a writing has flowed; this is what tells." He has therefore
also subtitled these pages "For the Struggle of the Spirits in the
Evangelical Church," and "indulges the hope that in them the spirit of a
certain, confident faith grounded in the Word will not fail to be
recognized." Since we have now found this hope confirmed almost
throughout, we join with him in the request "to read the Scripture with
the same care with which it was written down." May this wish be
fulfilled by a good many!

A Gleaning from a Review by Ströbel.

In the third number of the Rudelbach-Guericke journal of the current
volume there is found the review, by Ströbel, of the work by Vorreiter:
Luther's Struggle with the Anti-Christian Principles of the Revolution.
Halle, 1860. From it we share the following fragments:

Concerning the doctrine of the invisible church, the reviewer writes:
Whoever knows no invisible church may also know no