# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_November 1862_S350
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

350 Church and Contemporary History.

for the war. The offer was declined. It was said that as citizens and
soldiers they would be gladly accepted, but not as Methodists. If we are not
mistaken, the governor of Wisconsin is a German Jew."

A Universalist preacher, by the name of O. H. Cleveland, in Milan, Ind.,
announces in an exchange paper that he has resolved to go off to the war, and that
the "ladies" of the congregation have promised to preach in his absence. (The
Evangelist.) It is remarkable that the patriotic preacher did not turn his business
over to the qualified ladies for it long before now.

The "Lutheran and Missionary" on Non-Essential Points.
The greater the reckless frivolity is in our days with which people declare now
this, now that — whether in Scripture or in the confessions of the church —
non-essential according to mere caprice, and put it outside the bounds of what
a Christian must necessarily believe unto salvation, or of what the church
teaches, the more gladdening it is to find, in the number of October 2 of the
paper named — to be sure, like an oasis in the desert — a decided testimony to
the contrary. After the contributor had explained what the non-essential points
of the wholesome doctrine are, namely, such points on which revelation gives us
no further disclosure, he goes on to say: "But when it has pleased God to
reveal any religious truth, we may not call that truth a non-essential piece.
God never trifles; when he speaks through his Spirit in his Word, then our
feeling of high esteem and awe before our Creator compels us to regard
everything that is revealed as very holy, very precious, very necessary to our
growth in grace, and accordingly as essential in every respect in which it can
be viewed. It would be godless to condemn God's truth; godless to weaken it
by attaching to it a subordinate character, and by making a distinction among
the revealed doctrines and setting some aside as superfluous. Paul was bound
in his conscience 'to declare unto you all the counsel of God,' Acts 20:27.
More than that: even when a revealed truth seems to occupy a subordinate
place, as some particular point concerning Christ's person or satisfaction
[for sin] may seem to, it may nevertheless have a very essential influence on
the faith, or the hope, or the love of the individual believer, and we
therefore fear to lower it by applying to it the expression 'non-essential.'
..... At present 'dear, dear union' are the watchwords; we are so feverishly
excited, so impatient to bring about a union of all 'Christians,' that our weak
eyesight has made us unfit to distinguish between merely 'non-essential' and
absolutely 'essential pieces.'..... These symptoms are disquieting. We are
beginning to misjudge the means of grace, and then to undervalue them. The
Word of God is not exclusively 'the power of God'; the feeble feeling of our
times now makes people clever at strengthening it by human contrivance,
by human measures. Baptism is not 'the washing of regeneration'; the Lord's
Supper is not 'the communion of the blood — and body of Christ.' Those, to
be sure, were the doctrines of the New Testament — those were the doctrines
of the Lutheran Church; — but — but it will not do to speak so any longer
now. This sect or that does not believe these doctrines; — they are not
popular; — they will drive our church members away from us; — they hinder
us in 'cultivating fellowship' with the 'brothers' and 'sisters' of 'sister
churches.' Let us be silent about them. If they stand in the Bible, we will
adopt the interpretation of some newer sect or other; — if they stand in the
Augsburg Confession, we will call them 'errors'; — and if we nevertheless
cannot get rid of them — for there they stand — well then, let us call them
'non-essential pieces' and let them drop. You may go on believing them; I,
for my part, will push them aside along with the sects, and then — what a
beautiful 'union' we shall have brought about! 'Non-essential pieces' — what
a glorious discovery of love, now uniting 'sister churches'! Only one
difficulty remains to us — some may also call it non-essential — what does
God say to this wretched way of doing away with the revealed doctrines of
his Word?" — C.