# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Januar 1863_S19
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Luther as Preacher. 19

to the blessed life of the eternal enjoyment of God, to preserve and strengthen them therein. Under the invocation of the Holy Spirit, with untiring zeal, with earnestness and keenness of mind, he searches the Scriptures, coming ever better to recognize the heavenly doctrine in its manifold relations, its rich content, its deep meaning, sharply distinguished in its divine purity from the false apprehension, interpretation, and application by which reason and human ordinance are wont to obscure the clear sense of the divine Word; he makes his own the treasures of knowledge and experience in doctrine and life that are laid down in the confessions of the church and in the writings of her teachers and witnesses; he learns from these models the right way of handling and applying the divine Word, and seeks to hold fast all this within himself as a well-ordered body of knowledge, so as to be capable and ready at all times, for the attainment of his lofty goal, to destroy the strongholds of the devil in the souls of men, to build up faith — not human delusion, but divine truth; not harmful poison, but the unadulterated, health-bringing medicine — to administer it to them in season, to fill them with the firmest assurance, the surest comfort, the most fervent love, the most joyful patience, the most blessed hope, the deepest abhorrence of every sin. So equipped, he teaches, rebukes, exhorts, comforts unceasingly, undaunted, in fervent love, with wisdom, skill, in the power of God, making himself blessed, and those who hear him.

Luther as Preacher

by

Prof. Dr. Hengstenberg.

Under the heading "Luther as Preacher" there appears in the Ev. Kirchenzeitung [Evangelical Church Gazette] of October 11 and the following numbers an essay which, in the first place, once again documents anew that Hengstenberg, despite his residing in a territorial church under United-Church [Prussian Union] government, nevertheless has a better insight into what is truly Lutheran than — we will not say the local so-called Lutherans*) — but than many present-day Lutherans in general possess; but that essay also contains so much that is instructive and worth taking to heart that we cannot deny ourselves the pleasure of communicating the most important of it to the readers of our theological journal. Among other things, it says:

*) When Dr. Seyffarth recently sought, in the "Luth. Herold," to refute the article of Hengstenberg's on slavery which we had communicated, we are sorry for this only for the former's own sake, since thereby — apart from his "historical errors" — he has only displayed to the full his complete incompetence in the field of dogmatics and his complete inability to perceive the deep connection in which the doctrine of bondservice expressed by Hengstenberg stands with the whole doctrine of Scripture and of our church in general. And when Mr. Ludwig, too, trusting in a professor of Egyptian antiquities, undertakes in the number of December 15 to lecture Prof. Dr. Hengstenberg, we are indeed reminded of the old Ciceronian saying (if we may use the expression) Sus docet Minervam [the sow teaches Minerva].