# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Februar 1863_S60
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

60 A New Homiletical Monthly.

In Dr. Mann's "Aphorisms" one finds much worth taking to heart, above all what he says about "the freedom" (more precisely: the laziness) of many preachers who do not consider it worth the trouble to prepare themselves thoroughly for their discourses. Other things in the Aphorisms are unintelligible to us. So, for instance, when he says: "It is indeed fortunate that we preachers hold a certain ideal view of our assembled congregations, for otherwise preaching would often become an unbearable burden to us. But this ideal view often misleads us into presupposing, for a great many things we say, a sympathy among our hearers that, as a matter of plain fact, is not there at all . . . ." What Dr. Mann means by an "ideal view" we cannot quite make clear to ourselves. Still more obscure is how the same thing can be called "fortunate." Every preacher, in our opinion, should rather strive, for the benefit of his congregation, to improve his ideal view into a true, accurate one — toward which the holy Apostle Paul, in his epistles, gives him good and sure guidance. Or did the Apostle Paul, perhaps, also have the good fortune of holding "ideal views"? — We would rather take this very occasion to warn all preachers earnestly against all so-called "ideal views"; and in particular against this one: that one could treat the evil ulcers in the congregations with such cleverness and circumspection that, in cutting them out, no pain and no flinching would be felt at all. Thus, for example, the secret-society business is, by common acknowledgment, a true cancer in the congregations; this evil is now also being attacked and fought by many preachers, but with such refined cleverness, with such cautious and indulgent carefulness, that the extraordinary struggle drags on for years, and has, moreover, the extraordinary effect that no pain, no conflict, no loss of members occurs — yet also achieves the extraordinary result that — — nothing at all is accomplished, and everything remains as it was. This comes from the "ideal view" that one could step on the devil's head without his so much as noticing it himself, and thereby forget that he would "strike at the heel." But that is a delusion; the old serpent has not changed its nature. If it does not strike, that is a sure proof that it has not been trodden on either. It can well tolerate having a foot raised against it, and "ideal views" do it no harm at all!

The following aphorism, too, is unclear: "Be true in everything! That is a demand whose rightness all perceive, but whose extraordinary difficulty few do. This difficulty of being true is found everywhere, but especially among us preachers. That we might present ourselves just as it happens to be in our hearts — that, indeed, is quite out of the question . . . . ." This last remark, coming from a General-Synod pen, is truly hard for a "Missourian" to understand. Can it be that this marks the difference in spirit? Among us the rule holds: conduct yourself in all circumstances always just as it is in your heart to do; be true in everything, provided,