# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Februar 1863_S61
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Literary Notices. 61

Your heart stands right, and has itself become true through heavenly truth. St. Paul, a model for all preachers, always gave himself just as it was upon his heart, and indeed so utterly (one need only think, for example, of the second epistle to the Corinthians), that one could look deep into all the movements and stirrings of his heart.

This first number of the "Monatsschrift" [Monthly] has, as we have shown, its shortcomings. May the second issue be less deficient.

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Literary Notices.

Published by Justus Naumann in Leipzig:

Lutherbibliothek [Luther Library]. Instructive and edifying matter for people of every sort, drawn from Luther's writings. Arranged and compiled for the furtherance of family devotion and popular instruction within German Christendom. With a foreword by Dr. Friedrich Ahlfeld, pastor at St. Nikolai in Leipzig.

The work is to appear in divisions following rapidly one upon another, so that each little volume covers a definite, self-contained field. The editor begins with "Dr. Martin Luther's Instructive and Edifying Parables, Arranged According to the Small Catechism." The editor explains his aim for the whole in his own words, as follows: "Our labor here is the selecting, the ordering, the compiling; the reader receives nothing but Luther in his most original manner, yet with the grammatical word-forms and orthography treated with restraint, that is, adapted to the present only so far as was unavoidably necessary for comprehension. But this is not a colorful, haphazardly-tossed bouquet — that sort of thing we consider no true need — rather the individual gems are strung upon spiritual cords. Where this could be done, the cord itself was also to be plaited by Luther. For the next little volumes we are thinking of a doctrine of faith in short, strikingly concise, pithy, easily-retained and edifying sayings of Luther; of accounts from his own life and the lives of others; and of an adaptation of the Small Catechism for family devotions."

The task was to separate the popular portions of Luther's works from the often unpalatable polemical and the purely abstractly scholarly surroundings in which they occur in his writings (indeed even in his sermons), and thus to offer the reader the grains of gold — not, indeed, sifted out from chaff (for no such chaff is found in Luther's writings), but rather singled out from the remaining ore. It is no doubt this very mixture that has so far kept many from raising this rich treasure. Wherever it was possible without harming the matter, the polemical was set aside, and the pure, genuine, sterling residue of truth alone was given." Accordingly the editor intends to offer not whole writings, but excerpts from them. We