# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Mai 1863_S132
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

132 What Do the Apostles Say, and What Does Christ the Lord Say, About Our Catechism Controversy.

once accustomed, on the waves of superficial reasoning, to let the little
ship of their conviction now float upward, now sink again and be covered
by the waves.

What else, then, might be charged against the "new catechism" concerns the
form of expression — words that are antiquated and foreign to accustomed
usage. But here it is overlooked that our Bible, too, does not have the
language of the salons. Yet it disturbs no one in devotion. Surely the
catechism will do the same.

Concerning the manner of its introduction, I must remark once more that
the fundamental factor of every constitution is the constitution of the
community itself. The Lutheran Church was visibly founded by God in a
turbulent age. Our age is not so disposed that it could found a church. It
has, rather, received the Church as an inheritance. The confessions are
the testament. They are inviolable. Were the sworn guardians of the
sanctuary to abrogate them, the protest would be justified. But since the
protest at present is directed against a confessional writing of the
Church itself, a higher right prevails than that of formal consent.

The Author of the Marginal Notes in No. 163.

IV. A Couple of N.B.'s on the New Protest Against the Word of the
Apostles and Prophets, of Which Jesus Christ Is the Cornerstone. *)

a) A wonder, that bread still grows out of the earth, as it has for
thousands of years, now that the stargazers have learned to calculate.

b) Who would not rather be pious than a sinner? Only a pity that death
still could not be philosophized away! It is to be the wages of sin, says
the Bible. — Besides, no apostle writes that anyone must bear Adam's
curse who has not also sinned himself. There lies, rather, for this
worm-eaten race a comfort and a hope in the fact that we read in Romans
5:18: "As by one man's sin condemnation came upon all men, even so by
one man's righteousness the justification of life came upon
all men. 19. For as by one man's disobedience many
were made sinners, so also by one man's obedience shall
many be made righteous."

c) Strange, that the Persians, Indians, and Egyptians have never
acknowledged the kinship in which certain doctrines of the Bible and their
mythology are supposed to stand with one another! The Persians in
particular mocked mightily at

*) These aphorisms that follow here, not accepted by the newspaper named,
are marginal notes on a memorial signed by members of the congregation in
Halle, addressed to the Hanoverian Ministry of Worship, and published in
the Hildesheim General Gazette of July 29 of last year. Since we omit the
latter here, we hope that the aphorisms will nonetheless be intelligible,
and that their point of contrast may easily be inferred. The Editors.