# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Mai 1863_S141
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

What the Apostles Say, and What Christ the Lord Says, to Our Catechism Controversy. 141

so too the host of invisible angels may well come into contact with men. This will, of course, differ according to the position of the individual toward God and his gracious counsel. So far as anyone believes, he is in the fellowship of all who cling to God, and thus also of the good angels. They serve him invisibly; in especially decisive cases, however, in visible form, as the Bible proves. This does not, however, exclude all endangerment and injury from the hostile host — rather it is the necessary consequence of the struggle against the opposition. The latter, indeed, for its understanding demands the biblical point of view for the whole of present life, as a preliminary stage of testing and proving. Without the world to come, the dissonance remains unresolved (cf. Rev. 21:4). — Whoever resists God cannot, on the other hand, withdraw from the fellowship into which he enters through this hostile bent of his soul. He will have the evil angels about him even against his will. The act of their help, which the client of the latter more or less consciously then brings about, belongs to the domain of so-called sorcery. Roman history, among others, furnishes many an instance of this. The mediums of our day, rapping spirits, and the like, may also be such uncanny snowflakes, reminding us that the air harbors this and that which passes beyond our horizon. Well for him who can sleep quietly before it. Yet the storm is not thereby conjured away by one's — scaring off the storm-petrels!

VII. The True Light. *)

When it is pointed out in No. 194 that "toward the new catechism there is no political party," that rather "in this field all have joined hands in common resistance," this indeed serves admirably to make the catechism affair appear in its true light. Before Christ, Herod and Pilate are ever friends! If, for that matter, things have turned out otherwise, in hostility toward the word of the cross the nineteenth century resembles the first like one egg another. So this word, too, must surely still be the same. Indeed, the very contradiction it now meets in the little manger of the new catechism is good testimony for the latter. The old textbook, on the other hand, would gain little by the praise bestowed on it by opponents of revelation: for he does not serve Christ who pleases men. (cf. Gal. 1:10.)

As for the outcome of this matter, it rests in the hand of him who is called: "the same yesterday and forever!"

*) In a later number the enemies of the catechism boasted that, despite all their political differences, in their present resistance they stood together like one man. To this the advertisement given above refers.