# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juni 1863_S166
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

166 Dr. Hengstenberg's Position on the Questions of Ministry and Church Government.

not merely thoroughly estranged, but the earlier stage of indifferentism has turned into a deep-seated hatred, which already, in many places, blazes up from below like an uncanny flame. "Let us break their bonds and cast away their cords from us" — that is the watchword of this great multitude, and "why do the heathen rage" is the true description of them. The sorry events in the Rhenish Palatinate, Baden, the Prussian Chamber, and on the occasion of the catechism controversy in Hanover make this clear even to the dullest eye. Will this movement hostile to Christ come to an end again? Will the godless multitudes of the educated and uneducated, the high and the low rabble, be won back for the church? A sober Christian sees little hope, almost none at all, and for this reason: that the condition is lacking under which alone a revival of the dead and dying can be expected, namely the use of the means of grace. The ancient heathen peoples became fellow citizens of the exalted Jesus through hearing the word of God and the use of the sacraments. The Reformation was able to seize, penetrate, and purify whole nations, because the pure preaching shone forth like a light and was received with delight by people who longed, out of darkness, for light. It is quite different with the fallen Christians, the modern heathen of our time: they do not want to hear the word of God, but rail at it as priestcraft; they do not want to go to the Lord's table; they no longer want their children baptized; they want no Christian solemnization of marriages, no Christian schools, and no Christian oath in the courts any longer. But just as it is much harder to win back an apostate Christian, one who has fallen away, to the Christian faith than an unconverted person who has yet to be won for Christ in the first place, so much harder will be the bringing back of the modern heathen to Christ than the first conversion of the ancient heathen was. According to experience, only individuals, one by one, will ever come to their senses and, like the prodigal son, return to their father's house. Things are moving, unstoppably, according to the prophecy, into the "grievous times" of the end, into the times when the Son of Man "will find no faith." Already, just as once the hardened Jewry allied itself with unconverted heathendom, so now the repugnant reform Jews are allying themselves with the degenerate Christians who have sunk back into full heathendom, in order to do away with the Lord of glory. — How sorely needed it is, precisely in such times, for those who have a heart for the church, to whom the precious handmaid is still dear, to become truly conscious of the resources that alone help, to keep the weapons in readiness with which alone the fortifications of the adversary can be overcome. "It is a misery," says Hengstenberg, "to see how some arm themselves for this struggle with broken reeds, thinking they can meet the prince of this world — of whom it is said, 'great might and much guile are his cruel arms' — with Presbyterial and synodal constitutions and similar wretched expedients, which he regards as mere loose chaff." Yes, it is true: against the devil nothing avails but the word of our God