# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_November 1863_S346
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

346 On the Real Canker of the German Church.

What great, undeserved, divine grace it is that we in our beloved Missouri Synod are united in doctrine! No staff of worldly authority supports us, no crosier of episcopal constitution helps us, no "general-synodalist" lying Lutheran name holds us together, but rather the one doctrine, the one faith, the one confession — that is what has led us into the real, true unity, into the unity of the Spirit, and has kept us in it. Through the Chiliasm that sought to force its way in among us and to claim citizenship, or at least toleration, the devil sought to shatter our unity in doctrine. Praise God that we recognized the enemy and drove him out from among us without mercy. Even though the struggle was thereby made all the harder, and more painful to the heart, because old and intimate bonds of love had to be torn apart, still what was at stake was our life, our one and only treasure and jewel, the one, pure doctrine. Had we yielded, we would have become a miserable unionist mob, a "Lutheran General Synod." How little indeed have some learned German gentlemen, who turned up their noses at our decisive action against Chiliasm, understood of the nature of Christian unity; they suppose, presumably, that for our scientific, advanced age the earnest word of the Apostle Paul no longer applies: "let there be no divisions among you, but be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment." Well, where it leads with churchly unity when one treats the Word of God carelessly and heeds it not, even if it be only a single such passage, that is shown clearly enough by the conditions of the state churches and of the "separated Lutherans." We wish to have not only one Scripture and one confession, but also one mind and one judgment. That sounds altogether dreadful in the ears of the "educated, scientific world," but we cannot help it; we have, after all, more respect for one small word of holy Scripture than for the whole great, famous, scientific world; and we know it for certain and see it before our eyes, that unconditional obedience under God's Word leads to peace, and that deviation, even the most scientific deviation, leads to ruin. —

And how has it come about that we, who indeed came together here out of very different lands of Germany, with very differently shaped theological training, with all manner of different religious tendencies, have become one in faith, doctrine, confession, mind, and judgment? It has come about because, through God's wonderful providence, the delusion of progress found no foothold among us, because we were led back, out of the shifting cloud-shapes of newer university theology — which serves only itself — to the theology of our old, rightly-believing fathers in the faith, and so came out of vagueness into clarity, and out of mere scientific learning into simple faith, and out of waverings, opinions, and views into a firm heart, into steadfastness and assurance. We have grown accustomed to it; it is the spirit of our