# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Mai 1864_S139
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

The League of the Sister Churches. 139

—to you as well. What of it? Must you go straight out and cry it to the world, and start a quarrel, and tear things apart? To be sure, the Father has forbidden the poisonous mushrooms. But who knows whether they are not medicine for these sisters? Who knows whether they might not also be medicine for you against your own ailments? Therefore do not be so hard as stone, so closed off, so angry against your other sisters. You are dependent on them. Open your hand toward them. Let yourself be given to. So you will gradually come to resemble one another. So at last a general peace will come about.

Meanwhile, however, we must here accuse our author of the conclusion — precisely because we believe we have grasped the sense of his sisterly love as an all-embracing one — of a certain partiality and one-sidedness. For where are the other, still remaining sisters — the Quakers, the Anabaptists, the Albrecht People, the Methodists, the New Israelites, the Mormons, the Swedenborgians, the Plymouth Brethren, the hundred and forty-four sects and enthusiast-churches? Is there no enthusiasm of his love for them, or will these mayflies, these moths, of their own accord and without any luring call, fly into the great sisterly-league union-fire — once it is properly kindled among the chief sisters — and consume themselves there? So it must surely be, and so it must come to pass, once the mission of the four great, old sisters is fulfilled — that is, once they have gathered together enough firewood for the great union bonfire of joy and peace. "At present, however," it says, "not one of these four has yet fulfilled the mission to which the Lord has appointed her; each still has a precious work before her, outward and inward." So, patience only! You, Lutheran sister, still have, for instance, more wood of this sort to carry to the union-fire, namely, that you finally give up the literal understanding of your sacraments. Thereby you will at the same time gain a sense for the spiritual, and for a proper spiritual constitution of the church, since you will then, together with your eldest sister, be able — through all manner of sacraments that the spirit of the church creates (for then one no longer needs a letter) — to protect, cover, nourish, and raise yourself up, and adorn yourself ever anew, from the cradle to the grave. Even extreme unction will then taste sweet to you. And so at last even the sacrifice of the Mass, together with the Pope who instituted it, will please you well. Well then, you Lutherans, take note of what you still lack! Carry wood to the fire! Labor thus outwardly! And you still have a precious work before you inwardly as well! — Inwardly? — Yes, I will tell you. You are still stuck in the deep-rooted delusion that you must judge and convert the eldest sister according to your own will. This delusion must finally fall as well. It runs against the times and the place, against custom and usage. Go rather to where you see her in the splendor of her glory, in her altars, her Mass vestments, her surplices, her lights, her images, her incense, her holy water, and gain an impression of her venerable, adoration-worthy beauty. In that way an inward work is accomplished. And that too means carrying wood to the great bonfire of joy.