# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1848 07 05_S193
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

robbed, plundering the troubled and godly-sorrowful souls of their most glorious comfort, and pointing them, instead of this rod and staff of the Lord (Psalm 23:4), to the crutch of an unhealthy faith of feeling, a patchwork of legalistic conversion. Rightly, therefore, has the Lutheran Church, in keeping with its holy earnestness and zeal for the pure and unadulterated saving truth of Holy Scripture, refuted and condemned the loose deceptions of the sacramentarians, and branded them enemies of the Church. How should she now act otherwise? Indeed! Precisely because these falsifiers bear the Lutheran, that is, the orthodox, name, and moreover, despite their contradiction of the confession of the Lutheran Church, call themselves the "American Lutheran Church," sincere and honest-minded synods may no longer keep silent about this, but must raise a forceful and decided testimony against them and tear from them the honorable Lutheran name; for otherwise, by their silence, they would seem to approve this betrayal of the truth, would rightly fall under suspicion of false regard for men and man-pleasing, and would make themselves partakers of others' sins. What would the gentlemen of the synod say if their cousins, without their knowledge or consent, in broad daylight and before their very eyes, were to take, say, the portraits of Luther and Melanchthon, etc., out of their rooms, and hang Calvin and J. Wesley on the very same nails in their place? Would they be content with that, and by their silence approve this cousinly act of love? Would not conscience and the duty of love rather equally compel the robbed to rebuke their erring cousins with wholesome earnestness, and, should these not take it to heart, nevertheless to take back their own property? But what are the pictures of Luther and Melanchthon compared to the pure Word and Sacrament, which they won for us and left to us through hot and long striving and struggle against Satan, the world, and their own flesh, so that we too, out of inward experience of the heart, might confess it, together with them and all faithful witnesses from the beginning, alive in true unity of faith and of the Holy Spirit, and so that we too, like them, might defend it most resolutely against the fanatical assaults and encroachments of false brethren? Truly, should the sincere and honest-minded synods persist in their silence thus far and fail to raise a common testimony against the reformed-Methodist so-called Lutheran General Synod, then it takes no prophetic spirit at all to foresee that the Lord, for just punishment and chastisement, will set the Methodists — and perhaps even worse sects, in the German language too — upon them worse than before; for with the rod that we bind for ourselves, we are justly punished.

Faith and Feeling.

(See: Luther's Works, Halle ed., Tom. VIII, pp. 1164–73.)

"I always say that faith should have simply nothing but the Word itself to rely on, and should tolerate no cleverness or reasoning whatsoever; otherwise it is not possible for it to remain and be preserved. For human wisdom and reason can attain no higher and go no further than to judge and conclude according to what it sees and feels before its eyes, or grasps with the senses; but faith must conclude above and against such feeling and understanding, and cling to that which is presented to it through the Word; this it cannot do out of reason and human ability, but it is the work of the Holy Spirit in the heart; otherwise there would be no need at all for faith or the Holy Spirit, if it could grasp it with reason, or if it were to look and judge by what agrees with reason or not.

Take, for instance, this article, that I am to believe in the resurrection of the flesh, that all men are to become alive again on one day, and that our body and soul will come together again as they now are joined; that is truly not human art or ability. For reason is present, and does nothing more than look plainly at the fact as it lies before the eyes, that the world has stood so long, and one after another keeps dying, and everything remains dead and decays, and is even ground to dust in the grave, and no one has ever yet come back; besides, man dies and perishes so miserably, more wretchedly and shamefully than any beast or carrion; likewise, is burned to powder or scattered to dust, a bone in England, an arm in Germany, the skull in France, and thus torn apart into many thousand pieces, as one is accustomed to display the bones of the saints. Now when reason gets into this article and wants to ponder it, it is certainly altogether lost. For so many strange, odd, senseless thoughts occur to it that it must say there is nothing to it — just as in all other matters, when misfortune strikes, if one lets reason think and measure God's Word according to its own understanding. As when a man feels his sin and conscience, and does not simply hold to the word of grace and forgiveness through Christ, but instead fixes his eyes upon them, and ponders the law and works, and wants to beat and gnaw at himself over it — he certainly falls away from forgiveness, and has lost the grace which he should have grasped through faith.

So it has happened to all heretics in the high article concerning Christ. As it still happens too with our factions concerning Baptism and the Sacrament, because they do not simply believe the Word, but speculate and reason with reason: which can say nothing else but, bread is bread, water is water; how can bread be Christ's body, or water be a bath for the soul? For it cannot and will not remain in the Word, nor let itself be taken captive by it, but instead lets its own cleverness run free, and wants itself to understand and master it, etc. And because it sees that this is so utterly against its understanding and all the senses and feeling, it falls away from it and denies it altogether; or, if it cannot get past it, it twists and tampers with God's Word by glosses, so that it must after all be made to agree with its own understanding, and faith has no room, but must yield to reason and go under.

But against all this — whatever reason suggests, or wishes to weigh and search out, indeed, whatever all the senses feel and grasp — we must learn to hold to the Word, and to judge simply according to it, even though we see with our own eyes that man is laid under the earth, so that he must and shall decay, and be given to the worms to devour, and in the end become mere dust. Likewise, even though I feel sin pressing upon me so strongly, and my conscience so shattered that I cannot get past it, faith must still conclude the opposite, and hold fast to the Word in these two matters.

For if you want to judge according to what you see and feel, and when God's Word is held before you, want to set your feeling against it and say: You tell me much indeed, but my heart tells me something quite different, and if you felt what I feel, you too would speak differently, etc. — then you do not have God's Word in your heart at all, but it has been smothered and extinguished by your own thoughts, reason, and reflection. In short, where you are not willing to let the Word count for more than all your feeling, eyes, senses, and heart, you must be lost, and there is no more help for you. For it is called an article of faith, not of your reason or wisdom, nor of human power and ability.

Therefore here too you must judge solely according to the Word, regardless of what one feels or sees. I too feel my sin and the Law, and the devil at my throat, so that I lie beneath it as under a heavy burden; but what am I to do? If I were to conclude according to such feeling and my own ability, then I and all men would have to despair and perish. But if I want to be helped, I must, in truth, turn myself around, and look to the Word, and speak accordingly: I do indeed feel God's wrath, the devil, death, and hell; but the Word says otherwise, that I have a gracious God through Christ, who is my Lord over the devil and all creatures. I do indeed feel and see that I and all men must rot away down in the grave; but the Word says otherwise, that I shall rise again with great glory and live forever.

This now is called the art and wisdom of faith, which makes the wisdom of the world into foolishness — the world which holds all this to be a foolish sermon, and scrapes back with: Yes, the Gospel can say nothing else than that we are to be lords over death, sin, and all things; and yet it sees only the opposite in itself and in all the world, that there is no life there, but nothing but sheer death, sin, and the devil's power. On this it grounds and bases itself, and says: Preach on and on, and say what you will, but I see something quite different.

Therefore both these things must stand together here: that we are lords over the devil and death, and yet at the same time lie under his feet. The one must be believed, the other felt. For the world, and whatever belongs to its nature, must have the devil as its lord, who clings to us with all his might, and is far superior to us, for we are his guests, as it were, in a foreign inn. Therefore, so far as it depends on us, we must — as regards the world and this life in blood and flesh — be subject to him, so that he deals with us according to his will.

Then you say: What then do you preach and believe? If you yourself confess that one does not feel or perceive it, then your preaching must be nothing and a mere dream. For if it were something real, then experience too would have to show something of it. Answer: This is exactly what I say — that it wants, quite simply, to be believed ahead of