# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Februar 1859_S45
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

From the General Synod.                                                    45

...move us to abandon the ark of our beloved Church and plunge ourselves
into the surging waters of the shifting opinions of the age.

Let no one raise against us the objection that the Lutheran Church herself,
by our own admission, is full of false teachers; for when we declare our
Church to be pure, we do not thereby mean to say that she is not troubled by
false teachers just as the apostolic Church was, but only that within her,
error — in whatever shape it may appear — never has so much as a formal
right.

May the faithful God, then, have mercy on his poor Lutheran Zion, lead back
those who err within her bosom to the light of the full truth, strengthen
the weak, and make her once again a city set upon a high hill.

———

(Submitted by Conr. Schick.)
From the General Synod.

The Evangelical Review contains an article (in the English language) with
the following heading: "A Need in the Lutheran Church Met by the Founding
of the Missionary Institute." "An Address, delivered by Prof. R. Weiser,
President of Central College in Des Moines, Iowa, at the laying of the
cornerstone of the Missionary Institute at Selinsgrove, Pa., on September
1, 1858."

The founding of an institute for the practical training of believing young
men for the holy office of the ministry within the Lutheran Church of
America is an event that must, in a high degree, arouse the attention of
Lutherans in this land. For such an institute exercises great influence
over wide circles, over a host of souls dearly bought, to whom, through it,
either great blessing accrues, if God's Word is taught there purely and
unadulterated, or else great harm, if false doctrine instead holds sway
there — because it is only through the pure Gospel that the poor human
heart can be brought to a joyful, living faith in the Lord Jesus, our only
Savior, and be kept therein, whereas through every false doctrine the free
growth of faith is hindered and the new life is crippled or even put to
death. Only the truth that is from God can do God's work in man, and the
lie that stems from hell can only hinder and corrupt God's Word. The truth
alone shall make us free, but every error, every false doctrine, is a
fetter with which Satan seeks to bind Christians and keep them in his
bondage. Because this holds true according to Holy Scripture, our readers
will not, without some apprehension, gather from the heading that this
time it concerns

the founding of an institute within the General Synod — a body which, as is
well known, does not take things so very precisely as regards truth and
falsehood, as this