# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Mai 1859_S132
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

132 Excerpted Communications from This Year's Preface, etc.

their watchmen are blind, they all know nothing, but are dumb dogs that cannot bark" — so the judgment upon them stands written already long ago: "Son of man, I have made thee a watchman unto the house of Israel, and thou shalt hear a word from my mouth and warn them from me. When I say unto the wicked, thou shalt surely die, and thou dost not warn him, nor speak to warn the wicked from his wicked way, to save his life, the wicked man shall die in his iniquity, but his blood will I require at thine hand." How terrible will the responsibility of the bearers of the office be, in such a time of decision — a time which, like ours, forms the beginning of the end — on the day of judgment, if they cannot say with the Apostle: "I am pure from the blood of all men, for I have kept back nothing, but have declared unto you the whole counsel of God." — . . . . .

What will become of the Church in Germany, in Prussia, at this renewed onset of the world — especially of the Church of the Lutheran Reformation, which is outwardly so weak and helpless and without resource? On this question too, which occupies men's minds so greatly, may the Word of God give us an answer — a Word which is hardly so rich, so full of sweet comfort, on any point as on this one. If we seek this answer in the forty-sixth Psalm, we walk in the footsteps of Luther, who, on the basis of this Psalm, sang his hymn "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God," and who, among the scriptural passages he assembled for his own support and that of his people in the face of the imperial diet at Augsburg, assigned our Psalm a principal place — the substance of which the ancients aptly summed up in the words: "God's shield, avails in need." — . . . . .

The Church has the high privilege that things never come to the very worst with her, that she never, like the world, "perishes in terror," that she does indeed suffer persecution but is never forsaken, is indeed oppressed but does not perish. And because she is conscious of this high privilege, she never lets herself be seduced by "straits" into concessions, but holds it to be far beneath her dignity to make such concessions, or to yield even a foot's breadth to her adversaries. "God" — that is the firm shield which she holds up against all such demands as are made upon her by the world and by Satan. Oh, how little can those read our hearts who loudly proclaim that it is now all over with the "little party" (which, thank God, is in fact far more numerous than these people think), because worldly protection has been withdrawn from it — who suppose that this party will now collapse without support and be ready for all manner of concessions and compromises. No — only now will the spirit that has always driven us become truly manifest. We have meat to eat that ye know not of, and in the strength of this meat we are able to walk even the roughest and most toilsome paths. Our King does not grow faint or weary; he has not departed from us; we are near to him and he is nearer to us than ever. The greater the distress becomes, the more gloriously will he reveal himself to us; he will shield his Zion, as the birds do, with wings — protecting, delivering, redeeming, and helping. . . . . .