# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Mai 1859_S133
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Excerpted Communications from This Year's Preface, etc. 133

This is the great privilege of the Church of God and of every true member of it, to have part in this river and free access to it. This is the curse of the world, that it is shut out from this access. Therefore men must go and hew out for themselves cisterns here and there, which are cracked and give no water. This must be our highest, indeed our sole concern: that we not be cut off from the river! Otherwise, let things go as they will. Everything else is a trifle. To recognize this thoroughly is, among other things, sound reason. "Be thou not a terror unto me, thou art my confidence in the day of evil" — may that form the keynote of our soul. — . . . . .

The charge of hypocrisy has been raised against ecclesiastical conviction. Whether this charge is well founded will be measured by whether we "hold fast the confidence and the rejoicing of hope" even under the present difficult circumstances. "There is," says Luther, "no greater fear and faintheartedness than among hypocrites when they fall into temptation, just as, conversely, there is no greater confidence and courage than when everything goes as they wish." Should it now hold true of us what is said of Ahaz — "and his heart was moved, and the heart of his people, as the trees of the wood are moved with the wind" — then we would have to fall silent before the grave charge and dare not open our mouths. But God forbid! With his help we will put the charge to shame. — . . . . .

The "sin" consists in the "unbelief" that leads us astray when we see the wind and the waves, to come to terms with the world, to make accommodations with it, until little by little, unnoticed, we sink back entirely into its ways. The Apostle exhorts us not in vain: take heed, exhort one another. For this is a truly dangerous evil, one that very readily suggests the thought: let him that standeth take heed lest he fall; it can very easily creep up on us — it approaches at first with the most innocent air and seeks to entice us into a few small concessions, then proceeds unnoticed step by step further, down into the abyss. Here the word applies: resist the beginnings. — . . . . .

A grave sickness in the spiritual realm is the voluntary limping which confronts us already in the Old Testament, in 2 Kings 18. There Elijah says to the people: how long halt ye between two sides? (literally, with respect to two opinions). If the LORD be God, follow him; but if Baal, then follow him. This sickness is in fact very widespread in our time, whose prevailing character is halfheartedness and weakness. Everywhere there shows itself the inclination to escape the "either, or" relentlessly set before us by the Word of God, and to join together things that cannot be reconciled. Against this the Apostle warns. The lameness which then showed itself in the wavering between Judaism and heathenism now shows itself in the wavering between the religion of the lodge and the religion of the Church, between the nameless god and Him who has a name that is above every name; it should take care that it go no further astray — which lies very near at hand — but rather that it be healed. —