# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juli 1859_S202
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

202                                    Correspondence from Germany.

our local church circumstances has become of great significance. The
Lord, who knows the hearts, knows with what great, heartfelt joy it fills
me to be able to write to you that through your letter I have learned to
view many things differently — indeed, that my whole relationship to
you has become another, one drawn nearer and bound more closely — for
which I praise the Lord all the more gratefully, the more, day by day,
the fragmentation of our Lutheran Church in this present time comes
before my eyes and becomes a deep sorrow and an inward burden.

In the course of the present year, much has come to light among us in
Germany, on ecclesiastical ground, that we had scarcely suspected
before. Personal, heartfelt esteem and attachment toward men through
whose service the Lord has done great things in His Church, to whom I
too owe much thanks in particular, did indeed lead me — I confess it —
to judge more gently concerning some matters on which I held a more
decided opinion. To this is added that our whole age is an age of
becoming and struggling toward ecclesiastical and doctrinal clarity and
decisiveness; how short a time it is since we all first became sober and
came to our senses out of this and that error and confusion — how, then,
should one not gladly be inclined toward patience and forbearance with
such of our brethren, of whose upright disposition and faithful will one
believes oneself entitled to be convinced, but who have not yet
succeeded in breaking through to full theological-ecclesiastical
clarity. I ask you to understand, only in this sense, what I said at the
close of my earlier letter concerning the outstanding doctrinal
differences regarding the doctrine of the Church. But what I then wrote,
thinking it, as I supposed, in an innocent frame of mind, I could not and
dare not write any longer for conscience's sake now. Löhe's coming
forward with chiliastic ideas, as well as his history concerning [holy]
Unction — matters in which, according to God's Word, I cannot but agree
with the judgment of your Synod — further, the public controversy that
has broken out this year even in our own closest ecclesiastical circles
over the doctrine of Church and Ministry, make a doctrinal indecision no
longer possible; it becomes ever more evident that these are questions
of principle, articles of our churchly confession, which we must
maintain in their whole, unimpaired validity. — I confess and testify to
you, therefore, my wrong in what I wrote concerning the significance of
the outstanding doctrinal differences. I did not mean to deny the sin of
a real doctrinal error, nor to make it smaller than it is; but may the
Lord forgive that my eye did not see the matter more clearly and more
sharply than it did, as it certainly could have seen with greater
faithfulness — and you too, beloved brothers, I ask heartily to grant me
brotherly forgiveness, insofar as I gave you cause for offense by the
manner in which I expressed myself.

Now, as to the doctrine of the Church and the Ministry first of all,
your letter has rendered me the essential service of clearing up for me