# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_October 1859_S300
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

300 Correspondence to Germany.

quite well felt how you were in many ways hindered from judging with that firmness and decisiveness which the confession of divine truth, especially in times of conflict, demands — hindered by a piety toward eminent men of the church of Germany that, however honorable and pleasing to God in itself otherwise, is, in matters of faith and doctrine which are indeed not our own to yield on, ill-applied and displeasing to God; and take our earlier lines entirely in the sense that we wished, in heartfelt brotherly love, to contribute our mite toward removing that hindrance and toward bringing the doctrinal antitheses of our time, God willing, more sharply to your consciousness, along with their consequences. Now the LORD, the wonderful God, had, even before our lines could reach you, already for the most part himself done what we wanted; had already, through sorrowful occurrences in the Lutheran Church of Germany which also deeply grieve our own hearts, convinced you that the struggle of our day concerns questions of principle, articles of our churchly confession, which we must maintain in their whole, unimpaired validity. For this let praise and thanks be given from the depths of our souls to the faithful God and Father who takes such heartfelt care of us all. May he comfort you richly with the sweet comfort of his saving Gospel over the pain of having to recognize that you erred earlier in this matter. But the candid confession of this fault has, on the part of us who almost all ourselves suffered more or less from the same defect at some time, longer or shorter ago, humbled us to our shame and made you only the dearer and more precious to our hearts. —

Now when you say, in the course of your letter, that with the help of our explanation you now also rightly understand Thesis VII, Part II, of Walther's book, that you agree with it, indeed fully acknowledge the importance and significance we attach to it for the doctrine of the Ministry, and moreover assure us that in everything we have written about Church and Ministry in our letter you do not know a single sentence in which you are not entirely of our opinion — this frank testimony of your agreement with us could of course only gladden us from the heart and fill us with thanks toward God. Ask yourself, indeed, on that basis: what could still keep me, after what has been said, from being wholly one heart and one soul with you? — And yet you still have some misgivings about us, not indeed regarding the principles of the doctrine, but rather regarding our practice, and you state them freely and openly. For the latter we thank you heartily and urge you earnestly never to let yourself be talked out of it by anything whatsoever, since this is the only sure way to a final and complete understanding, which we both, indeed, desire from the heart. Your misgivings, however, are at bottom still the old ones, and in general it is, first of all, again the concern that we might one-sidedly overemphasize the general priesthood of all believers as against other parts of the doctrine. Now however much we ask ourselves, through