The origin and legitimacy of the Saxon Evangelical Lutheran Free Church. (410) [Free Church forms 1871 (418)] — The withdrawal of the faithful Lutheran East India missionaries from the service of the Leipzig Mission and its consequences. [Germany warns, but Leipzig missionaries leave for Missouri (422); Break with Leipzig Mission Society (424); Walther answers Leipzig claim that Luther tolerated Melanchthon (424-427); ]. — The position of the Missouri Synod as such in the Controversy on the Election of Grace. (428) [Schwan’s 1881 address on Election (428)] ● [1881 Synod: disputes, discusses, then adopts “13 Theses on Election” (433); Missouri’s seminaries (437)] — The laying of the foundation stone (439) and consecration of the new seminary in St. Louis. The 19th Synodical convention (1884) (458). (H. C. Schwan address) (459) — Review and conclusion. (465)
[] At the beginning of the last decade [1871], a sister synod of the German Lutheran Synod of Missouri, Ohio and other States was established in Germany, namely the Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Free Church in Saxony and other States. Although the bond of faith that links these Saxon Lutherans with the members of the North American Missouri Synod is so close that they are often shamefully accused of being Missourians, this Saxon separated Lutheran synod has nevertheless grown up quite independently in its native homeland. Here, too, solemn protest against the accusation which has often been made, as if the North American Missouri Synod had sought to undermine the German Lutheran state church from over here, to agitate for separation from it and for the formation of a German-Missouri Free Church. In many cases it is just the other way round. After all, the Saxon Lutherans who emigrated in 1838 never claimed that Saxon Lutheranism had emigrated with them; after Stephan's unmasking, they decidedly renounced his narrow-minded sectarianism, as is reported in chapter 2 of this book. The public declaration of the emigrated Saxon Lutherans was kindly received in their old homeland and published in Saxon newspapers (mainly in the Pilgrims from Saxony [Pilger aus Sachsen]). Thus, in the first decades of the existence of the
Missouri Synod, a bond of fraternal, intimate fellowship and assistance was formed between the emigrants and the Missouri Synod established by them and the Lutheran-minded people in their old Saxon homeland. The editors of the Pilgrims from Saxony, Pastors Meurer, Rühle, Böttcher, brought their readers news and messages from the area of the Missouri Synod in America and called for active support of them. It should be especially emphasized here, however, that following an appeal by the sainted Pastor Wyneken in 1840, the Dresden Association for Church Support of Germans in North America was formed, which from that time on sent a number of Lutheran pastors to America. Even though this association was not established in the beginning in exclusive connection with the Missouri Synod, it later entered into full church fellowship with the Missouri Synod, just as most of the sendlings of the association later joined the Missouri Synod, some of whom became outstanding members and leaders of the Missouri Synod themselves, to which not only the aforementioned Pastor Wyneken belonged, but also the still living and venerable Pastor Sihler in Fort Wayne, one of the first and oldest sendlings of the Dresden association. Unfortunately, the activities of this association seemed to cool down more and more, but they still existed until the beginning of the 1860s, when (1861) a formal institution for the collection and training of ministerial students for North America was established in Nassau by Pastor Brunn at Steeden, in close and exclusive connection with the Missouri Synod. Even now there was so little awareness of opposition to the Missouri Synod in Germany, so that Pastor Brunn's institution, when it first came into existence, was welcomed with joy and supported most eagerly in all German Lutheran churches, namely Saxony, Hanover, Mecklenburg, and Lauenburg. In particular, Pastor Brunn also met the then board of the Dresden Association for North America on several occasions during this time, and enjoyed the warmest brotherly love and hospitality of the sainted bookseller Justus
Naumann in Dresden, Pastor Siedel in Tharandt and others, as well as the full promise of participation and support. But especially on his annual collection trips, which Pastor Brunn made in almost all German Lutheran regional churches in the interest of his institution, he found the friendliest welcome everywhere, and was a welcome guest and speaker at many mission festivals; his institution was mainly maintained for the first 10-15 years of its existence with gifts from the state church as well as with students. At that time there was so little talk of a break or conflict between the Missouri Synod and the German Lutheran state churches. Rather, the Missouri-minded Lutherans on both sides of the world's oceans hoped that pure Lutheran doctrine would again and again come to dominate in the German state churches and that a real renewal and reformation of the German state church would take place.
Unfortunately things nevertheless turned out differently and certainly had to come out differently. And what was the main reason for this? Certainly not in a possible sectarian spirit or in the one-sided partiality of the Missouri-minded Lutherans for separation and free-churchism. No, indeed not. The contrast between the latter and the German Lutheran state church rather arose quite naturally and from within by the fact that in the Missouri SynBrobstd in America, as well as in its faithful friends and closest fellow believers in Germany, the faithful adherence to pure Lutheran confessional doctrine with all its consequences had won and kept the rule, while the German Lutheran state churches in their ecclesiastical and theological development, which had begun so hopefully, did not reach its goal but came to a standstill, allowing the liberal spirit of the times, unionism and the errors of modern theology to remain within them. Enslaved by the secular state governments of our time, whereby a real return
of the Lutheran state church to the pure Lutheran Confession revealed itself more and more as impossible.
It should not be denied here what powerful strengthening and foundation, especially in recognition of pure Lutheran doctrines and the truly Lutheran church principles based on them, the Missouri Synod in America has provided for our entire time, and how much this has not only bound its closest friends in Germany to it with intimate bonds of love and faith, but has also promoted their ecclesiastical endeavors. In such close fellowship with the Missouri Synod, the well-known “Association of Lutherans” (“Lutheranervereine”) in Dresden and Planitz in Saxony came into being in the early 1860s, at first without any thought of separation from the state church, but only out of the desire for support in faithful Lutheran church knowledge and attitude. But in their eager ecclesiastical striving for progress it soon became clear to these associations that the Saxon State Church and most of the pastors were not keeping pace with them: in the associations mentioned above, they clearly and decidedly held fast to purely Lutheran doctrine; in the State Church, on the other hand, they remained divided in their doctrine, unclear, undecided and tolerated various false doctrines; those associations pushed for Lutheran church discipline, the elimination of unionism especially at the altar, the establishment of Lutheran and closed communion, but the Saxon state church could not do justice to all these demands and requests, which these associations repeatedly addressed to the Saxon church government. The Ministry of Worship in Dresden rejected the petitions in question. Thus it came to the separation from the Saxon state church and formed the two separated congregations in Dresden, Zwickau and Planitz, which felt compelled to call the now sainted pastor Ruhland from America to be their pastor, since no Saxon pastor had joined them nor been willing to join them in the separation. The Missouri Synod in America as well as Pastor Brunn in Nassau, who himself stood in the
closest connection with the Saxon Lutheran associations, were completely far from urging the latter to separate, but out of full conviction, founded on the Word of God, they had to welcome the Saxon separation as truly Lutheran and confessional with joy, and so support and promote it to the best of their ability.
This is not the place to discuss in more detail today's German national or rather state church and the reasons for or against separation, which has happened in many other places. In order to be able to judge the position of the Missouri Synod, which it has currently taken on the same, we can only briefly mention the testimony it gave on the occasion of its jubilee celebration in 1872: “We believe that many dear Lutherans, many excellent men, are in Germany, but the organizations are no longer Lutheran; the Lutherans are in the midst of corrupt fellowships. We maintain that there is no longer a Lutheran Church in Germany as there was in the time of Luther and John Gerard, when the whole Bible was seriously considered to be the Word of God and the Concordia was considered to be the pure, clear and true exposition of the Word of God, where as soon as a preacher who deviated on one point from the Word of God and from the confession was agitated, he was put on trial.” As proof of this, p. 49 of the 15th Synodical Report [1872 Missouri] is cited earlier: The worst of all is that those who claim to be at the head of the renewed Lutheran Church do not believe or teach the doctrines of that Church itself. As an example is given in the same place: Dr. Kahnis, who teaches in the Arian way that the Son of God is inferior to and subordinate to the Father, thus denying the apparently admitted divinity of Christ, who further attributes to the natural, unconverted man a free will even in spiritual matters etc. Also Dr. Luthardt, although a learned man and one who is highly respected as editor of the Allgemeine Evangelisch-lutherische Kirchenzeitung (General Evangelical-Lutheran Church Newspaper), teaches completely in the spirit of the modern Lutheran theology that wants to be Lutheran: He does not believe that in conversion man is pure
passive in behavior, i.e. that he is only the object to be converted, but not the one who brings it about. The fact that man cannot do anything about it is considered an abomination by modern theology. (Also the Iowa Synod’s vocal leader G. Fritschel, who wants to introduce the modern German theology here as it already came out during the Iowa Colloquy, puts in the Brobst’s Monatsheften the statement: “Whether man becomes saved or is lost, that is in the last resort based on man’s free decision for or against grace.” Whereas Dr. Walther, in Lehre und Wehre, of 1872, p. 193 ff., wrote the important essay: “Is it really Lutheran doctrine that the salvation of man is based in the last analysis on man's free decision for or against grace?”) Although Scripture clearly states: “The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them.” [1 Cor. 2:14] , they admit that this is what it says, but it is foolishness to them that the decision should not rest with man. — It is also almost universally accepted among these so-called orthodox theologians of Germany that the Lutheran doctrine of inspiration can no longer be believed. The professors without exception say: Not every word in the canonical writings of the Bible was inspired by the Holy Spirit; and because we still believe this, they laugh at us as ignorant people who are behind the times, even though the Savior says so clearly: “It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God”, Matt. 4:4. Add to this 1 Cor. 2:13: “the words which… the Holy Ghost teacheth”. That Word, of which Luther says: “It stands firm like a wall which no one can overturn, no matter how intelligent he may be”, this they have left behind. †)
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†) Dr. Fred Kramer’s note: According to the German Hymnal prepared by Dr. Walther and used in the German services in the Missouri Synod throughout its history the quotation is not from Luther but from the hymn “Herr Jesu Christ, du hast bereit“ by Samuel Kinner or Koerner, No. 197, stanza 4. [Walther’s German Hymnal#197, stanza 3; TLH #306, “Lord Jesus Christ, Thou hast prepared”]
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No one believes what the old Brenz says anymore, that if Paul has interpreted a passage of the Old Testament, he who pretends that this is not the interpretation of the Holy Spirit must be cursed. *)
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*) It should be recalled here that the address of the Breslau High Church Consistory, published on June 15, 1884, among other things states:
But it is certain that where one no longer has the doctrine of Inspiration, there can no longer be talk of a purely Lutheran church, because the foundation for it is missing.
Following the above words taken from the synodical proceedings of the year 1872, a few sentences from Dr. Walther's synodical address of the year 1874 are attached here [BTL translation; Baseley translation here]:
“Over in the country of the foundation of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, this church is manifestly approaching its dissolution more and more. After the unbelief that had already penetrated it at the end of the last century had already almost left it in the dust of death, it experienced a gracious visitation and awakening, but the Church of the Reformation has not risen again. — For what has happened? —
“Instead of returning to the faith ‘which was once delivered unto the saints’ [Jude 1:3], to the faith of the Apostolic Church, as Luther once did, it is precisely those who want to be considered pillars of the Church who have made science, further education, progress, perfection their watchword.
“Instead of preserving with holy faithfulness the precious heritage of pure doctrines and knowledge, which our fathers fought for in hot battles and temptations and left to us, their children, while Christianity as a whole is being defended with great learning, all individual doctrines of Christianity are now in the case of the one, now of another, in incomprehensible blindness treated as not yet finally answered questions [or ‘Open Questions’],
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“The falsely famous art that the sainted Scheibel called the transformation of Christianity into innermost paganism is now once more being practiced at German universities, and the states as well as the state churches cannot ward off the evil …… When a people which had been graced by God as has the German people falls for the second time into the mire of rationalism — without permitting itself to be raised again by divine grace to the height and power of faith of the time of the Reformation — and this now, at a time of generally and internationally advanced human arrogance that has penetrated into the lowest circles, so this is more dangerous than the first time, and it can happen to them as it happened to Jerusalem."
made dubious and shaky, if they are not downright rejected, and thus themselves overturn what they have built. Under the broad shield of a so-called believing science, he who is supposed to be the servant of the Word (Luke 1:2) and wants to be called such, is now allowed to present himself as the lord and judge of the Word, to lead even the apostles and prophets to school, while those who assigned to scholarship, as the captured ‘riches of the Gentiles’ (Is. 61:6), to serve in the sanctuary of God instead of ruling, are branded as narrow-minded despisers of science. Now it is therefore even the so-called believers of whom David's lament is valid: ‘The foundations are destroyed’ Psalm 11:3 — — Instead of simply preaching repentance toward God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, Acts 20:21, to both the learned and the unlearned, to both high and low, in an apostolic way, one is altering and mutilating the Gospel in order to lead the apostate generation back to the Gospel! — they take away the sting of the Word to bring back to life a generation that has become full and died twice! — Christianity is reduced to general and undefined religious principles and moods of the heart, in order to save it for a whole people who have long since in a conscious decision turned their backs on it.
“Instead of recognizing that a people who in their leading voices have fallen into disbelief, laughing at all hope of a hereafter and seeking their heaven only on earth, far from giving themselves over to the maternal education of the Church, rather reverse the relationship now and want only the church to submit to its majority of votes; instead of therefore separating from those who no longer want to be subject to Christ and His Word, indeed, loudly proclaim: ‘We do not want this one to rule over us’, ‘Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us!’ [Ps. 2:3] instead of, as the apostle commands, ‘purifying oneself of such people’ — the same people are kept in the church by all means still available, a
ballast which must necessarily pull the ship of the church into the abyss. — Instead of rallying in closed ranks around the old banner of the Confession of the orthodox church, and holding fast and defending it with confidence of faith, as did our fathers resting in God, all sorts of ambiguous formulas of commitment to this confession have been devised in order to reconcile even those who have long since left the foundation of it, to soothe their consciences and to give them space and authority in our church! Orthodox believers and manifest unbelievers, in short, friend and foe, now peacefully and fraternally share the pulpit, altar and pasture of the flock of Jesus Christ, sit together in synods, deliberate there together on the good of the Church and, in order not to endanger external peace, making ever new concessions to one another.…” (See C. F. W. Walther's Lutherische Brosamen p. 545 [From Baseley translation Our Master's Table, p. 255-256]).
[] Just as this synodical address describes, the year 1871 was the year in which things began to happen in the Kingdom of Saxony. In May of that year a so-called State Synod was held in Saxony for the first time, and after many a pious wish had been expressed there (which was finally subject to the free approval of the Royal Minister of Ecclesiastical Affairs and Public Instruction), the so-called faithful and positive had to make such concessions that the oath on the symbolic books, which had rightly existed until then, was abolished and a vow was introduced for it, which even the worst rationalist could take. The unbelievers in Saxony rejoiced over this. But those who wanted in earnest to be Lutherans now realized that a time of decision had come. While the Saxon state church had now officially issued its confessional character, a number of Lutherans left the state church, as already mentioned, and the members of the above-mentioned “Lutheran Association” [p. 414] now became the stock of the Lutheran congregations, which now form the Evangelical Lutheran Free Church of Saxony and Other States. The first pastor called by the separated Lutheran
congregations in Dresden and Planitz was Fr. Ruhland, until then the pastor in Pleasant Ridge, Ill. He was called from there to Saxony on Dr. Walther's recommendation. Since at that time it was believed in various quarters that Dr. Walther wanted to exercise an ecclesiastical act of governance in the German Free Churches, he declared already in the synod of St. Louis in 1872 that he had rendered this service of love to his Saxon co-religionists not as a synodical president but as a close friend, after repeated requests, which enabled them to constitute themselves as an independent Lutheran Free Church. Thus, in the face of the slanders that are widely spread and generally believed as if the “Missourians” had “invaded” Germany, it is to be noticed that the Evangelical Lutheran congregations which were created by separation, and are independent of the state, called in their freedom an orthodox pastor such as they could not find in Germany, from America, making use of the counsel of Dr. Walther, and had thereby demonstrated that, fully conscious of their rights a royal priests, they had nevertheless wanted to accord the holy ministry, where they saw that it was being rightly administered, its due honor and co-operation in exercising their right of calling. After a year, Pastor Ruhland found a brother in Pastor E. O. Lenk *), who had left the Saxon state church, who, while Ruhland took over the Planitz congregation, worked in the Dresden congregation until he was later called to America. From Saxony, Pastor Ruhland came into even closer contact with the separated Lutheran Pastor Fr. Brunn in Steeden, who had served the Missouri Synod faithfully, and Pastor Hein in Wiesbaden. **) Since Brunn's physical strength weakened,
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*) Cf. Lenk, Appeal to all Christians of the Saxon State Church. Dresden 1872.
**) Pastor Hein joined the small synod at the beginning, which he helped to found, but he took the side of our opponents in the Election of Grace controversy that broke out later and fell away from the synod.
C. Eikmeier took over the ministry at the Steeden congregation. In addition to the latter, the following pastors were also appointed: G. Stöckhardt in Planitz, C. Schneider in Frankenberg, H. Stallmann in Dresden (now in Mendorf — Kleinlinden), P. Kern in Chemnitz, W. Hübener in Dresden, W. Meyer in Crimmitschau, and C. Hempfing in Mendorf near Wetzlar joined the small synod, whose first president was F. Ruhland. Since his death (1879) Pastor O. Willkomm, who is in Planitz, has been administering the presidency. Soon after it was constituted, this synod founded its own organ, entitled The Evangelical Lutheran Free Church, a church newspaper, which can also be obtained from the Lutheran Concordia Publishing House in St. Louis, and which deserves an even wider circulation than it has achieved so far. Particularly valuable are the proceedings of the fifth annual convention of this synod in 1881, held in Dresden in connection with the Election of Grace controversy, which had as their subject the doctrine of free will and conversion. The same are printed in Zwickau in Saxony and are available, together with the other writings of the Saxon Free Church, to purchase from Heinrich J. Naumann in Dresden.
It is still clear at all times that the separated Lutheran Church, wherever it has always come to light in Germany, is a great blessing for its surroundings, both ecclesiastically and in civic affairs. Also the now immortalized editor of the Freimund for many years, the Bavarian Pastor Wucherer, wrote in 1875: “The separation is the watchful conscience for the state church”; if he admittedly adds that this (the state church) is the cement for the separated, it would be sad for the existence of the separated church, if this latter opinion were correct. Meanwhile, the Saxon Lutheran Free Church must apparently have a quite different cement to hold it together, otherwise its existence would have been lost long ago. The bond which holds this Free Church together is the unanimous confession to which it adheres on the basis of the divine Word in the unity of the Spirit. This
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has been shown in the many hostilities, which she has not lacked either. After, for example, Pastor G. Stoeckhardt in Niederplanitz had not only left the state church where he was originally supposed to stand up against the separated Lutheran Pastor Ruhland, but had also given testimony against today's state church in the The Evangelical Lutheran Free Church, he was not only prosecuted in court, but also sentenced to eight months in prison in his absence, after he had already left Germany following a call to Holy Cross Evangelical Lutheran Church in St Louis. On the part of the state church professors, the Free Church has found a bitter opponent in the editor of the Allgemeine Evangelisch-lutherische Kirchenzeitung [General Evangelical-Lutheran Church Newspaper], the above-mentioned Dr. Luthardt, who is also Vice President of the Leipzig Mission Society. It is certain that the church newspaper mentioned above is not a mere local newspaper, but the main organ of the state churches calling themselves Lutheran. Since today's state churches have become a playground for the most varied spirits, this Leipzig church newspaper must also “do justice” to these different directions, as one can already read in the prospectus of this newspaper. It is indeed very nicely interwoven with “as far as they move on the common ground of the Lutheran Confession and submit to the standard of this Confession”, but of course one reserves for oneself in every respect free research and free scholarship and the necessary freedom for the further education of Christianity, where else would be the justification of Luthardt's Chiliasm and synergism, or the right of the trend of Kahnis to Arianism, or the trend of Schleiermacher, von Hofmann, etc. Only one direction is forbidden and frowned upon, that is the path taken by the Missouri Synod, which has remained faithful to the Lutheran Reformation, which admittedly does not follow the wishes of the modern, newer German theologians, but with the greatest possible faithfulness follows the opposite, urgent request of the Apostle Paul, who in1 Cor. 1:10-12
writes: “I beseech you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye all speak the same thing, … but that ye be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment.” The pastor Brauer, standing in the Mecklenburg State Church, gives this testimony in Dargun of the Missouri Synod in the Mecklenburg Kirchen- und Zeitblatt of September 1876, where he laments that the dull shadows of the state churches no longer allow the purifying breeze of serious doctrinal discipline. The erroneous opinion of Luthardt, as if the church as such had to allow itself to be given contradictory directions in its midst (that order demands this!), Pastor Brauer counters with the assertion that precisely because the Church is not a (philosophical) school, but has a divine, salvation-working truth that is revealed from heaven, a truth that she has completely, on the preservation of which life and salvation depend, she must not tolerate that even in the most important doctrines of salvation the one teaches yes and the other no. He appeals to St. Paul's word: “For I have not shunned to declare unto you all the counsel of God.” [Acts 20:27] It is a corrupting fraud of freedom, it is Chiliastic dreams of the flesh, to think that the Church, “the pillar and ground of the truth” [1 Tim. 3:15] of all truth of all time, is developing like the growing and passing things of this world from immaturity to maturity. (See the relevant reprint in Lehre und Wehre, 1876, p. 373).
[] In 1875, two articles appeared in the Leipzig Allgemeine evang.-lutherische Kirchenzeitung in which, in order to prevent the spread of separation in Saxony, all Lutheran Christians were warned of the Missouri Synod as being harsh people who condemned anyone who did not acknowledge every letter of the theories put forward by Professor Walther, in particular the so-called doctrine of transference and the doctrine that the Pope was the Antichrist. Already in chapter X of this book the most important points concerning these two matters are mentioned; Luthardt wisely refrains from the equally important testimony against
today's synergism and chiliasm. While the testimony of the Missouri Synod against the wrong direction of the modern university theology bore a blessed fruit back and forth, so that also in the area of the Leipzig Mission individual missionaries had been awakened to the right Lutheran insight, the above-mentioned articles, in which the gauntlet was thrown down to the Missouri Synod, had a different effect than one had thought in Leipzig. The missionaries A. Grubert, F. Zucker, C. M. Zorn and O. Willkomm *) felt compelled in their conscience to give public testimony and accordingly sent a “Declaration” to Pastor Brunn in Steeden for suitable publication. The same was published not only in the magazine Evang.-luth. Kirche und Mission, edited by Pastor Brunn, but also as a separate printing in the publishing house of Joh. Herrmann in Zwickau, and almost without exception the German circles connected with the Leipzig Mission judged the mentioned missionaries to be in danger. Although in this declaration there was not a single mention of the Mission, because what Pastor Brunn had said about the syncretistic state of the Leipzig Mission could not be blamed on the missionaries concerned, this action was nevertheless considered unforgivable. It became clear that the missionaries had acted rightly by taking steps to liberate the Leipzig Mission from the syncretism in which it lay, or, if this were not possible, at least to free themselves from this sin, according to 1 Timothy 5:22. The latter case occurred. The Director of Missions Hardeland himself rushed to the missionaries in the East Indies and, before any further negotiations, demanded that they should express their regret about the publication of the above-mentioned declaration. Since they could not do this for reasons of conscience,
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*) The fifth, E. Schäffer, who was originally involved, resigned afterwards.
they had to leave the service of the Leipzig Mission.
[] Although St. Louis did not know anything about these events in the East Indies, but had only learned that the missionaries had taken steps to eliminate the syncretism prevailing in the Leipzig Mission, it was nevertheless possible to foresee what was in store for them. While they had been abandoned by the Missionary Society, Prof. Walther, in agreement with the St. Louis Conference, offered the missionaries in question the necessary funds, which they needed to travel from East India to Germany and from Germany to North America. The money was sent to them at their request after the bond with Leipzig had already been severed. Although it was natural that the Missourians took care of their fellow witnesses, some were not ashamed to make such an act a special reproach to Prof. Walther. He was even publicly accused of having acted arbitrarily in this matter; but in the end, all districts of the Missouri Synod confirmed everything that the men of St. Louis, particularly Prof. Walther, who was then the general president, had done and expended in this matter. At the same time, the Missouri Synod felt compelled, painful as it was, to sever the ties with Leipzig and to withdraw the support still given to the Leipzig Mission, since there was no longer any hope that the Mission would dismiss the syncretism in its midst. *)
[] In the course of these events it turned out that even those circles in Germany, whose confessional standpoint was still the best one could do, could not tolerate the testimony against the evils which were tolerated among them, and wanted little to think of doing away with these evils,
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*) About the course of events in the whole matter reported in detail: C. M. Zorn, Urgent Justification of the Resignation of the Missionaries F. Zucker, etc. from the Leipzig Mission. St. Louis, Mo. Dresden, Heinrich J. Naumann.
that they rather sought to defend these sad conditions. Some particularly liked to appeal to Luther's supposed toleration of the errors of Melanchthon and refers to them as if one could not be more orthodox than Luther once was. While also Hardeland had attacked the position of those missionaries in East India with this pretence, Prof. Walther took this as a reason towritethe important article: “The ‘Toleration’ of Melanchthon on the part of Luther” in the November and December issues 1876 ofLehre und Wehre. [German text here]— Since Director Hardeland wanted to reassure the missionaries by pretending that a man had to be taken for Lutheran for so long, that is, not to separate from him when he professed to be Lutheran, and since he also thought that Luther had followed precisely this principle toward the Melanchthon, Dr. Walther answered this question at the beginning of his essay: “If Melanchthon had really already become apparent in Luther's time as a stiff-necked false teacher, and if Luther had really let him be quietly allowed to do so during this time, one would have to admit, however, that those Lutherans who do not want to maintain fellowship with false teachers appearing in our church do not act in Luther's sense, at least not according to Luther's example. Except the matter, thank God, is quite different. Dr. Walther proves first of all that Melanchthon did not deviate from Luther's doctrine in any article until 1535, in which year doubts about the doctrines of the Holy Sacrament may have arisen in his heart, that he signed not only the Wittenberg Articles in 1536, but also afterwards the Smalcald Articles, which leave nothing to be desired in terms of decisiveness, that Melanchthon later, moreover, only secretly spoke out his departure from Luther's doctrines toward fellow-minded people, but disguised it from Luther as far as possible, so that Luther still behaved unsuspectingly toward him, while Melanchthon already carried himself with an evil conscience, and suspected that Luther might get angry with him. Furthermore Dr. Walther proves from several
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examples that Luther did not simply tolerate Melanchthon, but rebuked and threatened him himself, if it once became obvious to him despite Melanchthon's constant playing hide-and-seek, or if even the strongest suspicion was aroused in him that Melanchthon was falsifying the doctrine. After Dr. Walther closes this detailed report, taken from the sources, with the story which comes from the mouth of [George] Major, that Luther not only wrote down the words in Latin at the entrance of his study room: “Our professors are to be examined on the Lord's Supper,” but also, before he set out on his last journey to Eisleben, told Major, when questioned, “What you read and what the words are, so it is the opinion; and when you return home, and I too, an examination will have to be conducted,” and so on, he finally summarizes the result as follows. p. 372, 1876: “Finally, we ask: Can those who cultivate fellowship in the church with notorious false teachers, when these profess to the doctrines of our church on the whole, rightly call upon the fact that Luther also tolerated a Melanchthon? — We answer: Impossible! It is true that if one goes a little deeper into the history of Melanchthon's behavior during the last ten years of Luther's life, the eye is presented with such a bleak picture of the former that one must ask oneself with astonishment how it was possible that there was no decisive break between the two men. … How much more would we have preferred” so Dr. Walther continues in view of his preceding historical account, “to be able to help that only the memory of Melanchthon is kept alive from the time of his faithfulness and blessed activity, but that the memory of him in the time of his fall would rather be erased and buried forever! May those who, instead of strengthening themselves in Melanchthon who once faithfully supported his teacher Luther, seek support for their syncretism in Melanchthon who was secretly engaging in machinations against Luther, while publicly confessing loyalty to him and his doctrine,
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they are responsible for forcing faithful disciples of Luther to draw to light what they would like to see covered up. … To say that Luther tolerated Melanchthon as a false teacher revealed before him is against all historical, actual truth and a horrible blasphemy against Luther, the faithful confessor of pure truth until his death and unbending fighter against any falsification of the same. To say of a man, like Melanchthon, who had done and continued to do everything to make Luther believe that he agreed with him in doctrine; of a man who Luther … had given a serious reproach, of a man who, as often as reproaches have been given to him, had yielded, of a man, who himself constantly complained in those days that he had to walk beside Luther as if under a threatening thunderstorm gathering over his head, who always feared that he might betray himself, that he would be called to account by Luther, and when Luther polemicized that it was himself being meant, and finally of a man who, even after Luther's death revealed to a Carlowitz what an unbearable, “almost disgraceful bondage” he had endured under Luther — to say of such a man that Luther had carried him as a manifestly false teacher — as an example for us “from the fundamental time of the Reformation” (as Hardeland said) would be downright ridiculous, if it were not so sad. But to ascribe to Luther, The Reformer, who was awakened and sealed by God, that though he boldly condemned all others who harbored Melanchthon's errors as false prophets, and therefore as ravening wolves, but in Melanchthon he had ‘tolerated’ and overlooked these same errors out of a special friendship, may God protect every Lutheran from this in grace; but to him who does this, may God grant sincere repentance.” [end of long quote from Walther essay]
As thorough as the historical evidence that Dr. Walther provides there concerning Melanchthon is, so serious and insistent is the above final application. Although the Leipzigers could not refute such articles, they were nevertheless from that time on always ready to open the columns of the Allgemeine Kirchenzeitung to the
opponents of the Missouri Synod, and when some years later the controversy on Election of Grace broke out in this country, the German university theologians were found on the side of those who thought that now they had found food on the table for them. But while in Germany it is customary to treat doctrinal disputes only as a dispute for students, Dr. Luthardt also encountered the strange fact that he, who was otherwise sympathetic to synergism, published an essay in the “Sprechsaal” section of his Zeitschrift für kirchliche Wissenschaft und kirchliches Leben (“Journal for Church Science and Church Life”; volume 1880, p. 204, installment IV) which in fact presents a Calvinist particularism. Neither Luther, nor Tileman Hesshusius, nor any Missourian has ever denied the universal grace and love of God toward all people. But the above-mentioned Lutheran publication, together with Calvin, makes the statement that God wants everyone to be helped, and so on, to a few individuals who are to be found among all classes and estates. In view of this, one could rightly ask: Where do these people get the right to persecute on account of the doctrine of the Election of Grace those who are concerned only about the sole working of divine grace in those who are saved by faith?
[] The position of the Missouri Synod as such in the Controversy on the Election of Grace.
After the Election of Grace Controversy had already been disturbing the minds for two full years, the 18th convention of the General Synod of Missouri, Ohio and other States was opened on May 11, 1881 at Fort Wayne, Indiana. General President H. C. Schwan who was elected at the conclusion of the previous General Synod three years earlier, based his synodical address on the text: “My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness.” [2 Cor. 12:9] — Let the following be taken from it:
[] “In response to the prayer of Paul three times, the Lord said: ‘My
grace is sufficient for thee!” That is: You have my mercy, Paul. You shall keep it too. That's enough. So let it be sufficient for you. My grace will give you what you need: strength to fight, patience to carry, good courage in sadness. Paul believed the words. He let is suffice for him. … So he was of good courage in weakness, shame and need. — This word also has something to say to us, especially in the present time.
We are not worthy of extraordinary revelations. We are not chosen instruments, as a Paul was. But the Lord Himself has revealed His Gospel to us; He has called us to be His instruments, has blessed our work above all we ask and understand, has lifted us out of the dust, given us space, made us high and great. So that we do not exalt ourselves, as we would certainly have done, He has also seen to it that we are not lacking a thorn in the flesh and a messenger of Satan. And especially in the most recent time blows have struck us as we never had to suffer them before, because they came from a quarter from which we should certainly not have expected them. Not the old enemies, … but those who stood with us in sacred brotherly bonds, who are the flesh of our flesh and the bone of our bone, have not only accused us of false doctrine, but have also branded us as apostates before the whole of Christendom, and have even sounded the alarm against us as falsifiers of the eternal Gospel.
Then many godly hearts, as once St. Paul sighed and cried out to the Lord, and still cry out day and night, that at least this bitter cup may pass away. What now? Have they perhaps cried in vain? Have we gone unheard? Satan and his own are certainly already rejoicing: at last these men must fall to the ground, who stir up the world; and when they lie down, they shall never rise again! But they are mistaken. The time will come when they will stop. This thorn may penetrate even deeper and make the breach even larger.
The unexpected blows of the fist to the neck may come even more. But we are heard! Because of the Word: ‘My grace is sufficient for thee’, we also have the Word. — — All the children of God among us, as they are certain that they themselves have done nothing to help themselves, so are they also certain that the Lord has truly opened their hearts to rejoice in His grace, to take comfort and put all their hope in it. Just as they know that if they had been left alone they would have fallen away long ago, that it is the Lord alone who has received them up to now, so divinely are they also certain that He will hold on to them until the end, and will keep their portion until the Last Day. Therefore, we have His grace. We are certain of it.
But we have not forfeited this grace through the present struggle. We have a clear conscience. We know, and He also knows, that the article of eternal Election was not brought into the plan out of arrogance, but out of necessity, for His glory, for certain comfort of His own. After all, the Election of Grace has been widely denied or set aside in modern Christianity, or made dependent on all sorts of things in the elect, which God should have looked at and foreknown, be it their own decision, or their acceptance, or at least their unwillingness to resist the gift of faith. The one who has eyes must have seen how the glory of God was thereby darkened and the children of God were deprived of the certainty of comfort. And whoever saw this was not allowed to remain silent. He had to witness and praise the unconditional nature of grace, in which the supreme glory of our God shines; he had to testify and praise the certainty of this grace, on which all the consolation of broken hearts depends, but on the other hand, everything that wants to rise up against it, wherever it is to be found, in us or in others, consciously or unconsciously, and however it may be concealed, adorned and made up, had to be knocked down and trampled into the dust. That had to happen and that and nothing else
was what we wanted when we put the article of the Election of Grace on the candlestick again. We know that, the Lord knows that!
… We are certain that we have not lost His grace through this controversy either. Therefore, His word is now also valid for us: My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness.
But what does this word tell us in our present struggle? It calls to us: Do not be afraid! The mountains shall depart, and the hills shall fall; but my grace shall not depart from thee, and the covenant of my peace shall not fall. Remain only with me and the certain word of my grace, and you shall certainly abide!
If you are not able to grasp how I once chose you, since you were in the same, even greater guilt than others, let it be sufficient for you that you now certainly have my grace, and that this grace is eternal, as I myself am…
If others seek to ponder, explain, and make acceptable to reason the mystery of Election, be content that it is an Election of Grace and that reason knows nothing of grace.
If others do not wish to hear of a election which does not rhyme with their concepts of justice and equity, and they therefore make a judicial decision in advance, let it remain an Election of Grace. My (God's) justice will remain pure when it is judged.
If others think that my election must necessarily have seen something in those to be chosen that makes them pleasant or at least acceptable, be content and be glad that I alone saw my mercy and merit. Otherwise you would certainly not have been chosen.
If others say, I have at least had to look at your faith: so be content that your faith is not your work, but mine – I determined to work that in you, just as I chose you.
If they cannot understand how to be sure of their election, since one should be assured of the present state of grace but not of his perseverance, let it be sufficient that both of these are made sure by my calling Word and that faith in this Word is also a miracle of my grace………
Feeling sorry for so many sincere hearts that are on your enemies’ side: What can be said? Entrust them to my mercy. I will let the sincere succeed. — To sum up, the Lord is calling us with these words: Hold fast to what my Word tells you, that Election is by grace alone for my sake, that only free grace is truly grace and certain grace, and that only certain grace can comfort. Remain with it, and keep it in your own chamber; confess it confidently before the world, and preach it from the housetops, and fear not. I am with you. Do not retreat, for I am your God. I strengthen you, I also help you, I receive you through the right hand of my righteousness.
This, this is what the Word of the Lord tells us in this fight. Are you saying we shouldn't trust that Word? Would we have cause to? He has mercifully redeemed us from six tribulations, should an evil move us in this seventh one? He has saved us through many a struggle, and through it He has blessed us, should He want to leave us in this last one, if we stand by him? Are there not already traces of His grace and help? The storm for which the alarm was sounded did not overthrow us, the wild waters that rushed against us did not drag us along. On the contrary, they had to show us that in this struggle we are also standing safe on the rock that the wind and waves break against. Yes, it almost looks as if the order had already gone out: So far, and no farther! For not a few of those who turned their backs on us in the first horror are already turning back to us. If we have had to painfully
experience the separating power of truth, we have certainly been allowed to taste the sweet unifying power of it…………… As often as something in us wants to exalt itself, may the thorn and the messenger of Satan hold it down, as often we are tried to be timid, may this Word of the Lord always lift us up: My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness. Amen.” [end of Schwan’s address]
——————
[] After the presidential address had been made, the Synod proceeded to the discussions concerning the fierce dispute that had broken out within the Synodical Conference over the doctrine of the Election of Grace. It is a sad fact that even in the midst of the Missouri Synod, members belonging to the Synod are fighting each other. “To see such a thing in our midst (the Missouri Lutherans) is unusual,” It is high time to control and prevent the destruction caused in our midst by the spreading of doctrines to the contrary. “Our doctrine is none other than that of Scripture and our dear Lutheran Church at the time of the Reformation and the Formula of Concord. It is the doctrine of our Church that we have ever professed and continue to profess without reservation. It is true that even our opponents have attempted to base their doctrine on Article 11 of the Formula of Concord, but with what right they have done this anyone who knows can see that our opponents not only recognize as such the two sole causes of Election, namely God's mercy and Christ's merit, as exclusively invoked by the Formula of Concord, but that they also add a third cause, namely, persevering faith. — Now the one who has made these and other doctrines that go against God and our Confession his own and spreads them can no longer go hand in hand with us. We cannot and must not tolerate that even pastors within our
synod communion not only hide but also openly point to us as Calvinist seducers of souls. An end must be put to this state of affairs.……” We therefore have the duty, for many reasons, to make known to the Church and to the world without hesitation: this and only this teaching is the teaching of the Synod; we do not tolerate any other doctrine among ourselves. The general mood in our midst also urges us to decide. Already at the Pastoral Conference held in Chicago in the autumn of 1880, all those present, with the exception of a few, declared themselves convinced that only the doctrine presented and defended in our publications was in conformity with Scripture and Confession, and that therefore it alone should be valid among us. Those who raise the accusation of crypto-Calvinism against us should have long ago declared their withdrawal from the associations of our Synod. We do not want any kind of unionism. — — From this it was also explained that the fact that the Synod is now taking a firm stand on this doctrine, and that a vote is needed, is not connected with the opinion that it should first be decided by a vote among us which doctrine is right and which is wrong — which has long since been established from God's Word, and in accordance with it from our confessions. Rather, such a vote should only be our confession of right and pure doctrine, and make known to us who belongs to us and who does not. At the same time, it will also become clear which part of the synodical house must leave. Pure doctrine is better for us than the entire property of the Synod, and our faith is more dear to us than anything on earth. — After all the Synodical Presidents had been commissioned to draw up some contrasting Theses on the doctrine of the Election of Grace and to submit them to the Synod for further discussions, they reported the following day through their chairman that they could not draft new statements on the doctrine of Scripture and the Confession of the Election of Grace and considered it best not to provide anything of their own, but rather
to recommend to the Synod that it should make those 13 Theses which are listed in Nos. 2-9 of Vol. 36 ofDer Lutheraner be made an expression of their confession in the doctrine of the Election of Grace. These “Theses” contain the pure doctrine of the divine Word on the Election of Grace, as it has found expression in the Confession of our church. Briefly and succinctly, these summarize everything that our Synod teaches on the Election of Grace. (See the 13 Theses in the previous chapter, p. 386.) The 13 Theses were then read out, and to those who feared that many members of the Synod might still want to associate a hidden meaning with them, it was expressly explained: “We do not associate with the 13 Theses at hand any other meaning than that which the wording of these Theses themselves give. The one who in reality takes these Theses as they are, is one with us in faith. We confess that in these Theses the sum total of all that we believe with regard to the eternal election of God is laid down. With this we say at the same time that we do not confess anything that is wrong with these Theses, and this is also to be found in our own publications. We know of no secret or hidden meaning in these Theses. We believe, teach and confess only what the Theses say according to their explicit wording. And this is because they contain the doctrine of the Holy Scriptures and, in accordance with them, the doctrines of our Confession. It is certainly true that we have also tolerated among us the expressions of later teachers of our church; we have therefore never declared them to be false teachers. But we have never concealed from ourselves the fact that we should rather drop the expressions of the later dogmatists, the so-called second form of teaching, and have now also dropped it, forced by painful experiences. — Anyone who reads these 13 Theses without bias must admit that they are true and nothing but the truth. This applies not only to the first Theses, but also to the latter, which contain the main part of everything that forms the concept of Election,
namely, that the eternal election of God is a cause of our salvation and everything that creates, works, helps and promotes it; thus, it is a cause of everything that serves an elect person here on earth for the final purpose of his unfailingly attaining salvation. —
After the Synod had answered yes to the question whether it was ready to vote on all sides, the question was put to the Synod:
Does the Synod recognize the doctrine of the Election of Grace, as presented in our publications, as far as it is summarized in the 13 Theses read aloud, as the doctrine of Holy Scripture and the Lutheran Confession?
This question was answered by a vast majority with a joyful Yes! Only a very tiny minority (of about six votes) answered with No!
After the Synod had settled the doctrinal controversy within its area, it was emphasized that these 13 Theses were well known in the congregations and had been read many times. The members of the Synod who gathered on behalf of all the synodical congregations represent the entire synod. It is only fraud and deception if the small minority wants to pretend that they are the true Missouri Synod, but the other members as a whole are the new Missourians who are off course. After the Synod as such had made its confession, it was now up to the district president to act with the individual opponents, who now show themselves to be open enemies. As already reported in the previous section, the doctrine was again discussed in a general pastoral conference, which was held after the conclusion of this general synod; two of the previous opponents declared there that they were convinced that they were better off by agreeing with the doctrine of the Synod. Shortly before the opening of this Synod, Prof. Stellhorn had accepted a call as professor in Columbus, Ohio, and under his leadership a number of pastors
left the Missouri Synod and went over to the Ohio Synod and formed the Northwestern District of the Ohio Synod. (See Chapter XI, p. 343.)
The Synodical Conference, which met in Chicago in October 1882 and consisted of representatives of the Missouri, Wisconsin, Minnesota and Norwegian Synods, adopted both the Declaration of the Wisconsin and Minnesota Synods, as well as the 13 Theses of the Missouri Synod as a Scriptural and symbolic confession of the doctrine of the Election of Grace, and the firm and measured attitude shown by the representatives of this doctrine both at the synodical assemblies and in their publications proved a blessing to many.
Inexperienced people could, in view of the Election of Grace Controversy [or Predestinarian Controversy], embrace the popular opinion in Germany that it is better to devote one's time and energy to missions and such good works! Even though the Missouri Lutherans have recently been portrayed in the Allgemeine Evangelisch-lutherische Kirchenzeitung as disturbers of the peace that hold back many a good thing, it is nevertheless certain that nobody can be diligent in a godly life who does not adhere with all seriousness to the pure teaching of the divine Word. Only those who know the pure Word of God and have experienced its saving power in their own hearts will be willing to participate in the building of the kingdom of God and to place themselves at the service of the Lord Jesus without compulsion. Such a cordial willingness was shown at the very same general Synod at which the Election of Grace Controversy was brought to a close by an almost unanimous confession. According to a passage in the report on the theological seminaries of the Missouri Synod “One might well think, in view of the fact that we are notorious by those who pretend to be genuinely Lutheran and quite Missouri, as people who, in the doctrine of the Election of Grace, ‘have become the old archenemies of pure Lutheran doctrine, the Calvinists,’ that our people would have gone astray from us. [] However, the call for help from many congregations became all the more urgent. Although 33 students graduated from the St. Louis Concordia Seminary at
the end of the 1880-1881 academic year, and a number of practical candidates were added each year, not half of the congregations that sought pastors were satisfied. This fact, too, contributed to the decision to undertake the new construction of a theological seminary, which had been discussed earlier. The old building erected 30 years ago in St. Louis had become dilapidated, and after careful examination of all the reasons, the lay delegates in particular insisted on the necessity of a new building, which was to be erected on the same site in St. Louis after demolition of the old seminary building. It was to have a building lot size of 250 x 340 feet, measure 225 feet long x 95 feet deep, have three stories high, contain over 60 rooms and dormitories, be equipped with an assembly hall, contain a library and reading room and 8 classrooms. According to this plan, which was approved by the Synod, the chosen construction committee went to work. Dr. Walther was commissioned to make an appeal to the congregations to support the cause of the seminary building and to have it published in the Der Lutheraner.
Now, when looking at the magnificent building, everyone should remember that this great work was undertaken when the Missourian pastors and congregations were still in the midst of the severe doctrinal struggle and could not yet say what far-reaching disturbances it would cause throughout the Synod’s area. Just at that time Stellhorn's tracts and the diatribes of a certain Lauritzen, who joined the Iowans, were sent unsolicited and by the dozen to the pastors and the school teachers, through whom one hoped to be able to agitate. Even in the manner of a theater advertisement they were laid before the door of our church members. Within the Wisconsin Synod, a pastor in Oshkosh, who kept only a minority of his former parishioners on the side of the Synod, was quickly driven out of his parsonage through the agitation of a school teacher, and Messrs. F.A. Schmidt and Allwardt came specifically for the occasion, although the
president of the Wisconsin Synod had protested against their presence, lent their hand to this eviction, and Prof. F. A. Schmidt preached to this fanatical crowd after the rightful pastor had been driven out. There was a rebellion there like there was at Ephesus, Acts 19: the one cried out: We do not want a election of grace; the other: We do not want a kingdom of grace! *) — At such a time, no small amount of faith was needed to begin the costly new building, the cost of which was to be met entirely by voluntary donors from the congregations of the Missouri Synod. The Lord God gave courage and strength, the funds came in, and although the cost was originally estimated at only $100,000 and the building required $140,000 when the building was completed, due to various circumstances, yet even this large sum was already paid up except for $21,000 when the following Delegate Synod gathered in St. Louis at the beginning of May 1884. The enemies were not allowed to succeed in even tearing the synod apart, which is why this seminary building stands also a testimony to the heartfelt unity that unites all parts of this great synod body. [] On October 1, 1882, the solemn laying of the foundation stone took place, and on September 9, 1883, shortly before Luther's 400th anniversary, the solemn inauguration of the Concordia Seminary Building took place. So the promise had been fulfilled anew for the Missouri Synod: Thy children shall make haste; thy destroyers and they that made thee waste shall go forth of thee! Is. 49:17. The address which Dr. Walther gave at the laying of the foundation stone reads as follows:
[] Our help is in the name of the Lord who made heaven and earth! Amen.
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*) As soon as this atrocity was accomplished, Stellhorn hired an Ohio preacher who now serves this bunch in Oshkosh, Wisc. The 50 voting members, loyal to their Pastor Dowidat and to the Wisconsin Synod, immediately built a new church and school rooms, and their congregations are enjoying renewed growth.
Dear brothers and sisters in the Lord!
Honored guests!
[from Der Lutheraner, vol. 38, No. 22, p.. 169 ff]
Almost 33 years ago, on November 8, 1849, the foundation stone was laid for a building that would house a twofold nursery for future servants of the Lutheran Church in its narrow spaces. That building, seven months later, on June 11, 1850, happily completed with God's help and solemnly consecrated to the Lord, extended from time to time and serving His holy purpose for 32 years, has already disappeared from the face of the earth a few months ago. It was not consumed by flames of fire, nor has it been washed away by floods of water, nor have storm winds blown over it and brought it to the ground. It was we ourselves who broke it down to make room for a new, larger building on the old sanctuary. Unawakened longings for high things have moved us to do so. No, God Himself has called out to us through His blessing, just as Israel once did through the prophet Isaiah: “Enlarge the place of your tent, and let the curtains of your habitations be stretched out.” (Is. 54:2) The old building could no longer hold the ever richer blessing of God that was streaming towards us. If we did not want to say to God in inexcusable satiety, “Stop, Father, with your blessing,” or if we did not want to spill the blessing of our God that had flowed to us in filthy ingratitude, we had to procure a larger vessel to contain this blessing.
So we have gathered here today to publicly and solemnly lay the corner-stone into the foundation wall which will support the planned massive new building.
The act which we are about to perform is probably a very inconspicuous act. Three hammer blows in the name of the triune God, and the thing is done. But, my friends, this act is merely symbolic. Not the act itself, but what it means and what it is meant to remind us of, is therefore the important thing
that has gathered us around these walls today. Nor is it the simple stone that we wish to place in this foundation, which alone is to support the bold, heavenly building that is intended to support and protect it from collapse; the solemn laying of this stone is therefore only intended to make us aware of the invisible foundation of the spiritual building that the new structure is destined to serve.
And so it is, whereby I may now be allowed to linger for a few moments. —
My friends, God does not need for His works any other reason than Himself. What God builds, He builds alone on Himself, on His completely free will and on His unchanging eternal counsel. God's power and wisdom, God's goodness and grace, God's justice and truth are the eternally unbreakable pillars on which heaven and earth and everything that is in them rests alone. The pagan poets of the ancient pagan world, who were considered to be enthusiastic about God, may have childishly fabled about a giant Atlas, who was condemned by the gods to bear the immense burden of the vault of heaven; but what does the book of divine revelation say about this? In it, God Himself presents Job with the question: “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? On what were its bases sunk, or who laid its cornerstone?” (Job. 38:4-6) and Job had to confess: God “He hangs the earth upon nothing”, while the Book of All Books testifies in another place of the eternal Son of God: “He upholds the universe by the word of his power.” (Heb. 1:3) In short, God alone is the foundation that supports every work of which God alone is the builder.
It is different with all works of human hands. On the other hand, everything comes down to, beside the master craftsman, the foundation on which the building rests. May a man-made building be so high that its top, like the tower of Babel, reaches up to the sky; may it be so wide that, like Egypt's pyramids, it covers the area of an entire city; the material of it may be so precious that, like Solomon's
temple, it shines from inside and outside with gold, marble and precious stones; may it have been decorated by the greatest masters of building, painting and sculpture with their most beautiful works of art, so that it is, like once that temple of Diana at Ephesus, an object of admiration of all times; may finally a building by human hands be so strong that it seems to be able to defy all powers of destruction forever, like once Nebuchadnezzar's royal castle: if, above all, the foundation is not unshakable, above which the building rises, if, for example, the ground is quickly giving way to drifting sand or loose rubble, then no amount of height, no amount of width, no amount of preciousness of its material, no amount of jewellery will help, no matter how astonishing the massive strength of its masonry and rafters and its columns and buttresses — the first storm wind that blows over such a building shakes it to its depths, shakes it to pieces, lifts it from its foundations, and in a few moments transforms it into a desolate heap of rubble.
This same understanding also applies to every invisible, spiritual building of humans. If the reason for it is the ever-changing, yes, the ever-evolving and self-devouring wisdom of this world, or if the reason for it is a human coercive force that stands today and falls away tomorrow, or if the reason for it is the fleeting fog and dreams of human speculation and imagination, or if the reason for it is the human authority that is always subject to error, then such a spiritual edifice built on a perishable foundation is itself a work of perishability.
So then, my friends, you may justly ask: What is the foundation for the invisible spiritual edifice, of which the visible new building now to be erected is to become only the temporary scaffolding, only the enclosing shell? You ask justly: What, then, is the meaning of the stone which we want to insert today into this foundation wall as its capstone?
I answer to this: Our foundation stone means the one of which God already says in the prophecies of the prophet Isaiah: “Behold, I am the one who has laid as a foundation in Zion, a stone, a tested stone, a precious cornerstone, of a sure foundation: ‘Whoever believes will not be in haste.” (Isaiah 28:16) Our foundation-stone is He who once prophesied of Himself: “Upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” (Matt. 16:18) Our foundation-stone is He who once prophesied of Himself: “Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.” (Matt. 24:35) Our foundation stone means the one of which the apostle of the Gentile nations writes to the Christians in Corinth: “No one can lay any other foundation except the one that is laid, which is Jesus Christ." Our foundation-stone means the one of which the same Apostle speaks when he calls the Christians to Ephesus: "Now therefore ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellowcitizens with the saints, and of the household of God, and are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone.” In short, our foundation-stone means Christ, the eternal Son of God and Saviour of all sinners, and His Holy Word which alone saves.
Yes, my friends, Christ and His Word alone, that is the rock-solid foundation on which the German Evangelical Lutheran Synod of Missouri, Ohio, and other States has stood unchallenged for more than 35 years now and still stands by God's grace. This is the synod which is erecting this new building through the free and rich gifts of love of many thousands of pious Christians who belong to it: this and no other should and will therefore also by God's grace be the foundation of the spiritual edifice on which work is to be done under the protective roof of this visible new building. “Christ and His Word Alone” — that is the unshakable foundation of the Concordia of 1580, that pure and glorious confession of our entire orthodox Evangelical Lutheran Church: this and no other shall and will therefore, also by God's grace, be the foundation of our institution, called “Concordia” after this confession. “Christ and His
444 To
Word Alone" was the diamond-like foundation of the great work of the Lutheran Church Reformation: this and no other shall and will therefore, also by God's grace, be the foundation of the faithful daughter of the Reformation, the foundation of this our theological seminary.
In the new Concordia, too, reason, as a gift of God, will not be despised, but will rather be held in high esteem and praised as a glorious light in the matters of this earthly life: But at the same time it will be testified that the fallen man's reason is blinded in spiritual and heavenly matters, that it knows nothing of the true God and of the way to this true God, yes, that the saving truth is only a foolishness and a stumbling block to it, and that it must therefore neither be a teacher and judge in matters of the divine counsel regarding salvation, nor brood over them and make deductions about them, but must give itself up in this foreign territory and remain silent. In the new Concordia, too, teachers and students will certainly humbly sit down at the feet of those sainted great teachers of the church who have unearthed invaluable treasures of divine wisdom and knowledge from the golden mine of the Holy Scriptures with unparalleled diligence and incorruptible faithfulness, and who have left them to us in their immortal writings. In the new Concordia, too, love and fidelity to the true visible Church of God on earth, to our dear Lutheran Zion, will at last be planted in the hearts of young theologians, but it will not be concealed from them that no doctrine is for truth because the Church teaches it, but rather that the Church must be recognized as the true Church only because she teaches the truth; that it is not the Church that sustains the Word, but the Word that sustains the Church.
Behold, my friends, not one false, borrowed banner
shall and will ever flutter above our new Concordia, which bears the inscription: “Christ and His Word Alone”, but on its deepest foundation, which bears everything, the watchword of our church should and will clearly and truly shine: “God's Word and Luther's Doctrine Pure Shall to Eternity Endure.” The mouth of the teacher must immediately, stricken by God, be silenced forever, whichever in our new Concordia dares to open itself against Christ's free grace and against His only true Word, and the hand of the teacher must immediately, overtaken by God's judgment, wither forever, which ever starts to take hold of the pen against Christ and His Word.
May the magnificently planned new building on rock-firm ground rise higher and higher from day to day, rising majestically and heavenly, be happily completed and, after a year's time, open its hospitable doors to us for a joyful entry and stand there until the distant future, a shining monument to the free grace of our God and the sacrificial love of many thousands of devout Christians even in these last times. But may the spiritual edifice, invisible to human eyes, which is cultivated in the wide, bright halls of this new building, grow, flourish, blossom, and spread its branches further and further, and bear a thousand-fold fruit for eternal life, a tree planted by God Himself along the streams of His grace and truth. Yes, may hosts upon hosts then go forth from here, who as faithful and blessed workers in the heavenly harvest and as brave and victorious fighters in the wars of the Lord fill the land everywhere with the Word of Christ, right up to its outermost borders, and may they thus bring to countless immortal ones created for eternal life and redeemed by Christ with a great price, the eternal sunlight of divine truth against the darkness of this world, the eternal inexhaustible fountain of divine grace against all men's sinfulness, the heavenly balm of divine consolation against misery and death, and thus bring them healing, heaven and eternal salvation from generation to generation, until
the last day of the world; and all to the praise, honor, and glory of God, and of the Lamb that sits upon the throne of glory, from eternity to eternity. Amen.
As the day of the dedication of the new building arrived, it was clearly visible that Sept. 9, 1883 was a day of joy not only for the congregations in St. Louis, but for the entire Synod. An eye and ear witness reports the following in Der Lutheranof Sept. 15, 1883: “People had hurried to the festival place with joyful expectation, but nobody had guessed that a gathering of 20,000 people would gather. Who would not have been able to feel their hearts in an uplifted festive mood at the sight of this crowd of fellow believers! Whose mouth would have remained without rejoicing and cheering? Almost every state, yes, every major city of our country had sent its representatives to the festival square. From the upper Mississippi, from Minnesota and the Gulf of Mexico, from California and across the Atlantic Ocean, from Germany, festival visitors had come. All the railroads that flowed into St. Louis brought in special trains hundreds, even thousands of festival goers, for example from Chicago, Milwaukee, Fort Wayne, Pittsburgh. Probably about 160 pastors, 133 of them, who had studied in the old Concordia seminary in the newest as well as in the oldest time, had gathered for the celebration. Various synods had sent their representatives, e.g. the Norwegian Synod: President Koren, Pastor Preus, Pastor Ottesen, Professor Stub from Madison; the Wisconsin synod: President Bading and Professor Gräbner; the Minnesota Synod: President Albrecht and Pastor Tirmenstein. The officials of the Missouri Synod were also largely present. — Those who observed the meeting a little more closely soon had to realize that here only one joy came to the fore, namely: With these many baptized ones I am intimately connected… known or unknown — one was aware that one was connected with one another in the Lord and rejoiced together in the same.
At 10:30 a.m. the celebration was marked by the singing of
Psalm 150 by the students, and then opened with the hymn “Praise the Almighty, my Soul, Adore Him” [German: “Lobe den Herrn o meine Seele”], which was sung to the accompaniment of the trumpets and into which the whole assembly joined. After the end of this song, Dr. Walther entered the stage, which was set up in the open air, and gave an address with his usual strength and freshness, which was listened to by the many thousands with the greatest excitement and attention until the end. The same reads as follows:
In the name of the Holy Trinity, God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit
Amen. [The following address was originally partially translated in Suelflow’s Servant of the Word book p. 95-101]
Honored guests!
In particular beloved fellow believers and confessors in the Lord!
What is it that has gathered us today from near and far in thousands and thousands around this new building? What is it that we have already sent up here a thousand voices of praise, thanksgiving and joyful songs out loud to God? — Is it the size and stateliness of this new building? Truly no! It is probably as mighty a building as it is dainty, praising its masters. Like an adorned royal bride it rises above all its neighbors. But who among us has not seen larger, more elaborate and more ornate buildings? Who among us, therefore, would have been so foolish as to travel hundreds, even thousands of miles and hurry across the world's oceans just to feast his eyes on such a building? — How is it? Is the reason for our present joy, then, that we Lutherans believe we have built this great and beautiful edifice and made a name for ourselves before the world? That is far from it! For woe betide us then! Then this building would only be a standing witness to our arrogance and thus not a monument to our honour but to our shame.
We cannot and will not deny that our hearts are beating with joy today, when we consider that the institution, which
once opened 44 years ago in a poor little log cabin in the middle of the forest, is now moving into a palace in the middle of this cosmopolitan city. But as a still living eye- and ear-witness I can testify that 44 years ago our little log cabin also appeared to us as a palace, into which we therefore moved then with no less joy than we do today into this magnificent building. Our poverty was so great that even such a small log cabin stood before our eyes like a miracle, for which we could only thank God with tears of joy. Therefore, no, no, my brethren, it is not the greatness and stateliness of this new building, nor the vain honor of being its builders, that is the true, real reason for our joy today, but something quite different.
Now, Lutherans, convinced that I will only lend words to the thoughts of your hearts, I beg you, let me show you that the true, real reason for our joy of celebration today is none other than this threefold one: the final purpose for which this new building is to serve alone; the circumstances which alone have caused and made necessary it; and finally the love which alone has built and adorned it.
That schools, be they elementary or higher, are institutions of the highest importance for state and church, needs no proof. Enemy and friend alike willingly concede this to us. The good and the bad of a people depends on their schools. They are the foundation on which a people builds itself. In them lie the roots of a people's fortune or its misfortune, its existence or its decay and destruction. — But that the schools in which religion is the main subject of instruction are still of special importance is just as undeniable. Schools of religion are either the poisonous laboratories where the poison is prepared which already kills the young souls of the future citizens; or they are the heavenly gardens on earth where already the young plants are watered with dew from heaven for the awakening
of a new divine life both here and there. — The most important educational institutions are, however, without doubt those colleges where young people are not only taught religion, but where they themselves are prepared to become teachers of it. For either such schools are, as Luther calls them, high gates of hell if God's Word does not reign in them, or are high gates of heaven if God's Word does reigns in them. And to give shelter to such a high school, that, and nothing else, is the high and glorious final purpose of this new building as well.
This house should not serve both earthly and heavenly things. This steeple, rising to the sky with its church bell, should not only adorn this house, but above all it should show its character and, hour after hour, day and night, shout to those inside and outside: “Sursum corda!” Here is a house of holy studies! Here is a house of prayer! Here is a house of God!
In this house, not man's word and man's wit and wisdom, but God's Word, and nothing but God's Word and the whole Word of God, and what serves to unlock and use it, shall be studied with untiring diligence, day after day, from the first light of dawn until the sinking night. Therefore this house is not at all so magnificently decorated for the sake of its inhabitants, but for the sake of the Word of God, which is to have a dwelling therein.
In this house, however, the Book of all books is not to be rationalistically explained and interpreted from reason, not papistically from the writings of the Fathers, not enthusiastically from alleged new revelations, but apostolically Christian from itself alone, that is, Bible from Bible, Scripture from Scripture, the Old Testament from the New, the New from the Old, the individual from the whole and the whole from the individual.
In this house, not new doctrines are to be researched, but only the old and yet eternally young doctrine of Him
who says, “Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.”
This house is not to be a place where the private opinions and private views of any person, however pious, are expressed, but only where the doctrine of the one holy universal Christian Church of all times and places is to be urged and brought to bear.
This house is not intended to represent the special doctrines of any sect, but only the doctrines drawn from God's clear words of the orthodox Evangelical Lutheran Church of Unaltered Augsburg Confession, this first-born daughter of the Reformation, this true visible Church of God on earth, are to be presented as divine truth.
In this house, the doctrine of the Reformation is not to be reformed again, but rather to be guarded and preserved as our Church publicly confessed it before the whole world with great joy of faith and unparalleled heroism three and a half hundred years ago, sealed with the blood of many thousands of her sons and daughters, and laid down for all time in her confessional writings, as an inalienable, inviolable treasure to be guarded and preserved with incorruptible loyalty.
In this house, therefore, the main teacher shall be Christ, our one Master himself, and after the holy apostles and prophets shall be none other than Dr. Martin Luther, the Reformer of the Church, who was raised and sealed by God and who, according to divine prophecy, flew as the angel with the eternal gospel through the middle of the heaven of the Church.
In this house never shall light and darkness, truth and error, live peacefully side by side, but the King of Truth alone shall reign, who said: “If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. [John 8:31-32] I came not to send peace, but a sword [Matt. 10:34].”
In this house, only Christians who are living believers
are to be received and equipped as heralds of the gospel of Christ, the Son of God and Savior of the world, who confess with the holy twelve apostles: “I determined not to know any thing among you, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified. [1 Cor 2:2] Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law. [Rom. 3:28] For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God. Not of works, lest any man should boast. [Eph 2:8-9] Fear God and give glory to him. [Rev 14:7]”
In this house, not only shall the minds of those received therein be filled with the teachings of divine revelation, but these teachings shall above all be impressed into their hearts, so that they may one day, having come out of the school of the Holy Spirit Himself, bear witness in truth: “For of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaketh. [Luke 6:45] We also believe, and therefore speak. [2 Cor. 4:13]”
In this house, those who are received in it should not only be given the opportunity, far from the noise of the world, to lie in hallowed surroundings for their holy studies, but through the grace of God they should also be brought to the point where they willingly renounce the goods and the honors of the world and consecrate their lives, their powers, their souls to the service of Christ and to the saving of the world until their death, and therefore also to when the time comes, with a thousand joys, to exchange this magnificent building for the poorest sod hut of our American West.
This house is to become an arsenal of God, in which God-fearing young men are to be outfitted with the spiritual armor of Christ's soldiers, so that they may be able not only to plant and water, but also to fight victoriously with the sword of the Spirit against all the strongholds of the Prince of Darkness, even if he appeared in the likeness of an angel of light against the Word of the Most High.
This house is to contain a spiritual fountain, from which the water of eternal life is led over mountains and
valleys and everywhere the spiritual deserts are transformed into green meadows of lively believers' congregations.
In short, this house should be dedicated solely to the glory of God and the salvation of redeemed sinners.
How is that? Isn't that a great, glorious end in itself? And isn't the same, for all believing Christians and especially for us Lutherans, reason enough that our hearts beat faster with joy, since we now see this new building completed with God's help without any accidents and so well succeeded before us? Is that not reason enough that we raise our voices today and shout out loud and joyful to one another: “The Lord has done great things for us, so let us rejoice”? Yes, that we shout to all our fellow believers, confessors and comrades in arms, wherever they may be in the world, “Let every thing that hath breath praise the Lord!”? [Psalm 150:6] — Yes, truly, my brethren! —
But the real reason for our joy of celebration today is not only the high and glorious final purpose of this new building; we are all the more delighted by the circumstances brought about by God, which alone prompted this greater new building and finally made it a matter of unavoidable necessity.
When our synod, the German Evangelical Lutheran Synod of Missouri, Ohio, and other States, first gathered in the blessed city of Chicago 36 years ago, it was a small, unnoticed group of only twelve poor congregations. The church, which in this country still called itself Evangelical Lutheran, was in the deepest decay. The teaching of our church was an unknown territory to them. The few pastors who still knew something about it and wanted to hold on to it were considered to be limited minds, which one hoped would soon be extinct. The confessional writings were hardly known by name and were considered to be outdated documents of earlier, unexplained times. Instead of Luther's doctrines, this church, which called itself after Luther, was dominated by the doctrines of Zwingli and obvious
rationalism, strangely bound up with fanatical [schwärmerischen = as Methodists, Pentecostals] methods of conversion. Hardly any pastors had a regular call according to God's Word; almost all were rather hired for one or more years. Immortal souls were handed over on trial to unprepared, immature men, while Christian parish schools were abolished and Lutheran youth were handed over in good pagan fashion to the non-religious state for education. In short, the so-called Lutheran Church of our country was dead at that time, a mockery of all sects that, like hungry night birds, divided into their corpse.
When now our synod appeared with the then unheard-of slogan “God’s Word and Luther's doctrine pure shall to eternity endure” it was not only the anti-Christian papacy, not only the syncretistic, unionistic Evangelical fellowship, not only the fanatical sects, but above all the local so-called Lutheran Church, which fought our synod as a new Old Lutheran sect leading to Rome with the greatest bitterness and, as a foreign plant and un-American invader, confidently prophesied its inglorious demise in the near future.
But our prospects were also really bleak. To want to transplant the old Lutheran Church, which submits to every letter of the Word of God, to this new land of untamed lust for freedom, seemed indeed to be a quite hopeless, more than a foolish undertaking. But far from allowing itself to be distracted by this, our Synod did not ask: What must we do to become great and numerous? but only: What must we do to be found faithful before the Lord of the Church? Success, she knew, was not in her hands, and so she committed this to God.
And what happened? — The ill-intended plans of our enemies did not succeed. When the congregations saw that the pastors of our Synod did not proclaim any new doctrine, but preached nothing but what they, the congregations, had learned from their dear Small Catechism of Luther;
when the congregations saw that the pastors of our Synod brought them the highest thing that a preacher can bring them, namely, certainty of God's grace and of their salvation; when the congregations saw that the pastors of our Synod did not want to dominate them like a papal bull, but on the contrary, sought to bring them to the knowledge of their glorious Christian freedom and their sacred congregation rights; when the congregations saw that the pastors of our Synod did not seek their temporal but only their immortal souls; when the congregations saw that the pastors of our Synod preferred to suffer hunger and sorrow, disgrace, persecution and expulsion, rather than give way in one letter to “God's Word and Luther's doctrine”: — behold, one congregation after another entered our synodical union. The mustard seed took root, sprouted up joyfully and gradually became like a mighty tree, under whose broad shady branches the birds of heaven dwell. The old Lutheranism, at first despised, even ridiculed because of its initial diminutive size, gradually became a power under the hot battles in America, so that finally everyone who wanted to be considered truly Lutheran had to be comfortable to profess the doctrines of our Synod. The old book treasures of our Church, especially her confessional writings and the writings of Luther, were pulled out of their dust, carried from house to house and eagerly read and studied by our people. Like a prairie fire, not only did truly Lutheran faith and Lutheran life and character spread again unstoppably over the country, but God also gave us a unity of faith and a joy of faith with an intimate brotherly love, so that sometimes the days of Luther seemed to have returned among us. Wherever a small Lutheran church grew up like a fruit tree, even in lonely prairie, a Lutheran schoolhouse soon sprouted as a young plant. The old pure songs full of faith and love, as our fathers sang them, resounded here again with their old sweet melodies. In short, the true
Lutheran Church, whose funeral dirges had already been sung in all the world, came to life again here, rose from its grave and planted the victory flag of the pure Gospel in more than a thousand places of our great Union of States. For years now, the Macedonian cry of “Come over and help us” has been heard on all sides. An ever more powerful stream of Lutheran immigrants, including those of our German language, is pouring over our country and settling here, so that almost week after week new congregations are springing up, many of which desire teachers in church and school from us. And not only within our new fatherland, but also from the land of our fathers, yes, from the farthest countries of the world, the cry for help has been reaching us for years, deeply moving our hearts. Everywhere, doors open to us at the entrance with the joyful message of the free grace of God in Christ for all sinners. Even though hundreds of workers have already been sent out from our institutions for the great harvest, the number of requests for such workers has not diminished over time, but rather increased, so that at last we have been unable to fulfill most of these requests with sad hearts. And so it came to pass that even the insufficient number of students could not find a place in our building. A larger new building became a matter of unavoidable necessity.
So I ask you then, beloved brethren in the Lord, is not all this a cause for great joy for us today? Or does a farmer perhaps get angry and start complaining when his harvest, which he has safely brought in, is so great that he finds himself compelled to dismantle his barns, which have gotten too small, and to build greater? No, he rather rejoices in it and raises his hands with fervent thanks to God, the kindly giver. Behold, we also have no cause to be angry and lament that we have been compelled by God's abundant blessing to perform such a great and costly construction; we also have
but rather the cause for us to rejoice in this from our hearts and to lift up our hands to God today with humble thanksgiving. Up to now, every new request for admission to our Institution has filled us with a new concern rather than with joy; but from today, opening the wide open spaces of this new Concordia of ours, we can joyfully cry out to every godly newcomer: Welcome! “Come in, blessed one of the Lord!” — Isn't that joy? —
But, my brothers, there is one more thing that fills us today with great joy: it is love alone that has built and decorated this new building.
No noble millionaire has performed this magnificent building and offered it as a gift to our poor church. No prince has forced us to make involuntary sacrifices for this work by means of a school tax he has imposed with legal authority. No non-Lutheran has been approached by us and expected to contribute even a single penny, contrary to his conscience, to the construction of this shelter for a nursery of our church. No one has been wrested and squeezed out of his gift by unevangelical appeals to his conscience. No one has been deceived by the false pretence that he will acquire abundant indulgences through abundant gifts and, as it is said, build a step into heaven. No one has been flattered by the excitement of his sense of honor and low, hypocritical flattery. We Lutherans abhor the principle that the end justifies the means. Therefore, according to the apostolic principle: “God loves a cheerful giver”, [2 Cor. 9:7] nothing has happened among us but our love has been kindly stimulated. Only the crying need of countless children of our church has been painted before our eyes in vivid colors, who in this land of immigration wander like sheep without a shepherd in spiritual deserts, and without the preaching of the consoling Gospel would finally have to languish spiritually. But above all, we have been reproached by the love of Christ, the
Good Shepherd, who seeks the lost, who shed his blood for all men, who wants to make all men saved, and who wants all men saved, including the lonely children of our Church, to be called to Him, and that we, whom He has so abundantly provided with the Bread of Life, are His called instruments. “O my brethren, let us help our brothers,” we called out to one another. And, behold! thereupon a thousand upon a thousand hearts and hands opened without delay and with joy in our dear congregations. The inhabitants of the land have competed with the inhabitants of the cities, the poor with the rich, the women with the men, young women with the young, and even orphans and widows with one another, to help that this building may be built and adorned in the most glorious way.
So then, my brothers and sisters in the Lord (God knows, not to flatter you, but to the glory of Him whose Word, grace and Spirit has worked all this in you), I make bold to say, to speak freely and openly here: This house, with the Lord's help, has built up your love flowing from faith and decorated it so beautifully. O wonderful, precious house! For what would be the same without this love of its builders, even if it were made of pure gold, silver and precious stones? It would be a house from which God turned His face away, and into which He would not enter. But the great gifts of love of the earthly richly blessed among us and the small, precious mites of our poor, widows and orphans transform every piece of wood of this building before God's eyes into pure, shining gold, every stone of its walls into pure, sparkling diamonds. Sooner or later this building may fall down, like all human work: as a monument of love of believing Lutheran Christians, this house will stand before God's eyes forever, yes, forever.
But, my brethren, blessing and prosperity of all works of love also comes from the Lord alone. So let us beg Him again
today, as we once begged Him 44 years ago, when that unadorned little forest cabin finally stood before us:
“Enter in! Enter in!
Dedicate this house, O Jesus!” —
Oh yes, Lord, not for the sake of our dull, unclean, imperfect love, but for the sake of your burning, pure, eternal, perfect love, we ask you to accept this house, which we hereby hand over to you. It shall not be our house, but yours, yes your house. Take it under your gracious and almighty care. Move into it today and make your home in it, and be and remain the right landlord in it. Bless the teachers and students. Bless therein the heavenly and the earthly bread. Let this house also be the source of ever greater blessings in town and country, in cabin and palace, for time and eternity. Bless our dear Synod and all its congregations whose love has built this house. Bless the dear brethren who have borne the great burden of caring for the execution of this work in never-tiring love for us all. Bless the master builders who planned and directed this construction and the builders who worked on it. Bless this land and its government, under whose earthly protection this house now stands. Bless this city that has welcomed it willingly and kindly into its bosom. Finally, bless our celebration today to strengthen our faith, to ignite our love and to revive our hope.
Thanks, praise, glory and honour be to your great name, here in time and hereafter from eternity to eternity. Amen! Amen!
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[] On May 7, 1884, the Fourth Delegate Synod, representing the 19th General Synod convention, met in St. Louis; it is composed, as its name indicates, of delegates from the various District Synods, which have now reached the number 11 and cover the entire territory of the United
States, as well as Canada within their borders. Already at the Jubilee Synod, which took place in 1872, it was decided that from two to seven congregations with voting rights would meet and send a pastor and a deputy as delegates. In addition, the professors at the educational institutions are obliged to attend the delegate synod. As a result, 200 members were present at the recent synod, not counting the considerable number of visitors. They filled the chapel of the great and magnificent seminary building almost to the last seat and waited until the end of the sessions for ten full days. What moved the hearts at this Synod convention was summarized in the [] opening address of the venerable general President H. C. Schwan in a way that made everyone rise to joyful praise and thanksgiving toward the Lord God. The synodical address reads as follows: ()
“The Lord hath done great things for us; whereof we are glad.” (Psalm 126:3)
This word of the Psalm expresses what moves our hearts now, and so we must above all make our voices heard. The Lord has done great things for us, a great help in the great distress that had affected us.
Let us just think back. There was a lot of pressure on all of us the last time we got together. An article of our Christian faith had been attacked, an article which Scripture clearly reveals, and our confession testifies to just as clearly; an article which, if overturned, had to take with it the basis for our salvation. In its place they had tried to put a doctrine which, if accepted, would have transferred our salvation on to a very different ground.
And this had not been done in a straightforward and open manner — in that case it would hardly have been dangerous — but it had been done in a rather veiled manner and under a deceptive pretence. The opponents presumed highly and solemnly that it was not the doctrine of the Scriptures and the confession of faith that
but rather our terrible falsification of those whom they were fighting; they insisted that it was the truth of the Gospel itself which they needed to save against us and to preserve it for Christendom.
And those who talked like this were not our old enemies, whose voices were known. They were brethren who did this. They professed their hearts were bleeding, but they couldn't help it. Therein lay the danger.
And this danger had come quite close to us. There were already some of us back then who were openly on the side of our accusers. Others seemed to be on the way. Some had let themselves be confused. Quite a few saw nothing but division and ruin for our fellowship. Yes, who would deny it, with anxious hearts we all waited for the things that were to come. This was the situation we were in when we last met. Fightings without, fears within.
And now? Now we see all happy faces here. Our sadness has been turned to joy. The danger is over. The battle is over. We are at peace. Isn't that something?
But how is it? Doesn't the cries of war still echo around us today? Is not the air filled with the arrows of our enemies? And we should have peace? — But what the world calls peace, we do not. There is no peace with those who make war. As long as they fight against the truth, they must be our enemies. But still, we have peace. We have peace even as and in the same way as the first Christian congregation, Acts 9:31, had peace. The apostolic church also had enemies at that time and continued to, and these enemies also had and kept their great wrath and did what they could to disturb the church of God. And yet Scripture says, “So now the congregation had peace throughout all Judea and Galilee and Samaria,” for He who ruled over it like sun and shield, and protected it with His right hand, had called out to its persecutors: “So far and no
further! That's enough.” That gave us peace in the middle of a fight. And so now we also have peace, peace throughout the country, through all our districts, in all our congregations. The quarrel no longer troubles us, not even outwardly, and as many of us as are children of God, they have peace not only with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, not only with their own conscience, but also among each other, and now also in this matter they hold firmly to each other in one sense and one opinion against all attempts of the enemy. Is that not a great thing?
But it is also not a shameful peace, but a victorious peace that we have. Not as if our opponents had declared themselves overcome, which they might have done. Not that everyone else has fallen to us. Even the apostolic congregation should not be so well off. But just as they once did, so we now have victory. For only those to whom the Lord grants victory are victors. But before God, always and at any time, the one who has survived the temptation and has kept faith is the one who has already won and wears the wreath. And that is the victory that has been given to us. And O! how gladly we want to be content with it! After all, this is the only victory that brings the true booty.
And there was no shortage of such booty. We know we've won something because we enjoy it. The dear Holy Scripture, studied in temptation and opened up more deeply, has become all the higher, more glorious and sweeter for us. The confession of our Church has once again proved itself in this struggle to be the good confession of the faith that was once given to the saints. But this has only increased its prestige. We have become all the more confident by standing, against all regard of man, solely on the Word of the Scriptures and becoming fools before the world for this Word. For even a source of consolation, which had been badly buried, has been opened to us again abundantly and has also done its part to make our hearts firm and confident
in the truth. United and stronger than before, we stand now.
Let us now look at all this, consider how little this in particular was to be expected according to human probability, and how hoping quickly turned into good what was intended to be bad: we do not know what else to say but: A great, great thing has happened to us!
Now then, who did this great thing? Who has won victory, peace and booty? Was it us? Did we at least do our part? Were we perhaps too much superior in scholarship to our adversaries? Oh, our erudition, no matter how great it was, could not have been the deciding factor here. Or did we understand better than they did how to explain the apparent contradiction between general grace and the special election of individuals and make it acceptable to reason? That helped us even less. We did not even try. No, no! to speak humanly, we had everything against us in this struggle — except one thing. Our opponents had an enormous advantage over us. For before the crowd, which does not think, but would rather be considered enlightened and free, not we, but they, as fighters of dark madness, heroes of light and martyrs of freedom, could appear, and that has seldom missed its effect. In the case of those who always want to first understand and make sense before they decide to accept divine truths themselves (and that is what old Adam wants in Christians as well), they were able to invoke the judgment of “common sense”, which we were not allowed to do. After all, there was no secret in their teaching about what even the wisest man has to put his finger on. There everything rhymed with the natural human thoughts and feelings. Conclusions of any kind had free play and full validity. For the sake of their doctrine no one had to become a fool before the world. Was
that not a great advantage for them? And did they not make use of it? — Among those who base their convictions on human respect (even if unconsciously), even in matters of faith, they could point to a number of “fathers” who, though not of their own mind, often seemed to agree with them in words. And how much use this was to them, especially for those who knew the least about these fathers, is more obvious by the day. — Indeed, they were able to present the Holy Scriptures themselves to unsuspecting and untrained Christians here and there, with greater success than we did. For the more — and rightly so — the dear simple-minded people are concerned about the general promises of grace in the Gospel, the easier it is to persuade them that only from these passages can the doctrine of God's eternal election be taken or explained. In short, what only reason and feeling of the natural man (also in Christians) thinks, desires and wants, all this spoke in this struggle for them and against us. Would it have been a miracle if they had succeeded in enchanting our people in crowds and finally even led them over to their camp with a resounding performance?
And yet the exact opposite of all this happened. After the first shock had passed and now it came to light where this attack actually came from and where it was aimed at, our congregations turned their backs on their supposed saviors and liberators in such an overwhelming way that they themselves stood there dismayed, and that they have not yet been able to find their way in. Congregations which had previously paid little special attention to the doctrine in question are now, to their amazement, firmly opposed to all the attempts of our opponents.
Well, whose work was all this? Was it supposed to be our doing? No, no! It was done by the Lord and it was a miracle before our eyes. [cp. Ps. 118:23] No one could do this, no one did this, but He who does great things to us and to all ends.
But why do you think He did these great things properly? If it was not for the sake of His beloved Son, if it was not by free grace, if it was not because He caught the wise in their wisdom, and because He chose that which is weak before the world, that He might bring shame to that which is strong, that no flesh should boast before Him; if it was not because of these, we know not why He did it. Nor do we know how it was done. Except that it must have been done by his Word and his Spirit. In this way He must have entered into our hearts, must have made the text more powerful than all the glosses of the false art, must have broken and hindered all evil counsel and will, and must have strengthened us and held us fast in His word and faith. Otherwise it could not have happened. For that is His good, gracious will.
But if it is really the Lord himself and the Lord alone who has done so much for us, and by grace, well then, let us rejoice from our hearts.
Happy, not gloating. Let us not rejoice in the fall of our enemies. That would not please Him who can and will restore the fallen. Merrily, not gloriously, as though we considered that robbery which has been given us by grace. Then we would take back from God the glory we had given Him, which we had only given Him by pretense. That would be a fine sign that we ourselves are already facing the trap. — No, if we sincerely believe that it is the Lord who has done great things for us, then our joy must be of a completely different kind, it must be the joy in the Lord. He who rejoices must rejoice in the Lord and be joyful in the power of His strength; He who boasts must boast in the Lord alone. So may He then be the joy of us all.
But in such joy we should really forget what is behind, all the wrong that has been done to us, all the fear and misery that has been inflicted on us. Let it no longer be thought of for the sake of the great things that God has done for us.
Like a woman whose hour is past no longer thinks of fear for the sake of her present joy. — With this joy in our hearts, let us rather confidently stretch ourselves forward, let us be joyful in hope. We want to trust the One who has sustained us up to now, that His faithfulness and grace will hold us to the end, yes, we want to rejoice in advance of the Great things which He will certainly do for us even further. — But at last we are to prove by deed that this joy does not leave us lazy and barren in good works, but that it makes us willing, zealous and powerful for all that pleases the Lord. So let us make good use of the time of peace, following the example of the apostolic church! Let us build ourselves up like her, walking in the fear of God, and there will be no lack of the comfort of the Holy Spirit.
Just as in the Old Testament burnt offerings the clouds of incense surrounded, enveloped and covered up everything that would have been unattractive and unpleasant for the senses, so also with us the joy in the Lord and the praise of the great God and our Saviour must envelop, hold down, dampen and devour everything that is still in us from below; but on the other hand lift, carry and strengthen that which strives upwards in us. Then our sacrifice of joy and thanksgiving will be a sweet savor before the Lord, He will remain with us with His grace, and we will be able to sing anew day after day:
The Lord hath done great things for us; whereof we are glad. [Ps. 126:3]
[] A review
Of the history of the Missouri Synod may still be permitted with a few words. At first sight it is a story full of church battles, but in which victory is not lacking. Where there is faith, there is also victory, Rev. 15:2. While the Church of the Reformation is the prefigured, predicted Second Temple of the New Covenant (see the sermon in Dr. Walther's
Lutherische Brosamen on Ezra 3:8-13) [“Lutheran Crumbs”, or Baseley’s From Our Master’s Table], it is not surprising that those who are building this temple today will suffer the same fate as those in Nehemiah 4:17: “with one of his hands wrought in the work, and with the other hand held a weapon.” It must be fought, although it is something very distressing that there is so much strife in Christianity. Many push themselves against it and go astray. Many fall in battle or are wounded at least. It is also, let us say with Luther, the greatest and most harmful annoyance of the Church, the dissension and division in doctrine, which even the devil drives to the highest, and is generally brought about by a number of arrogant, stubborn and overambitious heads, who want to be something special, to fight for their honor and glory; they cannot be compared with anyone else, thinking it would be their disgrace if they were not of a more learned and greater spirit, others do not give honor to anyone, even if they see that he has greater gifts than they. Therefore it must be fought against the false spirits, it requires the honor of God. Where the Word of God is taught clearly and more purely, where the doctrine is diligently pursued, that we are justified without works by faith alone, there the name of God is sanctified. But Satan does not like this; he wants us to teach and live differently than the Word of God teaches; he tries to lead us away from the Word in every way, in a crass way so that we reject it, in a finer way so that we allow ourselves to be led astray from the right meaning of it. And Satan never lacks tools. The world is an enemy of the Word, for it takes all glory from the haughty hearts of men and disturbs them in their lust for sin.
Are we to stand by and watch Satan rob God of His glory, when He wants to deceive us that we do not give God His due glory? Are we to watch idly when the Pope, as the real Antichrist, fights against Christ with his servants? — when the rationalists want to put blind reason over God's Word and take away the sole dominion of the divine Word. Shall we let the United “evangelicals”
have their way, who betray the heavenly truth, and consider error equal to error? Shall we be silent when the doctrine of grace is obscured by innumerable people?
No, we cannot do this. If there is to be peace, if there is to be peace, if there is to be an end to war, then this is only possible if Satan ceases to be Satan and God's adversary; but this is not possible; or if we deny Christ and his Word and make common cause with our enemies; — we cannot, we do not want to, we would dishonor God. — It cannot be otherwise; the salvation of the Church also demands a struggle. Only through struggle are the treasures given to the Church preserved, which the enemies want to snatch from her. The crown is robbed from the one who does not hold what he has and does not defend himself against those who want to take it from him. — — Those err grievously who think that it is best for the church to live quite peacefully, without struggle. God's Word and experience tell us otherwise. How can the church be in a happy state when truth and error are peacefully reconciled, when the wolves are not prevented from tearing the sheep apart? “These are”, — says Luther, “very wise, excellent people who can teach the Holy Spirit how to govern the Christian Church. Yes, my friend, if the devil did not want to bite Christ's heels, or had to leave it alone, such a quiet, peaceful church would be easy to have.” — (see Prof. Günther's Foreword to volume 40 ofDer Lutheraner.)
Such a cemetery peace reigned in the Lutheran Church in this country before the Saxon Lutherans and those who left the Ohio Synod raised their voices, before Der Lutheraner in particular let its testimony go out. Where Satan's works are attacked, such things cause much uproar. He meant it seriously and led many a companion into battle. But what did the founders of the Missouri Synod do? What weapons did they use in battle? It is often emphasized in this writing that they brought the divine Word and nothing else.
But they were also serious about God's Word, so the truth they fought for had to win. They did not try any experiments in church order, they did not rely on human statutes and authorities, they wanted to build the temple, which is invisible in itself, yet stands firmer than heaven and earth, because Jesus Christ is its cornerstone. For the name of the Lord Jesus they offered their souls, as it is said of Saul and Barnabas. This is why they also fought against delusion, as if the efficacy of the Word and the holy sacraments were bound to some human institution, or to a particular teaching within the Church. Christ and His Word alone shall prevail, otherwise no one shall rule in the Church of God! The Missouri Synod is built on this foundation. “The written Word of God”, so the Constitution of the Missouri Synod declares, in agreement with the Lutheran Confession, that Holy Scripture alone must be and remain the source, rule and guideline of faith, both for those who come with us and for those who wish to remain members of our church fellowship. The Word of Christ also proves its worth in the case of a synod; that only such a house built on a rock will stand still when the rain is falling and the winds are blowing; but such a house built on sand must make a great fall in the time of trial. Someone might object, it goes without saying that in a Lutheran synod one refers to the Scriptures! Yet there are not many of them today who do not prefer a sandy ground to the rock-solid ground of the divine Word. The spirit of union, which is like a pestilential air over the Protestant area, has led to the opinion that in many doctrines, especially those concerning discernment, the Holy Scriptures are dark and some articles of faith are so doubtful that they should be relaxed for everyone until perhaps the whole Church has decided them, that is, until they have become one. Such people build their houses on sand! They do not believe that the Word carries the church, they think,
the church must sustain the Word. That is why some base their faith on the so-called Christian consciousness, or on their enlightened reason, or on a doctrinal development in the history of the Church, i.e. on tradition. Even our newest opponents cry out: The fathers, fathers! and boast that they have “witnesses” for their little finds, even though they do not meet the meaning of these fathers, who are actually the later Lutheran dogmatists. But even if it were the case that they could rightly refer to such fathers, the Christian conscience is trapped only in God's Word, and cannot be bound to any human testimony. Luther's enemies had much more reason than our opponents of today can have when they said that not with the Holy Scriptures but with the Roman Catholic fathers, and with the decisions of the councils, they could refute Luther's doctrines. But just as Luther, when asked: “Would you be wiser than so many fathers, popes and councils?”, answered: not my word and not yours, nor the word of the fathers shall apply, “The Word of God shall establish articles of faith, and no one else, not even an angel!” [SAII, 2, 15] How Luther pointed backwards from the Fathers to the foundation of the apostles and prophets, and recalled Christianity to Christ, the only arch-Shepherd, and how Luther spoke the word to all the rebellious spirits who wanted to teach him, Matt. 17:5: “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear ye him”, so the founders of the Missouri Synod also went back, they preferred to sit at the fount of the Reformation, through which the pure fountains of Israel were reopened to Christianity. Already in 1866 Dr. Walther confessed in a Synod address: “When 20 years ago, 16 pastors gathered in the city of Fort Wayne (as reported in chapter VI of this writing) to draft a constitution for the then newly formed Synod of Missouri, Ohio and other States, these pastors proceeded from the conviction, which they had acquired by God's grace, that the Evangelical Lutheran Church of the Unaltered Augsburg
Confession is the true visible Church of God on earth, and that therefore the doctrines laid down in the public confessions of this church were pure, as purified silver in an earthen crucible, and that they proved their worth seven times over; convinced that Luther was not a mere witness of this or that truth, but the angel with the eternal Gospel promised in God's Word, who was to fly through the midst of heaven, the Reformer of the Church chosen, awakened and called by God Himself, and that the Reformation victoriously carried out through Luther's ministry was a real Reformation, a true renewal of the Church, they decided to do nothing new, but to take the Church of the Reformation as their model in all aspects, in doctrine and practice”, (Lutherische Brosamenp. 535) [From Our Master's Table, p. 251].
When the founders of the Missouri Synod took this path, there was no shortage of enemies who prophesied their doom, and there was no lack of manifold accusations and blasphemies. To this day, however, the exhibitions of the opponents cancel each other out. Because the Missouri Synod with Luther granted the preaching ministry no violence other than that of the Word and the full dignity of the spiritual priesthood to believing Christians, it was accused of abandoning the faith to the arbitrariness of the mob; and because it was at the same time anxious to lay the foundation for a Evangelical order and discipline and to sharpen the use of confessional registration and of both keys, it was accused of Papist presumption of power and priestly rule. The same thing is still happening today. While our newest opponents accuse us of apostasy from Lutheranism, as if we had fallen to Calvinism, which is rejected in our confessional writings, they accuse us once again of being far too exclusive Lutherans, of associating “exaggerations” with the confessional writings, while we do not tolerate differences in subordinate points (namely doctrinal points) and do not accept such open questions as the Iowans prefer. This is the judgment of Pastor W. Rohnert, who already made himself known in the Election of Grace controversy,
and his booklet entitled: Kirche, Kirchen und Sekten (Church, Churches and Sects), published in 1885 in 3rd edition. Only then, if the Lutheran confession did not go back to God's Word in all parts, would we have to distinguish between those doctrines which we consider binding and those which we release. That is the way we judge the teachings of the heterodox, whose confession is only partially correct; but we accept the Lutheran Confessions without reserve, because we recognize in it the thoroughly Scriptural confession and the Evangelical Lutheran Church, to which the Missouri Synod wants to belong, as the orthodox church of this last age.
It was this realization that lived in those who gathered in 1847 to found the Missouri Synod. Not church-political plans, but: “I believe, therefore I speak”, that was the sole reason for that documentary testimony of their confession. The old Lutheran rhyme: “God's Word and Luther's Doctrine Pure Shall to Eternity Endure” was not only written by the Synod as its watchword at the top of its publications, it was also written and it shone and burned as a light and fire in the hearts that Luther was the Reformer or church-renewer awakened by God in this last age of the world, and that the church named after him was the bearer of pure Christian doctrine appointed by God. From this also follows the seriousness with which the Missouri Synod follows the apostolic injunction: “Contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints.” [Jude 3] The Lutheran symbols should not only be carried around in the hand or reside on the pastors’ bookshelves, but the solemn subscription to the Word of God and of the Church's confessions should not only be regarded as an church law, whereby one enters the synodical association as if through a door, generally by committing oneself; the inner conviction of truth should move the whole heart and life, and whether the number of synod members is increasing or decreasing, the testimony of truth must nevertheless go forth, and
unity on the basis of truth, that is the unity of the Spirit alone, must be the one that is to be held ever more firmly, the more old and new enemies rise up against this testimony. As St. Paul prophesied to the apostolic church in Acts 20:30, it was also fulfilled in the Missouri Synod that false spirits arose from their own midst. The word they wrote on their banner was not taken from Scripture, nor from the Lutheran confessional writings, but its wording was in accordance with later dogmatic writings. The temptation came close to letting these spirits be granted. In other synods one is used to tolerate the deviation from the individual doctrines, and even to enter into communion and pulpit fellowship with false believers, if one only generally professes to be a Lutheran! It is certain, however, that where no doctrinal discipline is practiced, the gates are opened to the enemy who undermines the walls of the church; there the church becomes more and more a playground for those whom Luther at Marburg in 1529 once called: “You have a different spirit than we!” That is why the Missouri Synod was only able to exist as an orthodox church fellowship in itself, by renouncing, according to the command of God, not only all fellowship with sects outside its camp, but also the false spirits that arose from its own midst. — As much as the members of the Missouri Synod liked to extend the hand of fellowship to those who shared the same doctrinal ground with them, or as much as they were increasingly determined to follow the Lutheran doctrine in practice, they had to testify decidedly, and prove by their action, that an outward, “paper” pledge to the Word of God and the symbols is not sufficient, for wherever a synod or a church body tolerates a syncretistic practice and in fact declares that it is right, there it has either already fallen inwardly, or it has never even stood in the confession of the truth. Where false doctrine and practice is not resisted, there can also
the commitment to pure doctrine does not last long. That is why we hold Luther's word against those who stand in the midst of such syncretistic fellowships and yet want to be considered Lutherans: “Contradict the willful spirits, otherwise your confession will be merely a mask, and of no use. Whoever considers his doctrine, faith, and confession, to be true, and not uncertain, cannot stand in the same stall with others, who teach false doctrine, or are adherents of the same, and cannot continue to speak fair words to the devil and his allies. A teacher who keeps silence in the face of errors and nevertheless wants to be a true teacher is worse than an open enthusiast, and does greater harm with his hypocrisy than a heretic; you cannot trust him.” [St.L. ed. vol. 17, p. 1180; not in Am. Ed.; from a talk with Georg Major]
It was Luther's steadfastness and loyalty to his confession that the dead indifference in matters of faith and the syncretistic spirit, which is only concerned with increasing the visible crowd, was stopped for quite some time. But it again required all the more seriousness and zeal to raise the banner in the midst of the current generation, following the example of the Church of the Reformation, which not only represents a certain trend, but calls back the scattered children of the Lutheran Church to the previous path, the path of truth.
“We have, if you want to call it that, made an attempt”, Dr. Walther testified in the synodical address of 1866, “to see if the doctrines of the 16th century could not also help souls in our 19th century. We have made the attempt to see whether the tree of our old Lutheran Church, which once bore such wonderful fruit for the salvation of millions of people for thousands of years, will not still show its old driving force and fruitfulness today, — and behold! our hope has not been shamed. … The old doctrine has now again shown its old and eternally new force; thousands of souls have been led to faith
and through faith to salvation, and a church has risen, united in faith and confession and shining in love and good works.” — — “Remember, my brethren! the blessing bestowed upon us is not due to our wisdom, still less to our dignity or our zeal, but by God's grace alone to the fact that we have desponded of our knowledge, will and ability, as obedient children of the old Lutheran Church, returned to our mother's church, namely to her doctrine and practice.” (Lutherische Brosamen, p. 541) [From Our Master's Table, p. 254] What is the state of the Missouri Synod now? By God's grace, she is still united in faith and confession and radiant in love and good works today. It is already noted at the beginning of this writing that the world wanted to prophesy to the founders of the Missouri Synod from the beginning an imminent end of its activity. No sooner had the Saxon Lutherans settled in this country than one read in a radical public paper that the founders of this fellowship had been driven out of Germany (which is not true), and that the time would come when these Old Lutherans would also be driven out of America! Now no one dares to say that the Missouri Synod has grown to the detriment of the Church or the civic estate. If one were to weigh the diligence in literary works or the industriousness in good works with the activity of other fellowships, the Missouri Synod, as recent years have shown, does not lag behind others; this should be remembered especially by those who think that our Orthodoxy is something dead, that the spiritual life must be lacking in the strict Lutherans. The new seminary building, which is an ornament not only for St. Louis, but for the whole Lutheran Church, the schools for higher education and other educational institutions, of which there are more and more, with a total number of 900 students, taught by 34 professors, the orphanages, asylums, the Emigrant and Negro Mission, and finally the church buildings, of which in the last year 1883 in the Missouri Synod 92 were completed, while the General Synod
had 54, and General Council 82, all these are signs of life of which we must not be ashamed. Although the number of Missourian pastors has also grown to nearly 850, we must not forget that rapid growth and expansion sometimes occurs among enthusiastic fellowships, and even the Mohammedans of old are an example of this.
In the narrower sense, therefore, the question should be asked: where does it come from that congregations *) are pressing to get pastors from us? Could it be because they realize that we are only seeking the wool of the sheep? Or is it not rather because they know that our pastors do not deceive them, do not feed them empty-handedly, but take good care of them. We can comfortably point to what is before our eyes and say: come and see! We can see and notice that it is a matter of the heart for the pastors, that they themselves have experienced what they preach. It is true that they base their sermons on pure doctrine; they are not for the so-called revivals, for revivals brought about by compulsion; they do not resort to new measures; they do not intend to only stir up the minds and thus to catch them, but they preach the Word of God publicly and privately, the Law in its severity, the Gospel in its sweetness, of which it is certain in their hearts that the Word of God has a power that makes it alive in itself, that true heavenly divine life comes only from the Word, that it is not their ministry to give the Word even more special power and emphasis through their own actions and doings. They relentlessly punish all sins, go after the erring, seek to raise up the fallen, to comfort the afflicted, to make those in doubt certain. — Even
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*) Also in the present year 1884, 70 congregations asked for candidates and therefore turned to the St. Louis faculty. Unfortunately only 40 could be provided with standing pastors. However, it is gratifying to see the trust that these vacant congregations place in the St. Louis faculty and the District Presidents.
R. Hoffmann, who died in the Union (“Evangelical”), has to acknowledge some things in his booklet about the Evangelical Lutheran Missouri Synod and writes about it, p. 23: “This much must be acknowledged, that the Missourians owe no small part of their influence to the unshakable consistency with which they suppress everything that looks like a strange fire on the altar, for the simple Christian in particular does not want to waver and vacillate in matters of faith, but rather desires a firm ground and secure support.”.*) R. H. thinks that this firmness is the power of the Missourians, but it is something much greater, because the Missourian pastors like to put their own person in the background. It is rather the power of the Word of God, which breaks its way into the hearts of the listeners, and fills them with such a clear conviction that the church members can say with those Samaritans: “Now we believe, not because of thy saying: for we have heard him ourselves, and know that this is indeed the Christ, the Saviour of the world”. [John 4:42] — We are servants of God and not of men, therefore we also want to strengthen in our hearers the state of grace which they have through faith in Christ, so powerfully that all doubts will give way and the joyful certainty will be worked through the Holy Spirit, of which it is said: “You have received an anointing!” [cp. 1 John 2:27]
Such Lutherans, who are attached to pure words, no longer want to hear the voice of the stranger, therefore we do not need any church property insurance, with which other synods sometimes want to chain the congregations to themselves. God protect us
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*) R. Hoffmann adds: “We could at least learn this much determination from Missouri, that we finally close the doors of the churches to those who have broken the foundations of faith, and that we stop building even more stern bridges, where every bridge is a denial of Christ.” — This is a pious wish which cannot be realized in today's state churches, because the principle of the ruling Union is this: Indifference in matters of faith, equal justification of error with truth; the truth itself must only be half preached, because everything is more permitted than the Lutheran reproof [Elenchus]; false doctrine must not be publicly rejected.
from such coercive measures! The sheep of Christ, though simple-minded, have a sensitive ear, and so they learn to distinguish between the voice of a stranger and the Shepherd's voice of Christ, and so they realize what a pasture it is to which they are led! Such a small group of Christians, who are firmly convinced that this is the right way to eternal life, which God has revealed once and for all, who know in whom they believe and who do not equate their God with a fashionable man who reveals himself today in this way and tomorrow in another way, certainly arouses the wrath of the devil and turns the world against us. But we must not care about the judgment of the world, if we only bring souls to Christ and to heaven, then it must be the same for us, whether the world despises or praises us for it, because we know that we will not be judged according to its standard.
Where does it finally come from,that people not only hasten to hear God's Word, but that the members of the congregation also become zealous to do the Lord's work, that they give large sums of money every year for the purposes of the kingdom of God, without being forced to do so by pastoral command, even without the synodical assembly being allowed to impose any conditions? Is this dead orthodoxy, or is it the love of Christ that drives them? That they receive, with great sacrifices, their own week-day schools and are not only concerned with the education of their children in the Lord, but also with the spreading of the Word of God in general? The children of God, who have come to true freedom in Christ their Lord, recognize the purpose that God has with them in this world, namely, that they should serve their fellow man for their salvation and benefit. Otherwise He would certainly take Christians out of the world into heaven as soon as they were converted, but now He makes them for the time being associates and co-workers in His Kingdom of Grace on earth. The joyfulness of Christians, who have become certain of eternal life, also drives them to the right use of earthly goods; once they have become masters over sin, death and the devil, they have
also become masters of Mammon, and scatter it for the blessing of others and for the edification of the kingdom of God. But there is also a lack of love where the hope of eternal life is missing, as it must be under the fetters of the Law. The Apostle, 1 Cor. 13:13, does not link hope with love (sanctification), but to faith; he leaves hope between them: “But now there remains faith, hope, love!” [after Luther Bibel 1545] Let an example show how overflowing with comfort also the rightly understood doctrine of the Election of Grace is for Christians, for this doctrine is preached only to Christians. Just at the same time that the prevailing doctrinal controversy, which grieved many minds, forced them to preach more thoroughly and more often than usual about the Election of Grace for the children of God, the question arose in a small congregation in Illinois whether and what the members wanted to give to the new building in St. Louis. The pastor in question, G. G., writes that he was glad that his congregation was willing to give a sum of money in the congregation, because he was almost worried that his congregation would feel burdened because of a bad harvest that year. The next day, however, three men came to him and declared that they found this sum too small and had decided among themselves that they (the three of them) wanted to themselves alone give this sum for the new building. They asked that another meeting be called. This happened, and the sum agreed upon the first time was doubled. When the pastor asked the three men what motivated them to do this charity, the answer was: “If you hear such sermons as the sermons of the Election of Grace, your heart will have been such that you would like to do something in honor of God!” — If we add to all this the fact that the stream of immigration from Europe, like a slow-moving migration of peoples, is pouring into America, it is certainly not presumptuous to recall here the old prophecies and testimonies which already in the last century pointed to America as the country which in its time
would become a Pella to orthodox Christians. Thus Dr. Joh. Ph. Fresenius wrote in Frankfurt in 1756: “Let us consider that perhaps this remote part of the world, in time, when God will visit European Christians with severe punishments for their great ingratitude, could become a place of refuge and salvation for the few believers.” — When somewhat more than twenty years later the North American United States had formed, which had made the separation of church and state and complete freedom of religion a main principle of its constitution, the deacon Uhrlandt wrote in Gera: “The Church of Jesus Christ should and will remain, even if He, since the earth is large, should rebuild it outside Europe, and the political circumstances are becoming more and more conducive to this, especially since now in the West an independent Christian state has come into being.” What these enlightened men suspected, a careful observer must now see fulfilled with astonishment. Although even here in this country ruin penetrates like a flood of blood, it pleases God to build His Church from this family; the door is wide open for the Church of the Reformation here; it, which lies in ruins in Germany, is to be rebuilt here in this country on the old, eternal foundation! Therefore it happens, without doubt, that the faithful God preserves our Synod without our merit and worthiness, and permits it to stand; it is to work as leaven and as a renewing salt, and by means of true Christianity and true Lutheranism to resist destruction; it has already proved itself as an asylum for many who entered the hospitable shores of this country in a depraved and neglected state. In a period of forty years, while other synods wavered and sought many arts without finding the right support, the Missouri Synod remained solid and immovable on the ground upon which it was built from the beginning. As impetuously as she was invaded on all sides, she did not allow herself
to be made to waver in her resolve to follow the example of the Church of the Reformation unwaveringly on the path she had trodden. On this way that came to pass which is now plain. The confession of the full, entire heavenly truth is again placed on the lampstand, thousands and thousands know again what Lutheran doctrines and ways are. Should we now think that the time has come to go for once beyond Luther, and to correct the God-appointed Reformer, who leads his students back to Holy Scriptures, as our contemporary opponents and other wiseacres have tried to do? That would mean to forsake and despise the God-given blessing of the Reformation and the pure doctrine that has been given again! We may be called Lutherists, but if we are only true Lutherists, then we are also honest Bible Christians, who admittedly renounce false teachers and sects according to God's command, “for they believe not in Luther (as Luther writes), but in Christ Himself. The Word has them, and they have the Word.” [St. L. ed. 15, 1670, § 18; Am. Ed. 43, 68: “To All Who Suffer Persecution”] This is the Word or faith that the Missouri Synod has remained in until now, and what St. Paul writes to Timothy again applies to us today: “Keep that which is committed to thy trust!” [1 Timothy 6:20] There can be no greater grace for a church fellowship than to be the bearer of pure doctrine as appointed by God. The more clearly we recognize it, it is not by our merit that we hold on to the pure gospel, it is God's grace alone that holds us, the more seriously we must watch and pray that no one takes our crown from us!
O Lord! Let it be so ordered
The Christian holy church congregation,
Preserve them on earth!
Through war and victory,
Through suffering and joy,
Until there the glory of heaven
Will be revealed.