Perry Church, Dane County, Wisconsin

June 8-16, 1864

Dear brothers in the Ministry and brethren in faith!

Again the Lord brings us together as brothers in this time of severe trials with which our country and people are being visited. Certainly we must thank God that thus far he has spared us from seeing our own soil ravaged, our fields destroyed by the wild hordes of war, and streams of blood coloring our lands.⁷ We must thank him that peaceful conditions can prevail among us, but above all that the Lord’s congregations can be edified in peace through the Word of the Lord in the manner ordained by him. However, there is certainly no one among us who is so selfish, so without feeling, so unrepentant, that the general misery does not go to his heart so that he himself suffers with his suffering people.

Now if we move on from considering the many kinds of outward wailing and distress and look for its deeper reason, and if we acknowledge that it was nothing other than the people’s deep moral corruption, their indifference and contempt for the Lord and his Word, their pride and arrogance over toward God and people; if we must finally fear that the people’s incessant hardness and impenitence by increasing the flood of sin would multiply the torments and in the future bring even greater misery over our land, then it were really our only comfort that we could say with the pious king Jehoshaphat: “We do not know what we should do, but our eyes are upon you, Lord!” (2 Chronicles 20:12.)

And if it were our congregations over which we cast our glance, we must confess with concern, yes, deep sorrow, that also here it is the same cancerous sore which is spreading, and threatening to consume our congregations’ best vigor, that also here the chief evil is the spirit of arrogance which says , “Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us,” (Ps. 2:3) which wants to allow the light of reason to counsel in matters of faith and to find fault with the revealed Word, which, despising divine and human authority, wants the perverted will to rule. If we walked into battle against this enemy, many times it seems in vain, yes, it seems as if the enemy’s might is increasing during the battle, and then looking at our own strength we must often cry: “We do not know what we should do.” You see, though, that it was our comfort that we could add in faith: “but our eyes are upon you, Lord!”

The Lord grants us now, brethren, in such times, during such struggle and tribulation, to assemble peaceably. O, let us then use the time both properly and diligently during our public meetings as well as private meetings to help each other so that our eyes always may be turned to the Lord, so that also when we have returned home, each to his congregation and sphere of activity, we there constantly may look upon him and teach and help others in obtaining the same thing.

But friends! How should we better be able to render each other such help than to build up each other in the doctrine of the one saving faith through mutual consultation and mutual instruction from the Word of God? For where is the Lord, so that we can turn our eyes to him? The apostle John says: “No man has seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he has declared him.” (Jo. 1:18.) But it is in the Word in which he has wrapped himself. The Gospel is his clothing in which he who is the express image of the Father reveals himself to us full of grace and truth, one God, for the salvation of many. Yes, the more we gaze at him there and learn to know his essence, attributes and works, yes, the more we thereby are strengthened in the true faith and pure doctrine, the more should we also learn to turn our eyes to him and look to his hand alone.

But I hear someone say: “It’s the Gospel, doctrine, faith again! But what about the life, the life? What’s the use of all this talk about doctrine and faith when the life remains just as wretched? We in the Lutheran Church surely have the pure doctrine. What need is there then constantly to harp on that point? It were better that we worked on Christian life and that the synod took up this matter instead of discussing doctrinal questions over and over.”

Now I want to answer this first, that the one thing is to be done and the other is not to be neglected., that it certainly is pertinent that we explain the Law carefully so that people can know and understand what God actually demands in it , and so that we are busy with admonishing and encouraging them to every good work. But we are also to remember that the ointment of the Gospel does not dull, but on the contrary sharpens the sword of the Law, and that Christ on the cross is the sharpest preaching of repentance at the same time as it is the most blessed word of comfort.

Next, we all agree completely that both building and planting has to begin at the foundation, at the root. But now doctrine, and the doctrine of faith, are precisely the foundation from which the root of life, faith, springs forth which always bears fruit because that is its nature. Now if the proper Christian doctrine of faith is laid as the foundation, then from it will sprout the proper healthy root of life, the true Christian faith which will also show itself active in love which is the fulfilling of the Law.

But if the doctrines of faith are spoiled and distorted with human additions, opinions and views, then a false and more or less sickly faith will grow from such a foundation which will show itself in a life which will soon betray itself as a wretched feeling, as an arrogant, self-sufficient service of self-righteousness , as a miserable spiritless life of bondage full of self-devised sins, self-made torments and unchristian judgments.

Precisely because we are in earnest about working to develop a sound and healthy Christian life in our congregations so that everyone’s eyes can be turned to the Lord both through his work and during his life, in life and in death, precisely for these reasons do we want above all to listen very diligently and attentively to the Lord’s Word, to what he has to say to us, and to see as thoroughly and clearly as possible to acknowledge the doctrines of the Christian faith, that is, everything which God actually proclaims to us to believe unto salvation.

The Lord himself says also, “My words are spirit and life” (Jo. 6:63) and again, “Of his own will begat he us with the word of truth,” ( Ja. 1:18) and John says, “This is life eternal, that they might know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent” (17:3). In these passages the Lord teaches us to get the relationship between his Word and life clear, namely that his Word is life and gives life and that the proper acknowledgement of the Lord and God revealed in the Word, exactly that, is true life.

Or, where really does life with all that is good, holy feelings and emotions, with its self-denial and sac-rifice, its humility and patience, its love to God and men, where does it really come from except from the faith which appropriates to oneself the love of God to us and believes that God is both so incomprehensibly great that he has in Christ offered himself for us, and for the sake of Christ forgives us all our sins? Thus the apostle says also, “We love him, because he first loved us .” (1 Jo. 4:19.) But this faith which is the fountain of life in us from which streams of living water spring, is, of course, worked by the Spirit of God just through the Word as Paul teaches in Romans 10, “Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.” (Verse 17.) How earnestly do not also the Lord and the apostles admonish us to take heed to the Word and to continue in the pure doctrine. Yes, in John’s Gospel the Lord sets this as a mark of those who are his true disciples! And Paul says in Galatians 1:8: “Cursed is he who preaches another gospel than that which we have preached to you.” How do the Lord and the apostles not warn throughout the entire Scriptures against false prophets and the leaven of false doctrine! Yes, how earnestly does not the apostle Paul admonish us in the epistles to the Corinthians and Philippians to have one mind and one opinion and to speak the same language, so that factions should not arise among us.

This matter is certainly of extreme importance and the continual cry “not doctrine but life” does not make it less important. I therefore regard it as useful to add a portion of the testimony of Luther, the dear father of our church, on this point. In his explanation of Genesis 9 he says:

In Scripture, eating and drinking means believing. … As the food is, so is the eating, as the doctrine is, so is the faith. If the doctrine is correct, then there is also a correct faith. If it is false and corrupted then it is a false, dead faith. … Love bears all things - also the most common rogues, just as Christ has borne us; but faith tolerates nothing, but says thus: That if people are living imperfectly, then one must have patience with them; but I have no patience with incorrect doctrine. Therefore, there is a great difference between doctrine and life. But doctrine is no joke; it must be pure and correct, but we are not as strict where the life is concerned … The greatest weight lies on doctrine. When it is pure, then a person can bear all kinds of imperfections and weaknesses in life, so long as one remains with the doctrine and acknowledges that life should be otherwise. But where the doctrine is falsified there the life is doomed.

And in the explanation of Genesis 49 he says:

This is strange talk about doctrine; because not as much weight lies on the life. When a person keeps the doctrine pure, he can help with everything. … Where a person preaches correctly, there the life often follows weakly, gradually and slowly; on the other hand, where one leads people astray with false doctrine, there is does not follow easily. Because where the doctrine is not correct there the life which guides itself according to the doctrine cannot be correct.

In his exposition of Galatians 5:10 Luther says:

Wherefore (as I often give warning) we must diligently discern between doctrine and life. Doctrine is heaven, life is earth. In life there is sin, error, uncleanness, and misery, mingled with vinegar, as the proverb says. There let charity wink, forbear, be beguiled, believe, hope, and suffer all things; there let forgiveness of sins prevail as much as may be, so that sin and error not be defended and maintained. But just as there is no error in doctrine, so it has no need of pardon. Wherefore there is no comparison between doctrine and life. One little point of doctrine is of more value than heaven and earth; and therefore we cannot stand having the least jot of it be corrupted. But we can very well wink at the offences and errors of life. For as also do daily err in life and conversation, yes, all the saints err; and this do they earnestly confess in the Lord’s Prayer and in the articles of our faith. But our doctrine, by the grace of God, is pure; we have all the articles of our faith grounded upon the Holy Scripture. The devil would gladly corrupt and overthrow them. Therefore he assails us so craftily with this goodly argument, that we ought not offend against charity and the unity of the churches.

In a sermon on the day of John the Baptist he said:

I’ve said before that doctrine is one thing and life is another. That’s why you do well to distinguish between them; because God does not place as much weight on life as he does on doctrine. That’s why he readily lets his people stumble in life, of which we read many examples in Scripture; but where doctrine is concerned, then he doesn’t let it fall a hair’s breadth; because a wicked life is obviously not as harmful as a false teaching. A wicked life, namely, is not as harmful for someone else as it is for him who leads it; but false doctrine often misleads an entire country.

And again, in the exposition of Matthew’s 6^th chapter:

It is true that where teaching is not right, there it is impossible for life to be right and good either, since life must let itself be controlled and directed by teaching. Luther’s Works, American Edition, 21, 131.

And in a sermon for the 25^th Sunday after Trinity Luther says:

When these doctrines are properly lodged within the heart, they will, first of all, induce people to glory in the goodness and grace of God, to love him with all their heart, and also to live to the honor of this merciful God. They will begin in true earnest to do all that they know to be pleasing to God; and to avoid all that they know to have been forbidden by him … Therefore Christ so earnestly admonishes us to adhere to these doctrines and not listen to anything contrary. Sermons on the Gospels for the Sundays and Principal Festivals of the Church Year, by Martin Luther, translated from the German, Vol. II, Rock Island, IL, Lutheran Augustana Book Concern, 1871, p. 604.

In a sermon on Matthew 18 he says:

Because there is a great difference between doctrine and life. Because even if the life is wicked, a person can however still help when the doctrine is pure. Because then the light is still at hand according to which the errors can correct themselves. But when the light is gone then everything is lost; then a person is walking in the dark. Therefore the Lord laments not only the fact that they have lived that way but also the fact that some approved of it as right.

In his Table Talk Luther says:

Life is bad among us, as it is among the papists, but we don’t fight about life and condemn the papists on that account. Wyclif and Hus didn’t know this and attacked the papacy for its life. I don’t scold myself into becoming good, but I fight over the Word and whether our adversaries teach it in its purity. … This is my calling. Others have censured only life, but to treat doctrine is to strike at the most sensitive point, for surely the government and the ministry of the papists are bad. Once we’ve asserted this, it’s easy to say and declare that the life is also bad.

When the Word remains pure, then life (even if there is something lacking in it) can be molded properly. Everything depends on the Word, and the pope has abolished the Word and created another one. With this I have won, and I have won nothing else than that I teach aright. Although we are better morally, this isn’t anything to fight about. It’s the teaching that breaks the pope’s neck. Luther’s Works, American Edition, 54, 110.

In the explanation of John 14 Luther says:

There is even not so great a need with them who otherwise are weak (as many among us are) and hitherto sinners, if they only remain with the pure doctrine about Christ and do not become sectarian spirits. Because the branch can well receive a scratch or break or another injury; but when it just remains on the vine and does not break off from it, then it can through the same be healed again. Thus also, even if a Christian in his life has fallen and has been injured, yet, when he does not begin on something new contrary to the doctrine, then he can again be helped when he again clings to Christ in repentance and faith, is not then condemned and cast away as a sinner; who according to his foolish understanding enters with another doctrine and sects, wants thereby to have right and the error not punished, or remains in an impenitent life and does not want to hold himself to Christ again.

Finally, Luther says in his exposition of John 6:

The disciples hear God’s Word and the Master teaches God’s Word; both must here yield themselves captive; they are both captive, bound to God’s Word, to preach and hear it, neither dares depart to the right or the left. If now one steps out on the one side, he is false … In doctrine is nothing false, there we are completely and altogether pure and truthful; the doctrine is upright, because it is a gift of God; but in the life something is still culpable and sinful, but it is something given to us and not imputed … Thus for the Lord’s sake we will be called pure, and we are that also in truth … In the papacy we were weak saints with our good works. But when it henceforth will not go right with the life, then we must grovel, and even if we are weak saints in this life, so that there is lack, so that we do not fear, love and trust in God sufficiently, yet we do not, however, commit public vices, because we are not harlots, adulterers and usurers; and if we did fall into them, then however we stand up again through God’s Word, stop sinning; because God’s Word is in itself clean, precious, pure and truth itself. There is no unrighteousness in it. ⁸

This emphasis on life with the setting aside of and contempt for doctrine is by no means anything new. In Christ’s time we have the Pharisees, in Luther’s the papists. They rejected and despised the pure doctrine, urged works and placed man’s salvation in them. And in more recent church history we have the Pietists’ warning example before us. It was, that in their disordered times, they earnestly preached repentance and exhorted to conversion and faith too, but it was the sin of Pietism, that especially after

Francke’s ⁹ time it did not watch over the pure doctrine but regarded it as an adiaphoron, and contending for it as something to be rejected. In just this way it paved the way for the Rationalism, unionism and infidelity in the Lutheran Church of the times that followed.

Now when a person meets our zeal for the strengthening of doctrine and again and again shouts “life” and cites as the reason, that in our days doctrine is so well developed and established in the Lutheran Church and the acknowledgement of the pure doctrine so common that there is no danger on that score, and such zeal for it is out of place, then, I think that the fact that such a cry is so common is already testimony that pure doctrine is not as well established in the Lutheran Church as people claim. A look around at the divisions of the church which bears the name of Luther will also convince us of the fact that it is less than good in such regards and that just the frightful decay of the pure doctrine in the Lutheran Church at the present time must challenge us, as a part of this church, to throw ourselves into doctrine with all zeal and earnestness and seek by God’s grace to come to the greatest possible clarity and fullness in the acknowledgement of it. Yes, I believe that the situation under which the Lord has placed our little church body here must challenge us to look upon it as a chief task for our church body to strive for such acknowledgement of and strengthening in the correct doctrine first of all, so that through the preservation and reception of the pure Word of God we and our descendants can be saved.

Next, so that with us, our descendants can learn to lead a truly sound Christian life, and finally so that with the pure Word of God preserved to us by grace, and the occasion which God might give, we also can lend a helping hand to others and show them who have fallen into error the right way to salvation.

If we look at the plight of doctrine in the church of our fatherland in this way, then it surely is apparent that each of us who loves our fatherland and its church must be inwardly grieved over it. The fact that various sects are gaining ground there is certainly testimony of how little people are established in the pure doctrine. Meanwhile it is again of course beneficial that a drainage channel is found for the spiritual impurities. Nor is anything else to be expected where the bonds of the state church are beginning to be loosened.

No, but the church at the various conferences and meetings, the disunity among the church’s spokesmen is surely so striking that it must awaken the deepest concern when one considers that it is not merely indifferent things, adiaphora, or theological subtleties about which people are contending, but articles of faith, chief points of doctrine. At the meetings one finds the strongest contrasts and all similar crossings-over between them in doctrine represented and reflected and yet, at last, no unity. I need only refer to my discussions about lay-preaching and confession at the meeting in Drammen. Some, the Grundtvigians, bring, as is known, doctrines concerning the church, the ministry, ordination, baptism, conversion, original sin, which are obviously papistic and a large portion of the people fighting for the opposite views limp along with them in some points while they stand on the opposite side in other but equally dangerous errors. Others teach that only baptism alone or baptism in connection with the Word, in any case, not the Word alone, works regeneration.

But worse than all these errors, though, is the way in which, as it appears, a large majority view the matter. People consider them as opinions and views to which people are entitled, which a person must, however, tolerate and respect even if one cannot agree with them, partly for the person’s sake, partly on the basis of religious tolerance and liberality.

People aren’t aware that in that way they draw a line through the church’s formal principle, that they do not allow the Word of God to be taken as a clear word or truth which is certain in itself, but rather as an ambiguous, indistinct assertion which permits opposing interpretations and through whose explanation human teaching and subtlety decide the matter.

In the meantime we are firmly convinced that there are people to be found among the clergy and lay-people in our fatherland who simply hold fast to and confess the pure Lutheran doctrine in every point even if the silent in the land seldom let their testimony be heard at the larger public meetings and gatherings. Neither are we blind to how the virtually complete lack of doctrinal discipline is a result of the church’s relation to the state as a state church and is felt sadly and painfully by many of its members. We must also acknowledge with thanks to God what has been done for the spread of the pure doctrine there merely through the publications of Luther’s writings in more recent times. But at the same time we cannot conceal that the chief tendency which stands out distinctly in the church of our fathers is the indifferentism and false doctrine of the time, indifference for the pure truth. Surely, the more we feel, though, what we have to thank God for through the church of our fathers ,and the more heartfelt the love is with which we its children who have emigrated, still embrace it, the more heartily will we also implore the Lord of the Church who always has thoughts of peace toward his Zion, that he will look in grace toward the church of our beloved fatherland and place watchmen there who blow undaunted on the trumpet and let it give a strong and distinct sound so that hosts may assemble themselves to the battle for the pure, unfalsified Word of truth.

Now if the situation with pure doctrine is so sorrowful in far-off little Norway, then we can know before-hand that it is not better in Germany, which is a larger country, and the former cradle of the Reformation, which even now exercises an extraordinary influence in spiritual respects on the remaining Lutheran churches, especially in Europe. It is really Germany’s great professors who together are brewing the seductive drink which the smaller foreign nations are nipping at with great admiration and are getting drunk on.

We have there truth and lie combined, and with that the truth-denying principle of unionism in Prussia and most of the other states, together with its cousins, “Evangelical Alliance,” “Protestant Church Day,” “Gustav Adolph’s Union,” and whatever they are all called. We have there the papal chair in Breslau under the form of the Overconsistory or General Synod, and a carbon copy in New Ruppin under the cover of a Lutheran clergyman’s gown. In Hannover we have a Lutheran people who force their consistory to concede to them the right to believe or not in the existence of the devil. I do not know how many theological schools are to be found there, but there is scarcely one where orthodox doctrine is proclaimed in every point. And of those which for the moment pass for the light of the Lutheran Church, its supporters and defenders, they have mostly supplanted God’s Word, each with his pet idea with which they want to explain the doctrines set forth by Luther and the Reformers on the person of Christ, on the Word of God, Baptism, the Lord’s Supper, regeneration, justification, the thousand year reign, church, ministry, church government, etc., which they say are still not understood correctly. This is not to mention Kahnis, Hengstenberg, Delitzch, Pestorius, Kuiafodt, Thomasius, Loehe, and several others, who all more or less offend against the doctrine of the Lutheran Church.

That, however, here also individual spokesmen confess and defend the pure doctrine in all points we will be no means deny, but it does, however, appear to be only a voice in the wilderness.

In Denmark the situation is such that one can be in doubt whether he can any longer hallow the so-called People’s Church with the Lutheran name. Grundtvig plays the leading role here with his party. Even if he has not succeeded in getting the church to accept his “matchless discovery” along with the Symbols, yet he has, however, forced through the relaxing of the inhibition of leaving one’s own parish priest as it concerns both the congregations and the pastors. If people can also get the doctrinal freedom which he and his colleagues have worked so much for forced through, then one can surely say beforehand that the Danish People’s Church will be a complete Babel. And against this attack stands as the champion, the old rationalistic Professor Clausen and the church’s primate, Bishop Mortensen, whose speculative dogmatics gives more than enough testimony for this departure from our church’s doctrine. Thus, the prospects for the Lutheran Church are truly sad in that country.

I know less about the condition of the Lutheran Church in Sweden. But the participation in the Gustav Adolph societies, the comments of leading men at the church meetings in Scandinavia, inclining toward the Baptists on the part of some and toward the Episcopal Church on the part of others, and, taken as a whole, for the high church tendency, suggests rather great confessional apathy.

If we come now to the so-called Lutheran Church here in this country, then we surely all know how the number of synods calling themselves Lutheran is legion but how also the name is the only Lutheran thing which many of them have. The General Synod, which embraces most the of the so-called Lutheran synods, is manifestly a completely disunited church body, while the Iowa Synod represents the German pastor Loehe’s theology, and the Buffalo Synod is going straight toward Rome on another path.

However, we must surely acknowledge with praise to God that there is, though, a German Lutheran synod, the Missouri Synod, which has not let itself be content with merely the Lutheran name but tirelessly has brought to life the testimony of the Lutheran fathers, undaunted, shown off the prayers of the Lutheran Church, the pure doctrine, zealously watched over its preservation within the synod’s own bounds and fearlessly and openly as well as with scholarship defended it against opponents outside it. It has even thereby procured for itself a host of bitter enemies in our religiously indifferent time which is careless about the pure doctrine and doubtful about the truth. Thus, however, the commendation which it has before God that it has contended manfully for the one truth cannot thereby be deprived it. And when we rejoiced over the fraternal fellowship in which our little and young synod stands with this older and larger synod, then we are assured that with God’s help it shall be, as it has been, of blessed importance for us in our striving to apprehend and to hold fast the pure doctrine and remain with the Word of the Lord.

I have given here a brief sketch of the state of doctrine in the Lutheran Church. I know that all these things are familiar facts, at any rate, for the my brethren in the ministry. I hope, however, that I will be pardoned for having taken up the esteemed assembly’s time with it. I believed that by doing it I could better convince also my remaining fellow representatives of the fact that just the sad decay of pure doctrine in the Lutheran community of the present time must challenge us, in spite of all the cries, with all possible zeal and earnestness to strive after a deeper and more well-rounded understanding of and strengthening in the pure doctrine at our synod meetings and conferences as well as in our congregational meetings.

There is still one point which I cannot leave untouched here since it must powerfully stir us up to this zeal for doctrine. We in our synod are about to establish a theological school through whose labors our synod shall be supplied with shepherds and teachers in the future. Of what incalculable influence for the existence of the Lutheran Church among us in the future will it not now be that the pure doctrine as it is revealed in Scripture and confessed by our Lutheran fathers is proclaimed clearly, unobscured and unabridged through such a school? Extraordinarily much will depend on the men’s orthodoxy, sincerity and conscientiousness, whom the Lord at various times will place as teachers and leaders at our school. But it is, however, really the prevailing spirit in the congregations which always will be not merely exerting powerful influence, but also the determinative influence. If this is of the truth then it will well watch over that the truth is also prevailing at the school and knows how to sweep out the errors and false tendencies which might creep in there. But if the congregations founder off into religious indifference and carelessness for pure doctrine and tolerate all kinds of errors and false tendencies in its bosom, then the synod’s school cannot possibly remain untouched by it in the course of time, and preserve purity of doctrine. The false spirit of the church body will swarm up to the chair and make the school a synagogue of the devil. Also for this reason are we challenged to place importance on the appropriation and preservation of pure doctrine with all earnestness.

To work then, dear brothers! Important questions of doctrine lie before us for discussion, important for our Christian comprehension, important for the life of the church. But while we are discussing these matters now during these days and at other opportunities, let us remember the apostle’s words, “Knowledge puffs up, but charity edifies!” Therefore in humble acknowledgement of the fact that we can take nothing if it hasn’t been given to us, let us always pray as we work that the Spirit of the Lord who is with his Word will enlighten and guide us into all truth! Let us always strive besides to conduct the discussions in love for the Lord and his Word above all else, but then also for the brethren so that we are faithful to the truth in love! Finally, in this work let us always keep in view that we can be rooted and grounded in love so that we may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and depth and height, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses understanding, so that we can be filled with the fullness of God! Then shall we bear the best witness for it that pure doctrine is still the source of the true life, to the proper Christian life here on earth in faith and love, to eternal life hereafter in blessed contemplation.

But may he who can do exceeding abundantly more than we ask or think, according to the power which he works in us, bless this synod meeting and all its work! To him be glory in the church in Christ Jesus to all generations in all eternity! Amen.

7 For the most part the synod’s congregations were not in areas of the country where battles were fought during the Civil War/The War between the States.

8 The understanding reader will discern that with his remarks quoted here, Dr. Luther by no means wants to teach us to be indifferent toward life. In these passages he emphasizes the great importance of doctrine also for life. Of how ardent the same Luther is that a sound, holy Christian life be led in the church of God and of how earnestly he chastises the manifestly ungodly as well as the self-righteous life, the reader will convince himself by reading through the sermons on the epistles in Luther’s House Postil. (H.A.P.)

9 August Herman Francke (1663-1727), German preacher