ge of membership in the Church Luther has rendered an incalculable
service to Christianity. This view of the Church shows the immense
importance of a live, intelligent, and active personal faith. It puts a
ban on religious indifference and mechanical worship. It destroys
formalism, ceremonialism, Pharisaism in the affairs of religion. Justly
Luther has ridiculed the implicit, or blind, faith of Catholics, when he
writes: "The papists say that they believe what the Church believes,
just as it is being related of the Poles that they say: I believe what
my king believes. Indeed! Could there be a better faith than this, a
faith less free from worry and anxiety? They tell a story about a doctor
meeting a collier on a bridge in Prague and condescendingly asking the
poor layman, 'My dear man, what do you believe?' The collier replied,
'Whatever the Church believes.' The doctor: 'Well, what does the Church
believe?' The collier: 'What I believe.' Some time later the doctor was
about to die. In his last moments he was so fiercely assailed by the
devil that he could not maintain his ground nor find rest until he said,
'I believe what the collier believes.' A similar story is being told of
the great [Catholic theologian] Thomas Aquinas, viz., that in his last
moments he was driven into a corner by the devil, and finally declared,
'I believe what is written in this Book.' He had the Bible in his arms
while he spoke these words. God grant that not much of such faith be
found among us! For if these people did not believe in a different
manner, both the doctor and the collier have been landed in the abyss of
hell by their faith." (17, 2013.)

Luther's teaching regarding the Church leads to a proper valuation of
the means of grace. Only through the evangelical Word and the
evangelical ordinances is the Church planted, watered, and sustained. It
is, therefore, necessary that the world be supplied in abundance with
the Word through the missionary operations of Christians, and that the
Christians themselves have the Word dwell among them richly (Col. 3,
16). "He that abideth in Me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much
fruit; for without Me ye can do nothing," says the Head of the Church to
His disciples (John 15, 5); and in His last prayer He pleads with the
Father in their behalf: "Sanctify them through Thy truth: Thy Word is
truth" (John 17, 17). For the same reason it is necessary that the Word
and Sacraments be preserved in thei