nd that there is no guarantee of peace in words where men do
not agree in things." "To true unity of the Church is necessary an
agreement in fundamentals, and a vital part of the necessity is an
agreement as to what are fundamentals. The doctrinal articles of the
Augsburg Confession are all articles of faith, and all articles of faith
are fundamental. Our Church can never have a genuine internal harmony,
except in the confession, without reservation or ambiguity of these
articles, one and all. This is our deep conviction, and we hereby
retract, before God and His Church, formally, as we have already
earnestly and repeatedly done indirectly, everything we have written or
said in conflict with this our present conviction. This we are not
ashamed to do. We thank God, who has led us to see the truth, and we
thank Him for freeing us from the temptation of embarrassing ourselves
with the pretense of a present absolute consistency with our earlier,
very sincere, yet relatively very immature views." (Spaeth, 2, 114 f.)
Walther, who had rounded out almost a quarter century of faithful
Lutheran work when Krauth was still a champion of the original basis of
the General Synod, gloried in this frank and manly retraction of Krauth
as "an imperishable monument of the sincerity of his convictions."

110. Endorsing Walther's Views on Christian Union.--In opposition to the
unionistic tendencies of the Lutheran synods in the United States,
especially those affiliated with the General Synod, Walther had
maintained that church union dare not be advocated and effected at the
expense of any doctrine clearly revealed in the Scripture. It was in
complete agreement with this view that Krauth, in his address before the
Pittsburgh Synod, October 1866, declared: "With her eternal principles,
what shall be the future of our beloved Zion in this land? Shall it be
conflict, division, weakness, or shall it be peace, unity, zeal,
unfolding all her energies? It is unity. Every difficulty in her way,
every barrier to her progress, proceeds from the lack of unity. But what
is the unity of the Church? That question was answered three centuries
ago by the Reformers, and fifteen centuries before that in the New
Testament. True unity is oneness in faith, as taught in the Gospel of
our Lord Jesus Christ. We are one with the Church of the apostles
because we hold its faith; one with the Church of the Reformers, alone
because we hold its faith. Outward human forms