are nothing;
ecclesiastical government, so far as it is of man, is nothing; all
things are nothing, if there be not this oneness of faith. With it
begins, in its life continues, in its death ends, all true unity. There
can be, there is, no true unity but in the faith.... The one token of
this unity, that by which this internal thing is made visible, is one
expression of faith, one 'form of sound words,' used in simple
earnestness, and meaning the same to all who employ it.... You may agree
to differ; but when men become earnest, difference in faith will lead
first to fervent pleadings for the truth, and, if these be hopelessly
unheeded, will lead to separation. All kinds of beliefs and unbeliefs
may exist under the plea of toleration; but when the greatest love is
thus professed, there is the least. Love resulting from faith is God's
best gift. Love that grows out of opposition or indifference to faith,
God abhors. There can be no true love where there is not also true
hatred,--no love to truth without abhorrence of error.... In Christ we
can alone find unity. Only when we meet in this center of all true unity
will we have peace. And we can be in Christ only in a faith which
accepts His every word in His own divine meaning, and shrinks with honor
from the thought that, in the prostituted name of peace and love, we
shall put upon one level the pure and heavenly sense of His Word and the
artful corruption of that sense by the tradition of Rome or the vanity
of carnal reason." (Spaeth, 2, 162 f.) With respect to the Missouri
Synod Krauth wrote, April 7, 1876: "I have been saddened beyond
expression by the bitterness displayed towards the Missourians. So far
as they have helped us to see the great principles involved in this
disputation [concerning the Four Points], they have been our
benefactors, and although I know they have misunderstood some of us,
that was perhaps inevitable. They are men of God, and their work has
been of inestimable value." (2, 236.)

111. Krauth on Predestination.--In a letter dated February 13, 1880, Dr.
Krauth said: "I have not read Dr. Walther's exposition of the doctrine
of election, but I purpose, as soon as I can command leisure, to write
something whose object shall be to show that the New Testament doctrine,
confessed by our Church, in regard to election, as fully as the most
extreme Calvinism, gives all the glory to God and ascribes to Him the
total merit of our salvation, both as secured