he
principles established in the Confession, and many evils could be
excluded which in other places had taken root and had been growing for
nearly a century." (164.) However, both Spaeth and Ochsenford fail to
see the real issue; for the grievance at Fort Wayne was not the
inability to abolish immediately all abuses referred to in the Four
Points, but rather the persistent refusal on the part of the General
Council to take, as such, a definite and unequivocal Lutheran attitude
with respect to these questions. Nor was the charge, at least on the
part of Missouri, with respect to the "educational method," as advocated
and applied from 1867 to 1918 by the Council, directed against this
method as such, but against the mutilation of this method by practically
eliminating its eventual natural termination, expulsion according to
Matt. 18, and against the apparent insincerity in the advocacy, and the
lack of seriousness in the application of this method. Indeed, the real
grievance was not that weak members of the General Council were lagging
behind in Lutheran doctrine and practise, but that many of her prominent
leaders and her periodicals occupied an un-Lutheran position and
championed un-Lutheran doctrine and practise.

AKRON-GALESBURG RULE.

122. Non-Lutherans Admitted Exceptionally.--Regarding the Four Points,
especially the question of altar- and pulpit-fellowship, the General
Council during its subsequent history never really rose above the Fort
Wayne level. In 1868, at Pittsburgh, the Council declared "that no man
shall be admitted to our pulpits, whether of the Lutheran name or any
other, of whom there is just reason to doubt whether he will preach the
pure truth of God's Word as taught in the Confessions of our Church."
(208.) As though a sectarian minister could preach in accordance with
the Lutheran symbols; or offense and unionism were fully eliminated when
the sectarian minister, preaching in a Lutheran pulpit, proclaims none
of his errors! The same convention held: "Lutheran ministers may
properly preach wherever there is an opening in the pulpit of other
churches, unless the circumstances imply, or seem to imply, a fellowship
with error or schism, or a restriction on the unreserved expression of
the whole counsel of God." (209.) But, apart from other considerations,
the fact is that, as a rule, these conditions were not and could not be
complied with. Furthermore, the same convention declared: "Heretics and