Guard the Good Deposit

On a Friday night in September 1884, Lutheran theologian C. F. W. Walther gathered some of his seminary students together in St. Louis, Missouri. This was one of a series of Friday night talks he gave for the purpose of 'making you really practical theologians. I wish to talk the Christian doctrine into your very hearts.' On this night he said:

You can gather how foolish it is, yea, what an awful derision has taken hold upon so many men's minds who ridicule pure doctrine and say to us: 'Ah, do cease clamoring, Pure doctrine! Pure doctrine! That can only land you in dead orthodoxism. Pay more attention to pure life, and you will raise a growth of genuine Christianity.' That is exactly like saying to a farmer: 'Do not worry forever about good seed; worry about good fruits.'

--C. F. W. Walther, The Proper Distinction between Law and Gospel: Thirty-Nine Evening Lectures (St. Louis: Concordia, 1928), 20-21