In three estates or fellowships the Christian lives in this world here below: The first is the family, or Naehrstand, with its three aspects and relationships: the parental, the matrimonial, and the domestic. The second is the church, or the Lehrstand. The third is the state, or the Wehrstand." The holding in high esteem and holiness of these three estates or fellowships (Gemeinschaften) and of their respective organs, the fatherly, the ministerial and priestly, and finally the civil regiment (Obrigkeitsamt), that is of the Wesenswille, is the essence and purpose (Eigenschaft und Ziel), structure and function, of a well-ordered commonalty in Christ. The implications of those three statuses with their respective callings are rationalized in the Haustafel of the Lutheran Catechism, which Haustafel and which Catechism may be designated as one of the most powerful and far-reaching pedagogical agencies ever designed. But how maintain it in high esteem and holiness?

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Without going for the moment into the implications of each of these statuses or estates or fellowships, the most important aspect of the group-trust, it seems, is the joint liability of the group qua Lehrstand and church: for the maintenance of a static relationship between the three. The group here functions as the Christian par excellence; its paramount Amt and calling are to maintain that relationship as ordained. For "the maintenance in high esteem and holiness of those three Christian estates, callings and offices [Aemter] implies in the first place that one leave each of them, that one give each of them what belongs thereto." Suum cuique, in other words, as "it is writ."

The stewardship of the interstitial process itself thus becomes rationalized by religion under its category Amt. The Amt and office par excellence of the group as the Christian commonalty, the Gemeinde, the church, is that groups, individuals, nay, social categories themselves, stay put "each in its station." The Christian in

"For Haustafel and Katechism, see Wisconsin District Synod, VII (1891), 32 ff.; for domestic discipline, manipulation, position of woman, religious sanction of paternalism, attitude toward divorce, exogamy, and endogamy, see ibid., pp. 45–51; and for the religious foundation of the social order and the fourth commandment, see Michigan District Synod (1909).

For joint liability, see Wisconsin District Synod, Vol. VII (1891).

his commonalty is here constituted as the guardian of the prescriptive law of a static universe. The feeling attached to that principalship, the Lutheran preserves by shivering under the ancient taboos against minding another's calling (sich in fremde Aemter mischen), an offense, which it will be remembered, in an ancient group-law is a public offense and mentioned in the same breath as murder. Minding other people's business is the essence of lawlessness, is anarchy for the public law of that group; the maintenance of functional status the essence of its "law and order." The intelligence that goes with that law-conservatism may be characterized by the very Lutheran and also very German simplism: Jeder lerne seine Lektion so wird es wohl im Hause stohn. It implies a knowing as well as a minding of one's business. Both are of the essence of the right Gesinnung and of the Gesinnungstuechtigkeit which Germans have endowed with so much feeling as their ideal virtue. Now since the knowing of that business is a comparatively simple matter, since "it is writ," and since the law has been laid down once for all, the Lutheran conserves much energy for the minding of that business. How effective the group is in that respect in minding its group-liability of the guardianship of social statuses we shall see in the interstitial process at large, if any of its neighbors, let us say the state, takes a notion to challenge its Amt and mind what is not indicated by an ancient religion as its business. Right then and there it will recite its lesson of a Rechtsstaat and lay down an ancient law. Sometimes, of course, it happens that "the others," not so fortified with lessons, and not having finished the learning thereof, devise new social agencies or organs. So much the worse for them; that only proves, then, that they do not know their business. A certain element of spuriousness will characterize them and their doings as the Lutheran sees them. As Bismarck characteristically said of the press and its representatives, they are "Kerle die ihren Beruf verfehlt haben." With little interest and less concern, the Lutheran will let them "strut their idle hour" while he himself, true Bourbon, will learn nothing because he has forgotten nothing and learned his lesson so well.

The stewardship and its categories of the church and group

*See I Pet. 4:15. Also see Synodalberichte (Mo.), Wisconsin (1891, 1892); Illinois (1901); Michigan, Vol. IV (1924).

qua Lehrstand therefore concern us more." The importance of the Haustafel and Katechism of Luther as the summary of the Lutheran lesson anent the Christian and his station has been emphasized above. No sculptor ever designed more indestructible die and pattern to cast and mold in his image an ethnic clay. But to the present writer, that mold gained, rather than lost, in effectiveness for having at last passed into the hands of the group. How the group used it as an organ for the objectification of its own coherence shall here be shown.

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As the Lehrstand, the church is in charge of the "power of the keys." Through that power, the commonalty, the Gemeinde, animates and limits to its authentic function the ministry, its organ par excellence. But through the power of the keys it is also the principal and guardian of its own organic unity, not over and against that ministry alone, but in dealing with its own constituency as well. From that organic category it derives mind and power "that ye may be a new lump." It minds problems of territorial unity in the jus parochiae; problems of filiation; problems of federal relations. To the federal law of the larger and largest synodical group-arrangements it becomes principal as much as to the interstitial process at large. The group objectifies its ejective conFor group-stewardship and communal technique, see Synodalberichte, Mittlerer Dist. Syn. (1898); for social pedagogy of group-stewardship and communal technique, see Michigan District Synod (1924) (very good); Oregon-Washington District Synod (1922), Mittlerer Dist. Syn. (1904). Model community for Christian congregation in Oregon and Washington is congregation of Jerusalem, and for this, see Oregon-Washington District Synod (1919). For stewardship of community (no fellowship), see Mittlerer Dist. Syn. (1898), p. 30 (biblical authorities); for the reason for community discipline, see ibid. (1893), p. 33, Lutherana, III, 128, and Iowa District Synod (1894); for community and charity, see Mittlerer Dist. Syn. (1898), p. 45; for community and law and order, see ibid., p. 48, and Wisconsin District Synod (1891–92); for community and consensual technique, see Syn. Conf., Vol. III (1874, 1877); for community and jus parochiale, see ibid., also (for decisive precedent) Wisconsin District Synod (1892), p. 92; for community and leadership (Amt ansehen, nicht Person), see ibid., pp. 26-27, also Iowa District Synod (1889); for community ceremonies as group-nuclei, see Mittlerer Dist. Syn. (1904).

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"See C. F. W. Walther, Rechte Gestalt einer vom Staat unabhängigen Ortsgemeinde (1862, 1890); Pflichten qua- Schlüsselgewalt, Rechte and Pflichten, California-Oregon District (1892); Mittlerer Dist. Syn. (1898); Alberta Br. Col. (1922); “in Mitteldingen soll sich Gemeindeversammlung vollzählig beteiligen," Nebrasca (1913).

sciousness in a sociological technique of inclusion and exclusion. It learns to purge out the old leaven through group-discipline. Applying the Reine Lehre, the group law as a standard of right, and following procedural precedents of the apostolic congregations, the Rechtsgemeinschaft becomes a Gerichtsgenossenschaft with the power of Zucht, and, if necessary, the power of exclusion through the Ban.' The significance of this part of the intrasocial process within a religious group so constituted is immense. To the present writer, it is the secret of the effectiveness of the process as social pedagogy, and here it is difficult to say where the differentiation of organs, the quickening of the senses, proceeds most rapidly, on the cognitive side out of the business of knowing "the old leaven," or on the volitional side of purging it out. In either case, the differentiation of organs can be traced through the dialectics of the process. How degree and direction of attention sensitize and specialize those organs could easily be shown in detail. Space permits here only an observation on the development of the group-organs of the consensus itself. They must be especially interesting in a group so constituted by its a priori of faith that each constituent has practically the liberum veto, and that there can in no case be coercion.

Leadership, we have seen, remains organically related to the group-will under the calling-concept, and under the category Amt. It entails no more than a stewardship of Das Wort, Die reine Lehre. In this Predigtamt, close adherence to the a priori of faith is expected; its stewardship must run true to type. Compromise is taboo, initiative in new departures suspect in proportion as analogies present themselves with the doings of "the others," of whom the presumption is that they have not die reine Lehre, and "have a different spirit than you." This extends even to the ideal of a perfect sermon, prevailing in this quarter. The perfect sermon, the schoene Predigt, implies scholastic methodism and clarity of exposition rather than the methodism entailed in the telism of effect and success. On the emotional side it entails the flush which comes from complete assimilation, rather than the heat of good intentions which comes from the fierce appetite. On the aesthetic side there

'For technique of correction and guidance, see 13. Allgemeine Synode (1866), pp. 44-47, 62, 63 ff.; also Iowa District Synod (1894), Michigan District Synod (1924), and Mittlerer Dist. Syn. (1903, 1904).

will be much more response from a sense for the beauties of the things that are than from a vision of the things that may be. In contemplation of a revealed God rather than in the thrill over the dynamic power of an unrevealed God, the Lutheran seeks his compensations. In spite of its inveterate distrust of "rationalism," its insistence on "spiritual discernment," this type at least derives the better part of its "illumination" from the rational rather than from the emotional man.

Nor is the cure of souls in this quarter determined by the feminine equation, for the women "if they will learn anything, let them ask their husbands at home." As to the limitations of the men "if any man be ignorant, let him be ignorant"; they need not on that account be distressed. Concerning the feeling appeal and response, then, it should be remembered that the purpose here is to arouse, awaken the Christian to his calling, but not to turn him loose; its function is to help in the attainment of the gratia amissibilis rather than in allaying the terrors of predestination.

For with the flesh, that very gratia amissibilis makes possible rational terms of accommodation, valuable to group- if not to soulconservation. In this parish of the City of God, there is no calling for either the intoxication of joy nor the frenzy of fear; the salvation process is a matter of orderly, customary procedure—it is a function of normal community life. As the Christian is born into, baptized into the community which is the church, so his salvation, we might say, is immanent in its life. It accrues to the individual from his being a socius of a community which is not a community of virtuosi, or saints, but an institution of grace-a Gnadenanstalt.

Thus, the sense of the fitness of things appears here conditioned by a static universe of neighbors, where even the devil has a calling and knows his business under the static order of original sin. The minister may lay down the law, but he must do it without Effecthascherei. As Moerike, the parson-poet, put it: On Saturday night the peasants steal the minister's radishes, and on Sunday they come to church for their pepper and salt. They do not expect the minister to get results in a hurry; they will not "get religion" in a day. They do not hope to go to heaven, nor fear of going to hell all of a sudden. Rome was not built in a day.