New Lutheran Quote of the Day

The Means of Grace do it, ancillary to which is the Office of the Holy Ministry.  The Office does the Means of Grace not the man put into it for their use, which is clearly then the Lord's use.  In an emergency a layman cannot not act in this way also, the alternative is too frightful to contemplate and there's a word from the Lord to encourage him.  Tractatus 68 (referring to Matthew 18 - "where two or three").--Dr. Norman Nagel, All Theology is Christology, p. 248.