# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1850 09 03_S4
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

4

S. That we do not know, to be sure; for that very reason we make provision for the case that we should die before them and they should then be left quite forsaken. We take the certain for the uncertain.

I. What is the uncertain?

S. Whether we shall outlive our own.

I. And the certain?

S. The certain is their support, in case we should die.

I. You can, then, lay down your head quietly and die, because you know that your own are provided for, is it not so? And in what do you trust therein?

S. In the societies, in what else?

I. Do you not know the First Commandment? We should fear, love, and trust in God above all things? Why do you not trust in God?

S. One must rely upon God and upon men.

I. Where is that written?

S. I do not know, but it is probably written somewhere.

I. Yes, it is written somewhere, only not in God's Word; for God's Word speaks plainly and terribly: Cursed be the man that trusteth in man. Jer. 17, 5. Cursed, cursed—he who trusteth in man and maketh flesh his arm! You will thus bequeath to your wives and children the curse instead of the blessing.

S. If you knew how piteously poor forsaken widows and orphans go about in this country. I have seen it, I have seen the most dreadful things, I have convinced myself.

I. Were they perhaps just such as inherited from their deceased fathers and husbands the curse instead of the blessing? God visiteth the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate Him, both fathers and children. On the other hand God's Word says: The seed of the righteous shall not be begging bread. Ps. 37, 25.

S. In short, I have seen it; to protect my family from such nameless misery is my most sacred duty.

I. In a manner pleasing to God, yes, but not so that one enters into a secret brotherhood with Jews and despisers of Christ, worships a heathen god, denies his God, and trusts more in money and the help of men than in God. Do you not believe that your widows and orphans will be provided for by God just as richly, and a thousand times more richly, than by your societies?

S. No, we do not believe that.

I. How? What: Do you know what the Holy Scripture calls such a disposition? Unbelief. And what stands upon it? Damnation. He that believeth not shall be damned. Mark 16, 16.

S. What? You may not yet condemn me:

I. Not I, God's Word condemns you! with such manifest, avowed heathen unbelief!

S. In the Scripture there is also much that is not true.

O. Yes, much that is not true.

I. Well, my friends, now I am done with you. I thought you cared that your secret societies should not be against God's Word. Now I see that this was all a lie, that you ask nothing at all after God's Word and hold it not for God's Word, but for lies. Why then did you call me to be a preacher of the divine Word, since you are once for all drowned in bottomless unbelief? Whither will you go with your poor souls in death?

O. Where the others go I will go too. If I do not come into heaven, I do not wish to go in at all.

I. Good, I have told it you, I have saved my soul.

The four delegates rise and say, smiling: "We intend to save our own too"; and go away.

"The church may remain closed next Sunday!"—those were the last words on both sides.

Dear Reader!

If you have not yet shuddered at the dark evil of the secret societies, read this and let yourself shudder. These four men were among the best, that is, outwardly the most active members of the whole congregation; what a glimpse their speeches give into those works of darkness, and into the secret power of Satan, which he exercises as king and prince over such a company. I am anxious for every soul that walks in these nets. May the merciful God know His own and save His elect. For what will be lost must one day into the pit of hell.

G. Schaller, Pastor.

(Submitted by P Keyl.)
The Old Tried Measures of the Lutheran Church for the Abundant Use of the Word of God.

The immediate occasion for treating this subject for the "Lutheraner" was an essay by the Rev. Superintendent Dr. Kliefoth in the Mecklenburg Kirchenblatt of the year 1846 on preaching and catechization in the past and present of the Lutheran Church. The rich contents of this essay, the almost complete likeness of the ecclesiastical evils as well as of the ecclesiastical remedies in the old and the new fatherland, the obligation so close at hand that our preachers and congregations also should take both more earnestly and more effectively to heart, further the close connection of this subject with the old tried order of divine service, of which mention was made in the fifth volume of the "Lutheraner," finally the wish to see such and similar writings transplanted to our American soil—all this has moved me to bring the said essay into an extract as brief as possible and suited to our circumstances, wherein, however, I have permitted myself to scatter in here and there remarks of my own. The extent of the original essay, which amounts to 130 pages, will make it understandable that the extract from it will take up more than one number of this paper. It is to be hoped that the readers will not be deterred thereby, and will deem the trouble of writing at least not unworthy of the trouble of reading. But now to the matter!

While we perceive with joy how in so many places a desire for the Word of God makes itself known, we may yet not conceal from ourselves that in most congregations a great lack of knowledge of the Word of God, and especially of the true layman's Bible, namely of the Catechism, is still to be perceived, for most of those who have immigrated here come from such lands in which such knowledge was deliberately hindered, as happened where Rationalism and the false Union had gained a firm footing; others, in whose former homeland the use of old Agendas, hymn-books and other books of edification has been preserved, bring over with them at least a remnant of a knowledge, to be sure, very insufficient; in some it is still to be thanked God, as the pious Prince George of Anhalt says in his sermons, that nevertheless the parents and especially the dear mothers have remained the chief house-pastors and bishops, through whom the articles of faith and prayer have been preserved; otherwise, so far as the pastors were concerned, it would have been almost all extinguished. Some God has awakened from their sleep of sin through pious preachers or other friends, has brought them to the desire to become other and new men and therefore also to read more diligently in the Bible. A not small part, however, asks contemptuously: "What Bible, what Catechism? that all comes from earlier dark centuries; we know better now and will go forward with the times." Many go on in rigid indifference; they hear a sermon now and then, but they hold this just as sufficient for being a Christian; they do not amend their life accordingly, but remain year in, year out the same people; "the one does this, the other that, his poor soul he quite forgot!" Still others finally, who know a few scraped-together sayings and stories of the Bible and can chatter about them, think or say boldly: what the pastor wants to tell me I know already long since, yea, when he preaches I know beforehand what follows.

Setting aside now all that by which this deplorable condition of not knowing or of knowing wrongly has been bettered or made worse in the new fatherland, and setting aside from the