# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1850 10 01_S20
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

20

en. — So far has the spirit of reason led the Reformed astray in the points stated, that they will not believe what they cannot comprehend. Such a spirit of reason has entered from the Reformed Church into our Church also, and has so taken possession of the clergy and the congregations that nothing is found but sad uncertainty, and almost as many opinions of faith as there are people. Against this false spirit of reason we will be witnesses, we who are called members of the Church of the Augsburg Confession, Evangelical Lutheran, and who extol the glory and majesty of the Word of God.

Yes, let the men of the spirit of the age, of whom our Church, alas, is full, go on never so much with high words — we will not be dazzled by false glitter — we know, thank God! what we have, and we will let our jewel be snatched from us neither by craft nor by force. We know that a church can stand there "worthy, powerful, inspiring confidence in its friends, commanding respect from its opponents," only when it is founded upon a Confession according to the Bible! — Therefore we repeat, in another sense than the preachers of the spirit of the age: Up, ye Evangelical Lutheran brethren, and rally around your venerable Augsburg Confession! Let everyone, be he clergyman or layman, help to build upon the broken walls of Jerusalem! Let everyone wield courageously the sword of the Spirit, and let the enemies know that the right God is in Zion! He who turneth the hearts as the rivers of water will awaken faithful children for our Church.

(Contributed.)

The Church Hymnals. *)

*) This letter was sent to us by a reader of the Lutheraner who is personally unknown to us and does not belong to our Synod. Ed.

Dear Andreas.

More than a year has already passed since I made your acquaintance through the letters about the "gemeinschaftliche Gesangbuch" which you wrote to your brother Jacob in the fifth volume of the "Lutheraner," and I have indeed greatly rejoiced over the gift of discernment which, by God's grace, has been given you in judging the "gemeinschaftliche Gesangbuch"; and I hope that your brother Jacob has meanwhile come to a full conviction of the truth.

But I must let you know that your letters were for many other truth-loving Lutherans a guide to search after the truth; and your pains which you took were richly blessed with many; so that now, in the meantime, the "purely Lutheran" St. Louis Gesangbuch has come to many fellow believers, families, and congregations — formerly groping in darkness and indifference — many of whom rejoice greatly over it. And indeed, what orthodox Lutheran should not rejoice, when he perceives what power the truth has in itself, in the struggle with error and darkness. We may count ourselves happy that here in the Western land of America we can sing again the glorious hymns of our beloved Lutheran Church, which is our spiritual mother, in which we, through the washing of water by the Word, were washed from sins, were born again of water and of the Spirit; and are enlightened by the gracious Gospel, strengthened, comforted, and established in faith in the precious, all-sufficient merit of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, with whose righteousness we are clothed through faith; with whose true body and blood we are fed and given to drink in the holy Sacrament of the Altar. And, O! how glorious it is now again in many Lutheran congregations, where in the preaching of the divine Word the Law is rightly divided and distinguished from the Gospel; where an orthodox Lutheran pastor is also at the same time in a position to have a hymn sung which stands in harmony with his sermon! How well it is now with many a pastor at heart when he, out of the rich treasury of the purest Kernlieder, selects without trouble a hymn which is to be sung in church on the Sunday! Gone now are the sighs which formerly, with the "gemeinschaftliches Gesangbuch" used from necessity, rose from the hearts of the pastors when they would gladly have chosen a hymn for the sermon, and yet at last found none. How glorious are the hymns of the Church; they taste now sweeter than honey and the honeycomb; I think they shine now brighter to many than before, when in the old fatherland — in several places — they were regarded as antiquities,—as books that no longer suited our enlightened age; but, thank God, a better light has risen with many; so that men hunger and thirst after pure, unadulterated church hymns, in the use of which the hearts, full of holy joy, are enraptured in the bliss of Paradise to heaven. How beautiful, glorious, and clear is, for example, the hymn: "Es ist das Heil uns kommen her, aus Gnad und lauter Güte," and often, when I sing it, it comes to my mind how once Dr. M. Luther shed tears of joy when he heard it for the first time sung by a beggar before his house door, and asked that the beggar would sing it to him once more. How clearly and distinctly Law and Gospel are distinguished in it, how purely apostolic-Pauline and — let me say it — old Lutheran a spirit shines out upon one there; to say nothing of other glorious hymns of similar content; and again I say, one must rejoice when one perceives how through the splendor of the truth the black veil must depart from the eyes. Truly! Christ our Lord, who by His obedience and bloodshedding has redeemed us from sin, death, devil, and hell, has visited His true Church in grace; may we only not neglect this gracious visitation, lest a sevenfold thicker darkness fall upon us. O! that the bush-dwellers of German blood especially would take to heart the "Zuruf aus der Heimath an die Lutheraner Amerikas," which glorious writing was written to us in the name of many Lutherans of Germany by the venerable Pastor Löhe in Bavaria, which exhortation so fatherly admonishes us to sing the old unadulterated hymns of the Lutheran Church. Verily, if we heed the voices of the witnesses of the truth, then surely help and light will yet come to the Lutheran Church from many sides; since it is known that several Synods of America are striving to return to the old truth, to the time of the Reformation. — Long since I rejoiced that the old Pennsylvania Synod also saw itself moved to publish a "Lutheran hymnal," which, I thought, should be like the old Pennsylvania-Lutheran one published by the venerable Mühlenberg. But how terribly one is disappointed, in that, although a considerable number of old Kernlieder are found in the newly published "Deutsch lutherisches Gesangbuch," namely the old "Gustav Adolfs Lied: Verzage nicht du Häuflein klein" — which hymn is lacking even in the St. Louis Gesangbuch — yet many other chief hymns are not to be found there, but a hodgepodge of the same sort as one had already before in the "Gemeinschaftliches Gesangbuch." — In this "new Lutheran" Pennsylvania Gesangbuch there is also found again the Tugendlied: "Nicht daß ichs schon ergriffen hätte, die beste Tugend bleibt noch schwach," etc. Yes, even in the rubric found there, "The Fatherland," there is found a song which, as it seems, is meant to be dedicated to "Washington." It says there, among other things: "Long live the spirit of the fathers, of the dear man above all," etc.; — I think Washington must be meant; and in my opinion that would well be a song to sing in taverns, and in the streets by brothers of freedom — or for Odd-Fellows in the Freemason lodge, — but not in the church, by orthodox Christians and true Lutherans. — And how shamefully Luther's hymn there, "Christ unser Herr zum Jordan kam," is disfigured and crippled. This powerful Luther hymn has in the old Gesangbuch seven verses, in the new Pennsylvania one only three — falsified ones; and the hymn: "Durch Adams Fall ist ganz verderbt menschlich Natur und Wesen" one hardly knows any more; all the verses altered; so greatly have the "sparing hands," as it is said in the preface made to the Gesangbuch, distorted and falsified this glorious hymn, to which the Lutheran Church draws attention in the Book of Concord in the article: Of Free Will. This glorious hymn, which, as said, is recognized by the glorious Formula of Concord as symbolical by the Lutheran Church; and yet the editors boast of having a right to their falsification of hymns,