# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1850 10 15_S28
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

28

resting in their own works, and thus leads them toward the judgment of God, whereas it is only the vicarious satisfaction of Christ which, if we believe, gives us the comfort that we need no more be afraid before God's judgment, as Christ says in John: "He that believeth on the Son cometh not into judgment, but is passed from death unto life. But the hymn-writer is not content simply to teach that confidence of the heart is to be placed on one's own doing, but shows also how one may attain such a good heart: it says in verse 5. "That thou mayest win this heart, fear God, and pray and watch:" Here, I think, is the Methodistic, yea Rationalistic and Pelagian doctrine of free will and human powers clearly and distinctly pronounced, so that according to the content of this hymn one has need of no vicarious Christ, and also of no Holy Ghost, who should work faith in man through the divine means of grace, through Word and Sacrament, and not through one's own preparation and one's own works, as this hymn-writer says. Oh! if one holds up against this hymn the glorious Confessions of our Church, in particular the so solid Formula of Concord, in the doctrine of free will and human powers, one will soon see and find how far this hymn departs from purely Lutheran and Pauline doctrine; yea, how St. Paul and this hymn stand directly opposed to one another, like light and darkness, and St. Paul would without doubt let his Anathema thunder forth in the power of the Holy Spirit, according to Galatians, chapter 1, and Luther says rightly:

"Many false masters now write hymns,
Take heed and learn to judge them rightly,
Where God builds his church and his Word,
There the devil will be with deceit and murder."

St. Paul and Luther know no other ground on which the sinner can find comfort and peace than Christ alone and his blood-shedding; thereto John the Baptist also points us with his holy finger; through him we must all become righteous before God, through faith alone, and not through the merit of works, no matter whether it be St. Paul, the Mother of God, or the thief on the cross who at the end of his life still became a believer in Christ. And oh! what a great comfort that Christ's cleft side-cavity is still to be the refuge for us in the last hour of death, when the heart in faith groans and sighs after him. The Pennsylvania hymn-book, to be sure, does not seem to be of this opinion, for in No. 628, v. 7, it says there: "A sigh in the last distress, a wish through the Redeemer's death to be righteous before God's throne, this makes thee not clean from sins:" Concerning this there is hardly need to say a word, for even the simplest Christian knows from God's Word that God's grace is exceeding great, but he draws it not into wantonness, waits not until his last little hour draws near, but seeks even in good time to make himself acquainted with glorious hymns for the dying, as for example it says in the St. Louis hymn-book, among other places, No. 407.

"I pray thee by thy bitter pains,
Thou wouldst be gracious to me, a sinner,
When I come now into the throes of death,
And shall wrestle with death."

To such a blessed little hour may our Lord help us, "Christus, unser Trost, der uns durch sein Blut hat erlöst, von's Teufels G'walt und ew'ger Pein, ihm sei Lob, Ehr und Preis allein;" and may he let also the glorious, pure, unfalsified hymns of the Church serve to sing the Lord's praise even here, until we shall one day join in before the Lamb's throne in the songs of praise of the elect, "who have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb:" who rely not upon their own repentance, but upon the perfect satisfaction of Christ, which he brought for us in our stead to his Father. After the guidance of the Pennsylvania hymn-book, indeed, anyone might easily be given occasion for a Roman-Catholic-Methodistic penance-exercise, particularly if one considers the hymn found there under No. 173, which at the very beginning treats of the Mother of God. It runs:

"Behold the Mother full of sorrows,
How with torn heart she
Stands by the cross of the Son."

Truly, if this hymn stood in the St. Louis hymn-book, the Weyl church messenger would long since have pronounced his Anathema upon the Old Lutherans, as though they worshiped Mary, as he once boldly enough made bold to do in the matter of the Reverend Pastor Wyneken in Baltimore. But here he shuts his eye, well then, I too will close, by adding only, from the hymn mentioned, verse 7, the following stanza, which is probably too much Catholicized; it says there among other things: "I will also strike wounds upon myself." Such expressions, I think, are Catholic enough, and might easily give occasion that true evangelical repentance might lead to the Roman-Catholic penancing, to doing penance even for sin itself. The God of grace, however, preserve us in the pure evangelical truth, and let the Church, as the bearer of the truth, serve thereto, that the glorious jewel of her church hymns may be kept unfalsified until the end of the days, until the Church militant shall be taken up into the Church triumphant everlasting, and shall sing the

Te Deum Laudamus
to God and the Lamb for ever.

* * *

(Sent in.)

When Elector John the Steadfast, 300 years ago, signed the Augsburg Confession, he surely did not suspect that after only 200 years the descendants of several of those who with him signed that remarkable Confession, which has become of such importance to the Church of God, would no longer be found at the confession of the pure doctrine, yea, that the struggles and deeds of the fathers, whose land may properly be called the cradle of the Reformation, would so soon be forgotten by the descendants. But God's counsel in the preservation of his holy Church is a wonderful one; of the most various instruments he makes use thereto. Now poor, unregarded persons, insignificant before the world, must carry out His will, now mighty and wise princes. To an attentive observer it is therefore also no great wonder when the course of events turns as it did in the Saxon ruling house. This seemed for a long time chosen by the Lord our God for the protectorate (protection) of the pure doctrine. I recall here only a Frederick the Wise, John the Steadfast, John Frederick the Magnanimous, Augustus. These sacrificed much for the preservation of the pure doctrine; John Frederick even his whole land. But what happened? One on the Saxon princely throne, forgetting all this, abjured his faith in order to have a wretched royal crown set on his head: namely Elector Frederick Augustus II. In Poland King John Sobiesky had died in 1696, the same who in 1683 relieved Vienna, which was hard besieged by the Turks and before whom all Germany trembled. The choice of the Poles fell upon Elector Frederick Augustus II. of Saxony, who, however, had to go over to the Roman Church for it. As consort he had a princess of the margravial house of Bayreuth, Christina Eberhardina, a noble pious woman, as appears from the following letter. How must the going over of her husband to the Roman Church, merely to obtain an uncertain royal crown, have pained this pious soul! But still more! When also the Electoral Prince Frederick Augustus III. took the same step — although he could not yet even know whether the Polish crown would fall to him also, since Poland was an elective kingdom — this pious woman then wrote the following letter, which the sender of this communicates in the hope that it may awaken the interest of the readers of the Lutheraner. He remarks only further that the Electoral Prince Frederick Augustus III. on the 27th of Nov. 1712 secretly abjured his faith at Bologna in the States of the Church and let it become known publicly in Vienna only on the 11th of Oct. 1717.

A. L.

Letter of the Electress of Saxony Christina Eberhardina, Daughter of the Margrave of Bayreuth, Consort of Frederick Augustus II., Elector of Saxony, to the Electoral Prince Frederick Augustus III.

My son, if thou shouldst see that misery which, upon the wretched tidings of thy unhappy apostasy from the true-