# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1850 11 12_S42
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

42

upon the entire Halle-Danish Mission in the Tranquebar territory, together with its appurtenances in grounds and buildings; in the course of this year, however, the North American missionaries in South India, because they lack the strength, placed their mission at Puducotta, flourishing as they themselves say, into the hands of our Tranquebar missionaries; and the congregation at Vepery near Madras, gathered by our fathers, with five to six hundred souls, which, it knows not how, had come into the Anglican church connection, begged most urgently for readmission into the Tranquebar Evangelical Lutheran mother church. Yes, even the authorities, at whose feet all of Hither India now lies, He in whose hands all the hearts of men lie has so inclined the heart that they have remitted to me, to ease the journey undertaken in the interest of our mission, the very costly passage from Suez to Bombay. — The Lord hath done great things for us; whereof we are glad.

So let us then also attempt great things in the name and in the strength of the Lord, and let us not look upon these smallest of all small days, and let us not look upon these our littlest of all little powers which stir in the service of the kingdom of God. For the Lord, the Most High, who for our sake became the lowliest of all, will be with his blessing precisely with the small and the lowly, that He may remain all in all, and that no flesh may glory in His presence.

Yet this shall not keep us from asking you, dear Alsatian friends, from earnestly asking you, that you would help us to strengthen our small power ever more and more, and join hearts and hands ever more closely together with us, that we may by no means be scattered and weaken still more the power that is small enough already. Consider that the cathedral which our fathers raised in South India is not completed; the Indian pagoda still towers over it, the holy stillness of it is still broken by the Indian idol-drum. O that it might not be said of our Church and of yours: This Church began more than a century ago to build a tower and now cannot carry it out; for the hearts of the children have turned away from the fathers, and they would rather build on anything else than on the inheritance left from the fathers.

On the other hand, however, we would rejoice as though we rejoiced not. We would by no means think that in our mission alone there will be nothing but sunshine. Against such sunshine thoughts even a merely fleeting glance at the present midnight-dark condition of our native Church may help to guard us, without whose powerful helping hand, with a healthy pulse of faith and free breath of prayer, we should indeed be in no position to do anything right, whole, or fresh for the heathen; only that we in doing so again do not forget that precisely the cross-form of the Church, so far as it is not self-incurred, is the right, true form of the Christian Church, and that precisely in the beggar's garb and in the condition of Lazarus she is capable of the most kingly thoughts and the most heroically humble sacrifices — as a palm tree rises the higher the more storm and rain bend it; wherefore also our Luther, in the same measure as the dear old cross-form of the Church came to light beneath the thousand-year-old Roman tinsel, began not to weep but to rejoice. This we will not forget, beloved.

And now one last word,

When in the days of Ezra the second temple was built by that portion of the Jewish people who, by the rivers of Babylon, had not been able to forget the lofty-built city of Jerusalem, but had returned to the homeland of the fathers, every one that built, because of the enemies round about, had his sword girded by his side, and so builded. But one blew with the trumpet. So also at the present day a portion of Christendom has returned from the strange Babel of unbelief to the hearth of faith of the fathers, and builds, amid manifold temptations, on the fallen sanctuary. I hope that each one of you will be found among these builders. Build then also as they did, namely with the trowel in one hand and the sword in the other. It is not enough that you help to spread the Church abroad into all lands; you shall also help to preserve her in your own land, that the roof may not fall in upon your head while you seek to enlarge the walls. Church and mission stand and fall together.

Next, however — forget not the trumpet around which the children of Israel gathered at their work. By this I mean our confession, founded upon God's clear Word, unanimous, full-voiced, sounding forth freely. Gather around this trumpet, which certainly gives no uncertain sound and which has already many a time sounded to battle and to victory, that you, drawing "in one yoke, in the yoke of Christ," may speak "one speech," and your language be not confused, and you be not scattered into all lands; — in one word, that your Stuben at the sanctuary become no Babylonian tower.

Finally, as you would not be puffed up, so also despair not! you will now bring to completion a much fairer building than your fathers, the Reformers; yet do not for that reason leave the building lying altogether. Your fathers built, in their day, a cathedral; let it suffice you, if it must be, in these small days, to have a church of lesser size. The children of Israel also did not bring a second Solomonic temple to completion. For how is it written? Thus it is written: "But many of the priests and Levites and chief of the fathers, who were ancient men, that had seen the first house, when the foundation of this house was laid before their eyes, wept with a loud voice; and many shouted aloud for joy: so that the people could not discern the noise of the shout of joy from the noise of the weeping of the people." So also will it be, if, as merciful God may grant, our Church comes to completion in Stuben; then also shouting will mingle with weeping, and the weeping perhaps far outsound the shouting. O that it were granted me, on my return from the land of the pagodas, to rejoice with you, and for my part now and then to weep also over the first foundations of a churchly new building, — and by all means not merely to weep over a thousand newly deposited heaps of ruins. And in this hope in our eternally bene King of Denmark gave us soon there- faithful covenant God, who will not forsake his Church, even if she forsake herself, but rather holds the sevenfold-colored rainbow of his divine faithfulness set up over the black thundercloud of human unfaithfulness — in this bright hope, which, God willing, shall cast a morning-red gleam ever and ever upon even my darkest backward thoughts of the homeland; in this morning-red hope, which I will not let go until it stands written upon my people's forehead with the stylus of God that no morning-red shall ever dawn for them; — in this most comforting hope I commend you and myself and us all to God and to the Word of his grace, who even for the very worst case has the very best comfort, to the Word of his grace, which meets us so kindly in our 126th Psalm and opens to us, through the wildly tangled primeval forest of this miserable temporality, a vista and outlook, full of presentiment and illumined at its farthest end by the noonday rays of eternal life, into the fields of eternal life, where it says:

1. When the LORD turned again the captivity of Zion, we were like them that dream.

2. Then was our mouth filled with laughter, and our tongue with singing. Then said they among the heathen: The LORD hath done great things for them.

3. The LORD hath done great things for us; whereof we are glad.

4. Turn again our captivity, O LORD, as the streams in the south.

5. They that sow in tears shall reap in joy.

6. He that goeth forth — and weepeth; — bearing precious seed — shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him.

(Sent in for the Lutheraner.)

The Hymn-Books.

(Continuation.)

Dear Andreas!

"Much study maketh the body weary," a true proverb; I have now experienced it myself in the examination of the "Pennsylvanian Hymn-Book;" yet one comes to know more and more thereby, and experience gives more practiced senses for the distinction of the "bad and the good." In the meantime I have found out some more things in the Pennsylvania Hymn-Book which I should gladly communicate to you again, although this time I mean to be brief, for one finally grows weary of the matter; it strains the thoughts too much, and would really be rather a matter for the pastors, who have more time for it; yet I did not wish to leave what was once begun unfinished, although I did not think there would be so much writing, but, as said, the more I have occupied myself with the "new Pennsylvania Hymn-Book," and compared it with the old hymn-books, the more I have found out, to my astonishment. I will let you know only a little more about it. —