# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1850 12 10_S62
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

62

fends Luther this confession in his letter to the Frankfurters. There he says, among other things: "If a thousand and a thousand worlds were mine, I would rather lose them all than suffer the least little piece of this confession to be taken out of the churches. - It is the Christians' first, most needful and most profitable school, wherein they learn to understand and practice God's Word and their faith; which they do not do so powerfully in public lessons and sermons." In another place he writes of it thus: "There must be a form and discipline in the churches, which without confession is not to be maintained. And it should come to this, where the people in confession were not accustomed to regard sin and to wait for absolution or forgiveness, that in time absolution and forgiveness of sin would be wholly abandoned and become a thing turned upside down, and the people out of their own devotion would again run to the Sacrament as before. So one must also leave room for the comforting, free Gospel, that it may be told to every individual man as well as to many. But what is absolution other than the Gospel spoken to a single man, who thereby receives comfort over his known sin? So there stands Christ's example, Matt. 9, where He absolves the man sick of the palsy singly, and Luke 7 the sinful woman." Further he writes: "For although a preacher in the pulpit also teaches the Law and Gospel, yet he lets it rest there, practices, asks and inquires of no one how he grasps it, nor can he see where it is lacking, whom he should further comfort or rebuke, since he has no particular person before him whom he may practice, etc., etc."

I hope by all this to have shown you sufficiently that private absolution, no more than the sign of the cross, can be a hindrance to you in calling a Lutheran pastor. If you are otherwise in earnest, this will not deter you. If it holds you or others back from setting up the holy ministry among yourselves, then it is precisely a sign that you do not care much about it at all. If you then nevertheless still wish to accept the Book of Concord, you yourselves do not know what you are actually doing thereby. For the very Book of Concord teaches us how we have liberty and right to observe such church usages and ordinances as the sign of the cross and private absolution.

That such things are unknown to you and to others in your congregation, and were not laid upon you at the altar at confirmation, can also be no offense to you, since you must have convinced yourselves, and every one can convince himself from the Book of Concord, that they are Lutheran usages and ordinances. Moreover, at confirmation ceremonies were neither commanded nor forbidden to you, but you vowed to hold to God's Word and faith. But God's Word teaches us, as I have shown you, to observe good and edifying ceremonies. You therefore do not break your confirmation vow if you accept a church usage which you may observe according to God's Word, although in childhood you did not know it. Could the Reformation ever have come to pass, if Luther and those who followed him had spoken thus: We have not known all this before, therefore we also want to know nothing of it?

But do not misunderstand me; when I have said to you here that the sign of the cross, private absolution and other Lutheran church usages are praiseworthy ordinances, it is not my meaning to place them on a level with Word and Sacrament. There is a heaven-wide difference between these means of grace, which God has expressly commanded, and such church usages as are praiseworthy and good, but in and of themselves are no means to salvation. No! it remains as the 7th Article of the Augsburg Confession says: "For this is enough for the true unity of the Christian Church, that the Gospel be preached in harmony according to a pure understanding, and the Sacraments be administered in accordance with the divine Word. And it is not necessary for the true unity of the Christian Church that uniform ceremonies, instituted by men, be observed everywhere, as Paul says, Eph. 4: "There is one body, and one Spirit, even as ye are called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism."

If accordingly, under circumstances, individual Lutheran usages may be omitted, and a pastor may also leave it to the freedom of his congregation whether, after receiving instruction, it will accept ceremonies hitherto unaccustomed, so that also the sign of the cross and private absolution are not indispensable conditions under which a pastor would go to you through my mediation, yet this is unconditionally to be demanded, that those who wish to join with you in a Lutheran congregation give up church fellowship with the "Reformed." Concerning this let me write you a few more words.
(Conclusion to follow.)

A Parable.

"There was a noble maiden, very fair and rich, who stood under high guardians, that they should protect her, for covetous so-called relatives desired her rich inheritance. Then the guardians came to an understanding with the wicked so-called relatives to put the maiden out of the way and to divide the estate among themselves. How were they to do it? They resolved to bury her alive, and first to give her a sleeping draught. As they thought, so they did. They gave the maiden a poisonous sleeping draught, she sank into a swoon, and seemed dead. The guardians invited a great company of mourners, and put on very pious faces. Just as they were about to close the lid of the coffin, the maiden awoke. The mourners begged her to lie still, and assured her that everything was being done for her best, but she sprang with a cry of horror out of the coffin, and hastened into the open air. The guardians and relatives after her, to catch her again and bury her. Then there was a chase over stock and stone. Of her burial garment, the last remnant of her great riches, much remained hanging on the bushes; but fear gave her speed, she escaped. Long she wandered about in the fields and woods as a beggar-woman, until at last a compassionate soul is said to have assigned her a stable for a dwelling. The guardians and relatives would not let the inheritance go, and insisted that she was dead; but since they could not bury the maiden, because they no longer had her, they laid a stuffed doll in the coffin, put a lid on it in which panes of glass were set, and with great pomp laid it to rest in a church-like building, and when now anyone comes and wants to speak of what has happened, or even to demand something of her property for the maiden, they show the doll through the glass windows, and one is to believe that this is the maiden, as if she had really died. But she lives, and will live longer than her relatives, who squander her goods. The most horrible thing about the story is, however, that it is true. God have mercy on the land where such stories happen."

The meaning of this parable, which I read lately somewhere, many readers will no doubt have worked out already without special interpretation. By way of superfluity I will yet set down a few "interpreters."

The "noble, fair, rich maiden" is our dear, precious Evangelical Lutheran Church. Her "rich inheritance" is her pure confession, in accordance with Scripture, her beautiful divine services. "The guardians" are the high lords in spiritual and secular offices, who were under obligation to protect and preserve her inheritance. The "wicked so-called relatives" are - it may sound harsh, but I cannot help it! - the Reformed, to whom the Lutheran Church has always been a thorn in the eye. The wicked relatives and bad guardians (bad, because they did not do what was their office) wished to divide the inheritance of the maiden, that is, her confession, so far as it suited them, and to appropriate her churches and church property. This they could do, naturally, only after her death and burial, that is, after the complete annihilation of the Lutheran Church; they worked toward that. To attain this end, they gave the maiden first a sleeping draught, but one so strong that in their opinion she should fall asleep by it forever; that is nothing other than the Union, by which the people were to be dulled, so that they could no longer notice the difference between Lutheran and Reformed. The sleeping draught took effect, the maiden sank into a swoon and apparent death, it seemed to be all over with the Lutheran Church. But she awoke again, against all hope and expectation, that is, individual Lutherans and Lutheran congregations arose and gathered again. These fared, to be sure, and in part still fare, very miserably and poorly, as is indicated in the parable