# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1851 02 18_S98
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

98

densbote," or anywhere else, it is all one to me! Look, Martin, here I have my farm, my good house, my orchard, my livestock, my wife, my children, and good neighbors, and the little bit of ready money that I need for myself and for the kingdom of God, my trade furnishes me, with God's help, which I can carry on on the side. Now for some years already newspapers, little tracts, also great sheets of paper with enormous letters have been carried into my house, in which the people extol the land of California, and say that there one can simply take the money out of the river sand, that one needs only to take along a hoe and a sieve, and one can gather gold enough. Look, that too stands in print, and the people all say it is so, but that does not concern me at all. I have everything I need, and something over, so I should have to be a fool if I were to leave my property and goods and my quiet and my peace in the lurch, and were now to move off to California on adventure, and first seek what I already have here. And what if I did not find it at all, and had to perish in hunger and sorrow in a strange land?— And it would still be possible that I might get a farm there too, though certainly with hard toil and heavy labor, and if not, it would after all be only something temporal that I had staked on it, even though I had been a great fool. But in this case with the Evangelicals it is quite impossible that I should find there what I have here, namely true rest, peace, joy and blessedness; it would be nothing but folly, if I only sought it, and I should have staked on it not something temporal, but my eternal salvation.

I mean it thus: I am a poor, lost and condemned sinner, as I learned already from Luther's Small Catechism, as the Bible testifies, and as my heart and life, alas, even in my old days, give me experience of; this has filled my heart with care and distress, and now and then, when the devil begins to reason with me, and to shoot his fiery darts into my conscience, I become quite anxious and sultry at heart, so that it takes a proper, sturdy and deep grip of faith in God's mercy and true promise, upon Christ's merit, that I may only keep my standing. My sins I cannot make good again; I could not atone for them either, that would have to be done in hell, and the long eternity would pass over it; with the getting better, toward which our schoolmaster and the new pastor always steered, it will not go either, and I do not see, even if things went better than they go, how my old debt should thereby be paid; in short, I know no counsel from myself, and it is nearly all over with me. But be saved I should dearly like to, and so I ask, how shall I be, and indeed quite certainly, so that no doubt remains hanging in my conscience.

Then comes my dear Lutheran Church, and teaches me quite simply that God wills that all men should be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth, that for this reason the dear Lord Jesus became man, to fulfil in my stead the whole law with His perfect obedience, and also to bear the curse and the punishment for all the sins of the world with His innocent suffering and death, and so to atone for and wipe out my debt and that of the whole world, which could not be paid, and to obtain for me and for all the world forgiveness of sins, a perfect righteousness, life and salvation. Then I ask again, how does this now come to me, a poor sinner, that I too get it for certain; and need not doubt that all the world gets it, but I in the end go away empty? Then she comes again, and — mark thou, Martin, there lies the best of it, — points me quite simply to the Word and the holy Sacraments, which bring all this with them, so that the dear heavenly Father pours it into my lap, as through His means, really and truly, so that I and everyone who hears the Word, who is baptized, or who receives the holy Sacrament, has received everything freely, for nothing, and really and truly as a gift, and nothing more is needed, since Christ has obtained everything, and God now offers and gives me everything freely and for nothing and really and truly without any reservations, except that I accept it; and that happens through faith, which the Holy Ghost likewise works in the troubled heart through the Word and the holy Sacraments. Behold, for a poor humbled sinner's heart everything is here so simple and clear together, everything hangs so firmly together, everything is already, to say it quite bluntly, so ready-made, and therefore equally certain and firm and comforting, that nothing remains for the poor sinner but to marvel, to laud and to praise, to cleave simply and childlike to his Lord, and to make known to his neighbor and to all the world, in friendliness and all manner of service of love, his joy, love and delight over such a wonderful and blessed work. — But that is just it, that is too simple for most people, with their wisdom and their doing they cannot get on at all there; a heart made simple and humble by God is needed for that, as the dear grandmother used to say in jest, when man is to let himself be clothed in the coat of righteousness all ready-made like that; he would at least like to have the glory of having supplied the buttons and the camel's yarn for it. But in the Lutheran Church nothing comes of that, and that makes it all the dearer to the poor sinner, for even if it is only buttons and camel's yarn, I at least would not know how to raise them out of my own means,

And the Lutheran Church does not pluck this out of the air; it grounds it so simply upon the Word, and upon the Word alone, and wholly upon the Word; on this she teaches one to hang entirely and wholly and draws one so away from everything else that by her hand one learns to believe like Abraham, against all seeing, feeling and experiencing, which to the Methodists and other enthusiasts must of course be a dead faith, but the Lutheran knows well what a powerful, living thing such faith is, especially in the high, heavy trials, where in the end nothing remains for one but the Word, to which faith clings.

And when she leads one thus to the Word alone, she has not first made the Word itself doubtful and of no effect with her glosses or "spiritual" interpretations and read-ins, but as it is written, so literally, she accepts it; let the reason of clever people turn up its nose as it will, and look at the literalists over the shoulder, that is all one to her, she knows what she has.— And this is all said only roughly, and the chief matter summed up in brief; but we two know well enough how she, in all, even the smallest particulars of every special doctrine, draws the whole riches of God out of His Word, and everything aims at this, that the sinner's heart may be made firm, and have an unshakable and overflowing comfort. Ah! a right Lutheran Christian sits in his dear Lord God's lap, so truly, and is a most blessed and glorious creature of God, who truly has life and full sufficiency, yea, is overflowingly rich in all things, and withal so sober and simple that in his everyday frame of mind he enjoys such high, glorious, heavenly, yet real things, and quite plainly speaks of them and speaks them out, as all enthusiasts with all their pretended spirituality or raptures cannot dream out and rave out.

This I know well enough, that a Lutheran can still ever grow and increase, and shall and must, in what he has learned, as the dear Apostles are always pointing to it and urging that one should lay hold more and more of the whole riches of the glory of God in Christ Jesus, through the ever richer knowledge of the Word; but when anyone wants to lure me with this, that he has first rightly found the truth, and a much easier and surer way, and much greater treasures than my Lutheran Church has taught me, that does not concern me, he does not mislead me, for I no longer seek the truth, I have found it, and indeed in the literal Word, as the Lutheran Church teaches it to be believed; there I do not first examine whether it could be true, but it must be false, because it does not agree with the Lutheran Church, which must surely be right, because she believes the literal Word as it is written, and God cannot lie, or have anything else in mind than what He has caused to be written down for us. To that I do not listen at all, but when I see how he will not let go of his own thing, I curse him with a good conscience like an error-