# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1851 03 04_S107
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

107

strife, because never does the greater part depart from the confession once adopted." (Ep. 313.) Clearly and plainly Calvin here brings to light his own and his Calvinists' disposition toward our dear Confession.

Three Church Questions to Evang. Lutheran Christians on the Church Dedication at Rothbach, in the Year 1849.*)
Reformation Sermon of a Village Pastor on Ephesians 5, 8. 9. 10
*) Another tract from Alsace.

You have surely all made the observation that when men lay great importance or high value upon something, they inquire diligently after it, and ask after it repeatedly and urgently. Why is it that a lively child plagues his father or his mother in one hour with many questions, and becomes only the more eager in asking, the more one waits upon him and answers? Because everything that he sees around him is still new, still unknown, and therefore striking and important. Why is it that grown people ask so eagerly after political events? Because these events seem to them unheard-of and important; because they think that the weal or woe of many depends upon these events.

Is it not striking to you, after what has just been set forth, that the people inquire so little after the Church and her fortunes, ask so little after the Church and her struggles, though she is the most important, the most extraordinary phenomenon on the whole earth!

In truth, what stands more mysterious than, namely, the truest manifestation of the Church of God in recent times, the ev. luth. Church. So often assailed and ever again victorious; often covered with darkness and disgrace, and anew again full of light; under cross and mockery and ever again coming to esteem anew, coming to honor! Of this Church one may also quite fittingly use the words of Paul (2 Corinth. 6): "as dying, and, behold, she lives; as chastened, and not killed; as sorrowful, yet alway rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing all things." Enemies within and without of the true evangelical Church have already sung her funeral song, and rejuvenated she rises again; it was said: it is all over with her, and just then she has stepped forth again strong and mighty upon the field of battle.

Now then! After such a glorious, wonderful Church, should not each of us inquire more closely, should not each of her children ask after such a one?

And that we may ask after her, this Church comes to our aid herself, in that she lets us celebrate the Reformation festival. To each of us she calls: You evangelical-Lutheran Christians, you ask in worldly things after everything that is important and valuable to you, — will you not then ask also after your Church, how it stands with her, for whose sake this temple building was erected? If anything, she ought to have worth and importance enough for you that you ask after her and inquire after her.

And so we will take up three important church questions, according to the guidance of our text, as members of the evangelical Lutheran Church, and make them the subject of our meditation, namely: I. What were we? II. What are we? III. What shall we be? Though the faithful answering of them may be a foolishness to the unbelievers, and an offense to the men of the Union. "Ye were sometimes darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord. Walk as children of light."

To Thee, O Lord, be praise and honor forever, that we have come to the truth, and that Thou through the pure doctrine hast taken away the blindness. Keep us from the new yoke of false human doctrine, which again takes from Thee the glory: Have mercy and hear!

Three important church questions we have to answer:

I. What were we?

1. God gives us the answer in the text: "Ye were sometimes darkness." By nature [Eph. 2], and without Christ, the whole race of Adam is darkness: the natural light cannot give us life. "Jesus and his bright shining, Jesus must be the sun." Because now through every new generation the darkness is brought into contact with the light through the Church, there exists a continual struggle of the light with the darkness. Already from Adam we were all darkness.

2. But how did it look in the Church when Luther came forward against the prevailing abuses and ordinances of men? Was not almost everything darkness? Indeed there were still here and there men who were versed in knowledge of languages or in worldly wisdom: but where did one find such church leaders as knew God's Word, who had knowledge of the pure doctrine of the Gospel! Many of the clergy of that time hardly knew that there was a Bible; what was one to expect of the laity? Alas, men had by and by turned their ears away from the truth and turned to fables! What did they give the people? Much invented tales of wonders, legends of saints, with empty ceremonies, which were often performed by dissolute priests without even proper devotion.

3. Since Christ was no longer known as a gracious Savior whom love for us poor sinners had driven from heaven down to earth and to the ignominious cross, where He atoned for our guilt and made full satisfaction for us, men fell upon works and torments of their own, not commanded in God's Word, in order to make satisfaction for their sins and to earn heaven.

4. Do you wonder then that there were at that time so many terrified consciences, driven by continual anguish, who felt well that with their works they could not make satisfaction for their sins and earn heaven? These hastened therefore in throngs to the indulgence-wagon, in order to ransom their souls with their money! The poor people! Because they no longer knew Christ as their ransom, they supposed they could buy themselves off from hell with money of their own, and believed blindly in their anguish of conscience what greedy Rome told them.

O my friends! See you whither it comes, when God's Word is perverted, when the bright light of the Gospel is set under a bushel? See you into what cheerless night the nations sink, into what false ways the people stray, when God for a time thrusts the candlestick away from its place! See you to what foolish means men resort when Christ is no longer preached to them as the only light in the darkness, as the only way to the Father, as the only Reconciler, Mediator and Advocate between God and men.

If Christians no longer know God's Word; if the justification of the sinner by faith alone is hidden from them, — what can one not take from them then, to what foolish doctrines, ordinances and ceremonies not seduce them, to what extortions of money not abuse their anguish of conscience!?

What were we of old? The Apostle answers: "Ye were sometimes darkness."

II. And what are we now?

If you now suppose that one must seek the darkness only in the Roman Church, or in past centuries, you err greatly, my devout hearers! There is yet another darkness than that of superstition — There is also a darkness of unbelief.

In the last century this too had made itself felt in the Protestant Church. Superstition and unbelief are black twin brothers, who from of old have set out to keep men in darkness and in the shadow of death. Now, that darkness of unbelief had covered the Protestant Church in the most recent time, and covers it in part still.

1. As in the Roman Church the Pope was set above Scripture, so in the Protestant Church men began to set reason above God's Word, and thus they gradually rejected with their blind reason all the fundamental doctrines of the true evangelical Church: "the Trinity, the Godhead of Jesus, original sin, justification by faith alone in Jesus the Crucified, the doctrine of