# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1851 03 04_S108
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

108

the Sacraments, of holy Baptism, as the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Ghost, of the holy Supper, as the Sacrament of the true body and blood of Jesus Christ." And what did they preach instead? No longer Christ, as Luther did, but a cold, dry morality, which the people did not even understand, or a mixture of half law and half Gospel! They no longer pressed for tears of penitence and for conversion to the grace of Baptism, but thought it wonderful what, when they had squeezed out a few tears of sentimental emotion!

2. What was the consequence of this darkness of unbelief? We fell into a hideous ignorance in divine things; the churches became empty, the afternoon service especially was laughed at, confession was despised, absolution mocked, prayer and Bible-reading in the houses held superfluous, alas! household worship had almost everywhere disappeared. The children were let run wherever they wished, and as long as they wished; no one was any more there to warn and punish them: the catechization on Sundays abandoned! Therefore there has also never yet been a time when children so despised their parents as now, when so many fathers and mothers sigh away their old days amid tears and heartache over their sons and daughters. And that there is so much rebellion in the world against divine and human order comes from this, that men first rebelled against God's Word.

Behold, that was and in part still is the darkness of unbelief and of ignorance. We all, have we long known what we perhaps now know again? Have we taken eternity seriously? Have we thought it so necessary to procure Bibles and prayer-books as we now begin again to do? Have we taken the word "regeneration" in Baptism, and conversion by repentance and earnest struggle of faith in justification, so to heart as now, when in evang. Lutheran preaching it is pressed upon again. When we consider the Protestant Church of the last past years, and ask ourselves: What is that? — must not our text answer us all: "That is darkness!"

3. Now, however, another darkness threatens us, which is the more dangerous because it bears the pious appearance of brotherly love in church-mixing zeal of work, that of the inner mission which wishes to build only what is common to all sects, but not the evang. Lutheran Church. That is the darkness of indifference to confession, when people of other church parties are told: we no longer hold to our confession of faith, as you no longer to yours; we give up our church, that we may go together and make a new [united] Church. O craftiness of the enemy! If he could bring it about that we should let go our Augsburg Confession, with its Formula of Concord, and the Lutheran chief parts with their explanations agreeable to the Church of God, what would he then make of our descendants! Under the appearance of church union he would bring still more disunion and confusion into Christendom; then it would go as with those heathen [Acts 19], who with one accord had rushed to the theater; they cried: Great is Diana of the Ephesians! and were in the end not at one, and knew not what they wanted. Does it not go in the church without confession as there before the theater [v. 32]: Some cried one thing, some another, and the assembly was confused, and the greater part knew not wherefore they were come together. Is not that darkness?

4. This increasing lack of confession and Laodicean lukewarmness the Lord visited upon many regions, as a faithful witness of our Church writes, "through permission of the well-known attempt at Union: it was to bring us to the loss of everything that belongs inseparably to the continued existence of an evang. Lutheran Church. The Lutheran Confession was, e. g. in the Palatinate, in Baden, in Prussia and other places, by virtue of the union of the Lutherans and Reformed into One Church, henceforth to cease to be the one public and common doctrine of our congregations. The old Agendas, standing solely upon the ground of the Lutheran Confession, were taken away, and in their place new church-books and catechisms were forced upon us, which deny and veil the Lutheran doctrine, over against the Reformed, yes, even over against the unbelieving; the existing difference of doctrine was concealed and blurred by ambiguous prayers and by ambiguous formulas of distribution at the Lord's Supper. Even to the (sur-)name which our Church bore from the fathers, these attempts extended, to destroy it. An evangelical Lutheran Church was henceforth, even by name, no longer to exist; — only "Evangelical" (in the ambiguous sense) and one only "evangelical (united) Church," so that the people might no longer distinguish between evang. Reformed, evang. united, and evang. Lutheran. Almost was fulfilled upon us what is written Ps. 83, 5 — 6: "Come, say they, and let us cut them off from being a nation; that the name of Israel may be no more in remembrance. For they have consulted together with one consent; they are confederate (a league, an alliance) against thee." Now we were so sick through the preceding unbelief, and the reawakening life of faith was still so young and full of childish devices, that thousands in Germany, without any resistance, yes, most of them without knowledge and will, exchanged the new Union church, e. g. in Prussia, for the Church of their fathers. Some resisted and would not consent to the denial of their confession imposed upon them, to the destruction of their Church, under a united church-government that dissolves the evang. Lutheran Church. Add to this that faithful pastors, who would not give up the evang. Lutheran Church and the faith of their fathers, were persecuted and in Germany often kept in prison for years; that they were regarded even by well-meaning people as obstinate disturbers of the peace and restless heads, and the writings in which they wished to defend the Lutheran Church were forbidden. The faithful evang. Luth. pastors and church members are even painted as a new sect (!!!) of Separatists, by all sorts of Union men in churches as in missions, in Prussia as in Alsace; and this is done in the name of love! Is there "goodness, righteousness and truth," of which (v. 9) the text speaks, or darkness?

5. But are we then "no more light in the Lord?" —

As the evangelical-Lutheran Church we are, so many as believe, a light in the Lord, for we have pure Word and Sacrament; the doctrine which is confessed in the Augsb. Confession is no other than that of the Apostles. It is not founded upon blind human reason, but upon the eternally valid utterances of the holy Scripture, of the Old and New Testament; it excludes all Roman and Reformed false doctrines and rejects the lukewarmness toward confession and the ambiguity of the Union in love, in works and not in truth.

Not upon merit of our own, not upon satisfaction of our own do we ground the salvation of our soul, but upon Christ's life, suffering and death, upon His resurrection and ascension. Our Church is a light in the Lord, because she has laid in all things no other foundation than that which is laid, Jesus Christ in pure Word and Sacrament. What is proclaimed in the Word, that is given in the Sacrament; and they who believe it shall be saved.

And when we think of the incomparable Catechism of Luther, which already millions have learned, which has already become a guide to heaven for millions; when we think of the eighty thousand hymns, of the many books of sermons and of prayers which we have, of the glorious translation of the Bible by Luther, and of the expositions of the Bible which we possess from him and from many other men of God, — do we say too much when we assert: the evang. Lutheran Church is a light in the Lord!? What communion books, what books for the sick, the tempted and the suffering the Lutheran Church has! how rich she is in all doctrine and power! How soberly and obediently she bows under God's Word; what gold of wisdom has she dug out for her confessors from the shaft of the Bible, what soul-food and refreshment has she for all the hungry and thirs-