# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1851 04 01_S125
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

125

[illegible] by unbelievers is seized upon, is exceedingly simple. It is called: the emptying of man of all religion. Every man is conscious in his conscience of the truth: there is an almighty and righteous God, the Author of thy being, who rewardeth the good and punisheth the evil, to whom thou art answerable for all thy actions, and who commandeth thee to respect the life, the property, and the honor of thy neighbor as thine own. This consciousness of God is the necessary foundation of every civil society; without it no state is possible or conceivable. If, therefore, the glorious condition of a general brutalization is to come about, then in man too the last trace of the consciousness of God must be killed, the voice of conscience stifled in its last germ, the longing for a blessed fellowship with God extinguished, in a word, the sense for everything divine and heavenly must be rooted out of man, root and all: —

Then will the bold leap succeed:
Man will bring himself down to the beast.

For when man no longer believeth in a God who repayeth, then he loseth that holy awe which formerly held him back from crime; then he is ready to commit every kind of injustice against his neighbor in cold blood; a denier of God is altogether a beast and capable of all abominations, such as murder, perjury, theft, and so forth.

This the friends of light know, and all those swift runners on the road of progress; therefore they seek above all things to drive the faith in God out of the hearts of men. For this reason they blaspheme with one accord and as with one mouth against God and His holy Word, against Christianity and all Christian institutions. Into this chorus Herr Schmidt also joins with all his might. Only an oversight has befallen him in so doing. He still speaks of religion, he calls his paper an organ for religious enlightenment. But Herr Schmidt, as a declared denier of God, can have no religion. It would be ridiculous if a man who had murdered his father were still to prate much of his filial love; it is ridiculous when Herr Schmidt, who hath denied his God, still wants to talk of religion, since the word religion, even in the widest sense, always designateth a manner in which man regardeth his relation to God, and consequently includeth the concept of God. Since now Herr Schmidt hath denied his God, he can lay claim to religion just as little as horses and asses. Therefore let him at least be honest and designate his paper according to the truth: an organ for irreligious stupefaction, or, if he likes that better, for the brutalization of mankind.

Moreover, let not Herr Schmidt imagine that his atheistic nonsense is something new. God's Word saith of the deniers of God almost 3000 years ago the following, Ps. 14, 1: "The fool hath said in his heart: "There is no God. They are corrupt, and are an abomination in their being." If Herr Schmidt can still be advised, let him cease to act against his conscience and to blaspheme and deny the Almighty; he will otherwise some day learn to his hurt what is meant by Gal. 6, 7.: Be not deceived, God is not mocked.

(Submitted.)
Latest Progress.

Esteemed Herr Editor!

When I was lately walking with my cousin Christian, I met in a street the following strange procession. On the one side, namely, there goes an ass, on the other side a swine, and in the middle — imagine to yourself — there crawls on hands and feet a — man. While I was still wondering what this strange apparition might mean, I espied on the back of the crawling man a loose sheet, whereon with large letters the following words stood: "Latest Progress". Since the newest enlighteners have irrefutably proved that there is no God and no heaven, it is a dreadful crime henceforth still to walk upright and by the upright gait to intimate that man is destined for God and heaven. Down, then, with this miserable invention of the priestly caste! Down with this barrier which separates us from our dear brethren in the faith, the asses and swine! The earth is our one and all! Only to the earth let us look, and only on all fours let us advance, so shall we obtain immortal fame among all four-legged and two-legged asses and swine. All true friends of the denial of God and of the swine-religion are hereby summoned to join this procession crawling, in order to celebrate worthily the festival of brutalization in a tastefully decorated pigsty. The renowned music choir of the old tomcats is engaged for the whole night. Long live enlightenment!"

If you are not apprehensive, Herr Editor, that the light which shineth in the words communicated is too strong for your readers, I have nothing against your publishing them in your esteemed paper.

Accept, etc.

A Communion Celebration of Russian Soldiers.

Pastor Hunnius of Narva related at the Petersburg Synod in the year 1843 the following gratifying experience in office: Some time ago there appeared one evening a young officer, scarcely yet discharged from the cadet corps, and brought me a letter from his colonel, who was quartered in a neighboring little town, to this effect: "A number of seventy soldiers of the Lutheran confession have expressed their desire, since they have just come into the neighborhood of a Lutheran clergyman, to make use of this opportunity and once more to partake of the holy Communion; I would therefore beg you to prepare them for it by confession, and then to fulfil their request." The young officer, belonging to the Greek Church, asked: in how many days the matter could probably be dispatched? I answered him: "Beforehand I cannot determine that; it depends precisely on whether the men have already on the journey hither duly prepared themselves for this holy act. I must therefore above all things speak with them, and if I find them in the right frame of mind, I will take them as early as the following day to the holy Communion and then dismiss them." Accordingly he appeared the next morning with his whole band. They had had to make to Narva a long and very fatiguing march through a wholly inhospitable and swampy region in much rain, and were therefore rather weary. When I had addressed them, I found that they were Germans, Letts, Esthonians, with the dialects of Dorpat and Reval, and Finlanders, yes, there were even Russians found among them, yet these also of the evangelical Lutheran confession. They begged for a day of rest and recovery, since they were very much worn out by the toilsome march, and for the immediate reception of the holy Communion were prepared neither outwardly nor inwardly. — I therefore expressed to their leader my regret that I could not fulfil his wish today, but must first undertake a preparation with the men. He found this at first very strange, but at length acquiesced, and not long after sent me the men for confession. In order to make myself understood to them, I had to make use of various languages and dialects, which I myself could in part not all speak fluently, and in which I therefore could not make myself so understandable as I should have wished. But so much the more mightily and impressively did the Lord Himself speak to their hearts through His Word. Fortunately I had, through the kindness of the North American Bible Society and the friendly readiness of its agent in Petersburg, shortly before come into possession of a number of New Testaments in the various Russian languages that occur here. I therefore called the soldiers to me immediately after confession and explained to them that everyone who could read should receive a New Testament from me, if he desired it. I had them step forward one by one, and tested each, whether he could read the New Testament in his language. But only about half were able to do so. The Letts and Esthonians read incontestably the best, the Finlanders rather indifferently, the Germans worst of all, who on the whole seemed to be the most corrupt of the whole detachment, which is explained by the fact that the Germans as a rule let only bad subjects enter among the recruits. — To everyone who could read I gave a New Testament, and the impression which this gift made upon most of the recipients remains unforgettable to me. An old greybeard, a Lett by birth, whose resolute bearing and stern countenance proclaimed the bravest fearlessness, a man who had marched over the Balkan and stood before Varna and Beniloff, had seen Praga, stormed Wola, and entered into Warsaw, seized the book when I gave it to him, kissed it with tears, and said: "Sir, I thank you! For eleven years I have seen no church of my faith, heard no word of God in my mother tongue, could not come to the table of the Lord, my dear, most highly-