# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1851 06 10_S161
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Der Lutheraner.
"God's Word and Luther's doctrine pure shall now and evermore endure." (Rev. of John, chap. 14, v. 6, 7.)
Published by the German Ev. Lutheran Synod of Missouri, Ohio, and other States.
Edited by C. F. W. Walther.
Vol. 7.  St. Louis, Mo., the 10th of June, 1851.  No. 21.
Terms: The Lutheraner appears once every two weeks at the yearly subscription price of One Dollar for subscribers living out of town, who must pay in advance and bear the postage. — In St. Louis each single number is sold for 5 Cents.
Only those letters which contain communications for the paper are to be sent to the editor; all others, however, which contain business matters, orders, cancellations, money, etc., are to be sent here to the address Mr. F. W. Barthel, care of C. F. W. Walther, St. Louis, Mo.

(Communicated.)
Of the Holy Sacraments.

Because the edifice of the Methodist fanatical spirit is already beginning to totter and shake in some places, Mr. Nast anxiously looks about for great, glittering lies, in order thereby to prop up and protect it. Especially dangerous to Methodism now is the Scriptural, comforting, and life-giving doctrine of the Ev. Lutheran Church concerning the Word of God and the holy Sacraments. For if this doctrine were rightly recognized and humbly received by the Methodists, it would be all over with Methodism; then all zealous and honest Christians in the Methodist Church would decline to seek their peace any longer in the arid sandy desert of human feelings; then they would turn to the green pastures and the still waters which the good Shepherd opens to us in Word and Sacrament, and would find rest for their souls. But Mr. Nast will not grant this rest to the poor hearts; rather he seeks in every way to keep them from the living fountain of the pure ev. Lutheran doctrine and to fix them fast on the barren heath of the fanatical spirit. Therefore he falsifies and slanders the ev. Lutheran doctrine, of which he himself knows well that it is the true one.

But we contend against Mr. Nast, not because we hated this wretched liar; — we pity him, that he grows ever more hardened; — but because we wish for the children of God who are held captive in the Methodist sect the comfort of the right faith and the treasure of the full truth. We have already refuted the blasphemous lie of Mr. Nast, that we put the means of grace in the place of the Holy Ghost. He says further now that the "Formalists," with which name he reviles us, taught: "that the means of grace makes one infallibly blessed; that the Sacraments have an indwelling divine power, by virtue of which all who receive them might be sure of salvation; that the use of the Sacrament, without the obedience of faith, might make one blessed by the indwelling power proper to the Sacrament; that the Sacraments have a saving power in and of themselves."

With these words Mr. Nast charges upon us the following shameful error, as though we believed that whoever has once been sprinkled with baptismal water, whoever has only partaken of the bread and wine of the Lord's Supper, will infallibly be saved, no matter whether he believes or not. He accuses us hereby of making the Sacraments into magic charms and of attributing to the visible elements in the Sacraments secret, indwelling, magical powers. He accuses us of teaching that, just as an amulet or charm, in the opinion of superstitious people, affords protection and security from all dangers to him who wears it, by its indwelling power, so the Sacraments would bring salvation to everyone who used them outwardly, even if he were the most godless and unbelieving man.

But a glance into our small Lutheran Catechism convinces everyone that Mr. Nast's accusation is a lie. For after it has been said there that forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation are given us in the Sacraments, it says in reference to Baptism: Water indeed does not do it; and in reference to the Lord's Supper: Eating and drinking indeed does not do it. By these words every magical, indwelling, infallibly saving power is most definitely denied to the visible signs in the Sacraments. We also confess in the Smalcald Articles concerning Baptism: "And therefore we do not hold with Thomas and the Preaching Friars, who forget God's institution of the Word and say: God has laid a spiritual power into the water, which washes away sin through the water." Further it says in Luther's Large Catechism concerning the Sacrament of the Altar: "Here, however, our wise spirits twist themselves about with their great art and cleverness, and cry out and storm: How can bread and wine forgive sin or strengthen faith? though they hear and know that we do not say this of bread and wine, as bread in itself is bread, but of such bread and wine as is Christ's body and blood and has the words with it