# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1851 06 24_S172
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

172

account, which he distributed in his homeland among his friends and the poor. —

When Borrow was in Oncedo, the capital of Asturias, he received the following visit. "It was already after ten o'clock," he writes, "and the rain was pouring in torrents. I was still writing, but suddenly stopped on hearing numerous footsteps coming up the stairs. The door opened and in walked 9 tall men, headed by a little hunchback. They were all clad in long Spanish cloaks, yet I perceived at once from their bearing that they were caballeros or noblemen. They placed themselves in a row before the table at which I sat. Suddenly they threw back their cloaks at the same moment, and I noticed that each one carried a book in his hand, a book which I knew well. After a pause, which I could not interrupt, because I sat in amazement and already thought that apparitions were visiting me, the hunchback stepped forward a little and said in a soft, silvery tone: 'Sennor Cavalier, did you bring this book to Asturias?' I thought now that it was the city authorities, come to throw me into prison, and rising from my seat, I cried out: 'Yes, I did; and it is my glory that I have done it; the book is God's New Testament: I wish I could bring a million of them.' 'I wish it likewise with all my heart,' said the little man with a sigh. 'Fear nothing, Sir Cavalier, these gentlemen are my friends! we have just bought these books in the bookshop in which you deposited them for sale, and have taken the liberty to visit you, to offer you our thanks for the treasure which you have brought us. I hope you will also supply us with the Old Testament.'" After they had conversed some time longer with Borrow, they withdrew, wishing him good night in English.

"As I rode," relates Borrow, "toward the village of Cobenna in Old Castile, my saddle-bag full of New Testaments before me, I met a young, noble-looking woman with a little boy by the hand. 'Uncle,' she said, 'what have you there in your saddle-bag? Is it soap?' 'Yes,' I replied, 'it is soap, to wash the soul clean with it.' She asked what I meant by that, whereupon I answered her that I had cheap and good books to sell. She asked for one, in which she at once read aloud for at least ten minutes, exclaiming now and then: 'Que lectura tan bonita, que lectura tan linda!' How lovely, how glorious to read! When she asked the price of the N. Testament, I demanded only 3 reals, whereupon she said that, although it was very little, yet she could not give it, since there was little or no money in those parts. But I was not yet thirty paces away when the little boy came running after me out of breath with the cry: 'Stop, Uncle, the book!' Then he handed me three reals in copper, took the Testament and ran back to her, who was presumably his sister, swinging the book over his head full of joy.

"The poor have the Gospel preached to them" — this Borrow also experienced in Spain. Often poor laborers brought their last pence, or, when they had no money, provisions, in order to obtain a N. Testament for them. When Borrow one evening was bathing himself and his horse in the Tagus, a crowd of people came to the bank and cried: "Come out, Englishman, and give us books, we have our money in our hands." Then the poor creatures stretched out their hands, in which they carried small copper coin. Poor schoolmasters often spent their last money to provide themselves and their pupils with N. Testaments. And yet the price of 3 reals for 1 copy was so small that people often would not believe it of Borrow, and he was once even suspected of having stolen the books.

When Borrow, page 193, gives a survey of his successes in Spain, he says: "It will surprise the reader when I report that in two churches of Madrid the N. Testament was regularly explained every Sunday evening by the respective clergymen to about 20 children, who were all provided with copies of the Madrid edition of 1839. The churches which I mean are those of San Gines and of Santa Cruz."

"When I considered the difficulties which had surrounded our path, I could often scarcely believe all that the Almighty had permitted us to accomplish in the last year. A large edition of the N. Testament was circulated almost wholly in the center of Spain, in spite of the resistance and the raging outcry of the bloodthirsty priesthood and the prohibitions of an insidious government, and the spirit of religious inquiry aroused, which, as I fervently hope, will sooner or later lead to blessed and important results. Until recently the name of Martin Luther was in these parts of Spain the most hated and abhorred, who was generally held to be a kind of devil, a cousin of Belial and Beelzebub, who in the shape of a man wrote and preached blasphemies against the Most High; but now, strangely enough, this once so hated person was spoken of with no small respect. Not seldom people visited me with the Bible in their hand and asked with great earnestness and no small simplicity after the writings of the great Doctor Martin, of whom some in fact supposed that he was still living."

"It will be well to remark here that of all the names connected with the Reformation the name of Luther alone is known in Spain; and let me add that one will probably ascribe to no other the least weight and authority, however great their inner worth may be."

"The common tracts, written with the intention of setting forth the errors of Popery, are therefore of no great use in Spain, whereas it is probable that by well executed translations of suitable pieces from Luther's works much good would be accomplished."
H. F.

Of the chief article of our whole Christian doctrine: that is, of the justification of the sinner before God through faith in Christ.
(From the blessed Dr. Chemnitz's Examen Concil. Trident, translated from the Latin by J. G.)

This article is the chief article in the whole Christian doctrine. For anguished and terrified hearts, which contend and wrestle with sin and the wrath of God, seek and strive only for this haven and safe port, how they may have a reconciled and gracious God. And in temptation faith looks anxiously and troubled only for this comfort, what it should lay hold of, upon what it should rest, to what it should hold fast, that it be not condemned through God's righteous judgment for the sake of its sins, that the wrath of God be appeased, that it be redeemed from its misery of sin, that it be again received into grace and taken up into eternal life and blessedness. For the end of faith is eternal life, 1 Pet. 1. Here now the one article of justification, when it is rightly explained and thus understood, as it is revealed in the doctrine of the Gospel, brings to pious consciences necessary and abundant comfort, and makes the honor of the Son of God, our Redeemer and Mediator, great and glorious. On the other hand, however, when this article is falsified and clouded with strange opinions, it obscures the honor and benefits of Christ, and robs troubled and tempted consciences of the needed comfort which is held out and offered to us in Christ. We have not yet forgotten what a rack of conscience there was under the Papacy, when the consciences in temptation fought and wrestled with sin and the wrath of God, and anxiously sought for a firm and certain comfort; when of Christ, how He is sufficient for us with His merit unto a perfect righteousness, nothing right was taught; when, passing Him by, men directed the poor consciences now to a holiness out of the works of the Law, yea, to a satisfaction of their own by self-devised works; now to the superfluous works and merits of the monastic orders and brotherhoods; now to the intercession of the saints, now to pilgrimages, to indulgences and the like, and so led them ever deeper and deeper into darkness and misery. And when the poor men, of all this, as far as ever was possible to them, had done and ful-