# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1851 07 08_S181
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

181

Lately someone, somewhere, has let it be known that astronomy is very much opposed to the friends of the Bible; for it shows, he says, that the Bible is false. For the light, he says, needs about eight minutes to travel from the sun to the earth. But the sun is 95 million English miles distant from the earth. Therefore the light needs eight minutes to traverse a distance of 95 million English miles.*) Now there are stars, he continues, which are so much farther from the earth than the sun is, that their light needs between 36 and 48,000 years to reach us. It has reached us, for we see them. Therefore the light from them has been on its way to us for 36 to 48,000 years, and consequently the world is at least 36 to 48,000 years old, and the Bible is in error.

*) Thus far everything is right, but now further.

It is known to every beginner in astronomy that the distance of the heavenly bodies which belong to our solar system can indeed be calculated with fair accuracy, but that the calculation of the distance of the fixed stars was, until little more than 10 years ago, a wholly uncertain matter, resting on mere conjectures, until Professor Bessel at Königsberg made a calculation according to which a certain fixed star **) is 657,700 times as far from the earth as the sun is, — the first calculation of its kind which experts have acknowledged to be correct at least in the main. According to this the light would therefore need 657,700 times more time to reach us from that star than the light of the sun does, and this time would amount to not 11 years. Who knows, now, how many other fixed stars that we see are farther away than that one? It may indeed be conjectured that among those we see there are also some whose distance from us is perhaps 2 times, 3 times, and so on, as great as that of that fixed star. But no one can prove it; and even supposing it could be proved that one among the stars we see were 10 times as far away as that one in the constellation of the Swan, the light would still not need 110 years to reach us from it. Again, supposing there were in the great realm of space stars so far from us that the light would need 36 to 40,000 years to come to us, who can prove, or even make probable, that among those which we now actually see, whose light has therefore reached us, there are also some of the very remotest? To say, therefore, that we see stars so far from us that the light needs 30 to 40,000 years to reach us, is a swindle; and to wish to conclude from this that the Bible is in error is to show oneself, even in the eyes of the old heathen, a frivolous man, unworthy of the name of a serious and settled man.

**) It is a small star in the constellation called "the Swan" or also "the Cross," which one now sees in the evening fairly high in the sky in a north-easterly direction.

The old heathen put the new to shame. Whence comes this? To them, the new, the light of the world had risen in Christ, which has appeared to the whole world. They wilfully shut their eyes against it. Therefore they see nothing at all any more, whereas the old still saw as much as can be seen in a dark night without light. As to how it stands with the understanding of such people, here is an example from the book of the diligent fellow-labourer in religious "enlightenment" mentioned above, Ballenstedt. He boasts that he has attacked old prejudices which time had hallowed, and has put something better in their place. To these he reckons also the history of the creation of man. For he attacks the biblical account of it, and puts in its stead (part 3, page 151): "Man came forth by himself out of nothing, and was the creator of his subsequent greatness." Consider: man came forth out of nothing. He was therefore nothing, and yet he brought himself forth, and what is more, out of nothing!! And that is supposed to be better than: God created man. And how far things go with such people, the same Ballenstedt bears witness, when in the very same book (part 3, page 25) he says quite frankly: "Are not the animals just as artfully and admirably organized as man? Has not one long since come back from the prejudice of denying to our half-brothers, the animals, reflection, thinking power, reason and power of judgment?" The animals, as is well known, have not yet changed. Goose and ass are still what they were in former times. If now Mr. Ballenstedt and his like-minded friends have come back from the "prejudice" that the animals have no reflection, thinking power, reason and power of judgment, and so regard them as their half-brothers, or, more correctly expressed, their whole-brothers, — for what difference remains, if one grants reason and so forth to the animals, except that they have a somewhat different shape, do not walk upright and wear no clothes — a difference which, after all, could for the most part easily be removed — in what else can this have its ground, than in this, that Mr. B. and his fellows in opinion perceive how near they have come to the animals?

The dear Lord God, however, who is merciful and gracious, long-suffering and of great goodness, may He have mercy on all who have gone astray, and grant that they turn to the light of revelation, that they may not, in their perverse mind, be put to shame by the old heathen, and at the last day of judgment be made to see these same heathen rise up against them and bear witness against them.

Private Correspondence from East India.

1 Cor. 1, 30.

Poreiar, near Tranquebar, the 10th of Dec. 1850.

Grace, mercy and peace from God, our Father, and Jesus Christ, our Lord and Saviour, be with thee! Amen.

Beloved brother in the Lord!

Thy exceedingly dear letter of the 10th of June of this year I duly received on the 30th of August, and was heartily glad of it, since it brought not only so many good and comforting tidings from your America, but above all gave and gives me testimony that I and the other brethren in this mission, as well as the whole work of the Lord here, are held in loving remembrance by thee, and may rejoice in thine intercession. — I also remember thee and all the brethren in America at all times, and ever beseech the Lord that He strengthen you in the labour in that part of His vineyard assigned to you, and give you grace always to make the good confession among the crooked and perverse generation, and among this God-forgetting world. The tidings communicated in thy dear letter concerning our dear church, which sojourns in America, have greatly rejoiced and strengthened me, and moved me to much thanksgiving. Is not the Lord's work so visibly advancing everywhere in progress and growth; and does He not everywhere make for Himself a way and a place? It is only a few years since, it was in 1842, that dear Wyneken came to Germany, and visited also Erlangen and Neuendettelsau. Who would then have thought that in so few years a vigorous number of combatants would stand there, spread over the whole land, and everywhere bearing witness that the Lord has not forsaken His Zion, but still loves it, builds, enlarges and adorns it? This the Lord hath done! — But if He has already done so much, we may well hope with confidence that He will yet put our little faith to more shame, and also henceforth do exceeding abundantly above what we ask or think. Therefore we are of good cheer and joyful. — Here also with us the Lord has done great things, and has shown here also that He honours His dear Church, which preaches and keeps the pure Word, and administers the holy Sacraments according to His institution. The most and chiefest of it thou knowest indeed already from the Missionsblättern; but since these give the tidings only in fragments, and we cannot praise enough the manifestations of grace of our God, thou wilt take it kindly of me if I communicate to thee in a short sketch what the Lord has done here since I have been in India.

On the morning of the holy Christmas of 1843 I arrived, after a happy voyage, though by no means free from danger,, on the shore of India at Madras. Br. Ochs, who had come to meet me, was already waiting for me there, and with him I travelled in January 1844 to Tranquebar. The state of things in the mission,