# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1851 09 02_S1
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Der Lutheraner.
"God's Word and Luther's doctrine shall pass away now and nevermore." (Rev. of John, ch. 14, v. 6, 7.)
Published by the German Evangelical Lutheran Synod of Missouri, Ohio and other States.
Edited by C. F. W. Walther.
Volume 8.  St. Louis, Mo., the 2nd of September 1851.  No. 1.
Terms: Der Lutheraner appears once every two weeks at the yearly subscription price of One Dollar for out-of-town subscribers, who are to pay the same 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, which contain business matters, orders, cancellations, money, etc., are to be sent hither under the address Mr. F. W. Barthel, care of C. F. W. Walther, St. Louis, Mo.

Preface. *)

In now beginning the eighth volume of the "Lutheraner," we can do no otherwise than first to give hearty thanks to the faithful God, that He has granted us grace and strength to remain true, also in the volume now completed, to our original plan and the purpose set before us in the publication of this periodical. For in this past period also we have kept our chief aim as far as possible in view: partly to treat the pure doctrine of the Lutheran Church, together with the churchly practice founded upon it, in essays suited to the subject and the times; partly to rebuke false doctrine and the erroneous, unchurchly manner of acting which it has produced; partly to illuminate with the light of the divine Word important phenomena of the times that have significance for the weal or woe of the Church.

To these latter there belongs undeniably the monstrous apostasy of baptized Christians from the triune God, who created, redeemed and sanctified them, which has come to appear still more clearly in the last year and in our own neighborhood.

*) Since the Editor has at present, by commission of the Synod, departed for Germany, one of the co-laborers on this periodical has had to undertake the preparation of the Preface. Since he cannot possibly have the same view of the whole as the Editor himself, he begs the kind reader for an indulgent judgment of the following Preface.

The poisonous seed of unbelief (Rationalism), which for some eighty years especially has been scattered from the great majority of the pulpits and theological chairs of Germany into the hearts of the people and of its growing youths who are destined for the service of the Church and school, has now ripened terribly. So massive an apostasy from God and from His Word revealed in Holy Scripture — so impudent a denial of the LORD Christ, who has also bought these poor, miserable men, seducers and seduced, with the precious purchase price of His blood — so furious an onslaught against the fundamental doctrines of the Christian faith — so base a mockery of the Church of God, their spiritual mother, who in the time of their childhood regenerated them through holy Baptism and nourished them with the milk of the divine Word, so shameful a defamation even of her faithful and orthodox servants, who adorn the pure doctrine also by a godly walk — in sum, such a massive corruption, as I have said, has hardly yet appeared anywhere or at any time in the Church of Christ as is now the case; and especially our poor German people, endowed by God above others with noble gifts, and formerly, as it were, the home of the fear of God, fidelity and faith, is now on this side and on that side of the sea so eaten through and corrupted, above others, with the poison of this old and new unbelief, that the little flock of the faithful might well lament and cry with Jeremiah: "Oh that my head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of my people."

But it is not merely the massiveness of the present apostasy from the faith of the fathers, but also the kind and nature of the impudent, God-denying unbelief of this time, which must fill a Christian heart with as great grief as abhorrence; for the light of this present-day enlightenment is so deep and thick a darkness that in it even the light of reason and of the natural knowledge of God, which the heathen also have, is choked and dead, and that it becomes comprehensible only from a special blinding and bewitching by Satan, through which God, according to His holy order of punishment, has sent these strong delusions upon His enemies, because, after His gracious Gospel again shines forth brightly in public preaching, they have not received the love of the truth, that they might be saved. For even through the fantastic distortions of polytheistic heathen superstition there runs everywhere the presentiment of the one almighty and omnipotent God, who is by no means merely in, but personally and essentially also outside of and above the world; and in the mythology of the Greeks and Romans