# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1851 09 15_S14
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

14

doctrine and knowledge I am enriched, even as the preaching of Christ hath become powerful in me, so that I now come behind in no gift, and wait only for the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ, who shall also confirm me unto the end, that I may be blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. For God is faithful, by whom I was called unto the fellowship of His Son Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom be honor from everlasting to everlasting! Amen.

I call upon Thee, most gracious God and Father in heaven, and beseech Thee from my heart, that Thou wouldest graciously preserve me in the true way, in the truth of the Word, in the divine doctrine of salvation and of the unadulterated Gospel unto mine end, that I depart not from it, nor waver, but abide by it, that I may surely escape the terrible judgment of God, which He will let come upon those who wantonly cast to the winds the benefit and grace shown them and trample it under foot, who reject the known and confessed truth of the brightly shining Gospel, deny Christ, fall away from the same, become apostate, and cleave to idolatry and superstition.

Therefore forsake me not, O Lord, but stand by me, a weak one, strengthen in me faith and trust in Thee, that I may willingly forget all that is temporal, constantly cast it to the winds, and not, like Lot's wife, look back to that which is left behind; but may abide with Thee, for the sake of Thy holy knowledge and of Thy holy Gospel, in my hidden cross and suffering. Grant grace that I may bear all distress and danger, yea, even death, in patience for Christ's sake, for Thou art the comfort of my heart and my portion.

If I am now forsaken, yet hold Thou unceasingly by me; if I am cursed, condemned, despised by all my kindred, driven from house, home, goods and possessions, and disinherited, so that I must spend and end my life in exile; yet hast Thou chosen out a place in the world for me, where Thou canst provide me, as Thy believing follower, a dwelling. If I am poor and needy in body and soul, yet hast Thou many rich goods; if I have no food, yet art Thou the old, rich, provident Householder, who knoweth best how to provide for His own, and so for me also. If I know neither out nor in, yet hast Thou from all eternity cared for me.

Ah, my Lord Jesus, let not such folly rise into my heart, mind, and thoughts, that either for loss of temporal goods, or weakness of human nature, or through the temptation of the devil and the world, I should deny Thy Word and the truth of Thy holy Gospel, but help that I be strengthened and established therein, and that nothing may separate me from it, neither in heaven nor upon earth.

And if it please Thee, O God, so to do, that Thou shouldest try me like steadfast Joseph, or like patient Job, and exercise me in the school of the cross, then hold over me Thy strong hand, that I waver not, nor become fainthearted, but for the honor of Thy name gladly and heartily bear and suffer all things.

Grant grace that I may rather endure scorn and mockery, tribulation and misery, than accommodate myself to the grim and godless enemies of Thy holy Word; that I may not prefer the temporal to the eternal, the bodily to the spiritual, the earthly to the heavenly, the inconstant favor of deceitful men to the true grace of God. Help me thereto, and give grace, O Jesus, my Jesus; Amen! Amen!

The Friedensbote and the "Freien Blätter."

Strange, and yet again very comprehensible, it is that the Friedensbote, as is well known the periodical of the local Evangelical Church Society, hath as yet rendered no round and decided testimony against the "Freien Blätter," which not only deride and scoff at the fundamental doctrines of Christianity, as for example the Trinity of God, the Godhead of the Lord Christ, justification by faith, but also are bare and void of the knowledge of God, which even the heathen have from the natural light of reason.

Strange on the one hand, we say, is this silence of the Friedensbote, since the evangelical gentlemen preachers speak so much of faith in Christ and regard the strife about the one, that is, the pure doctrine, with lofty disdain, in that they do not know, or will not know, that essentially and in general the right faith in the Lord Christ can arise and subsist only where the pure doctrine is in vogue, as it is written: "Faith cometh by hearing."

If this faith were truly a living power in them, the confession could not possibly be lacking also against the enemies of the Lord and of His Anointed, who say: "Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us!" For as impossible as shining and warming are from fire, just so impossible can the confession be separated from faith. "I believed, therefore have I spoken"; this remaineth an immovable, always valid truth, not merely in confessing the Lord Christ as the Son of God and of Mary, and as the sole Justifier and Savior of the unrighteous and unblessed children of Adam, before souls desirous of salvation and willing to believe, but at the same time also as the almighty King and future Judge of the quick and the dead against the idolatrous and adulterous generation of our days, which saith: "We will not have this man to reign over us."

In Matt. 10 the Savior encouraged His disciples to a faith-courageous confessing of His name, in that He admonisheth them not to fear those who can at most kill the body, but not the soul, but rather to fear God, who, if they should deny, would destroy body and soul in hell. And after He had, following such earnest warning, comforted them again with the loving fatherly care for such confessors, that the hairs of their head are all numbered, that not a sparrow falleth to the ground without the will of God, their Father, He holdeth out to the faithful confessors a glorious promise, saying: "Whosoever therefore shall confess me before men, him will I confess also before my Father which is in heaven," namely as my brother and sister, who, as they have willingly and joyfully borne my reproach and my cross upon earth, and have cheerfully and courageously confessed my hated name as the only saving name, even before my adversaries, so now also as kings and priests shall taste rapture and joy eternally, as my joy and crown, as my chosen and beloved ones, shall by me before God and the holy angels be acknowledged, and presented as the heirs of my kingdom.

But the Lord Christ addeth thereupon also the terrible warning: "But whosoever shall deny me before men, him will I also deny before my Father which is in heaven," that is, he who from fear of men and cowardly love of peace doth not openly reprove my enemies to their face and confess me as the sole Helper and Savior of all men, him I will not and cannot acknowledge as mine, and in his hour of death, as at the great day of judgment, I shall not confess myself to him, though he may not have denied me before my friends, yea, to all appearance, may have been zealous for my name.

But what a terrible lot hath he to expect, whom the Lord Christ, according to His righteousness, must thus deny! Will and must not eternal reproach and shame befall him, even though in fleshly prudence he hath escaped what is temporal?

When we said further above that it is on the other hand yet again very comprehensible that the Friedensbote should conduct itself also quite peaceably toward the "Freien Blätter," thereby the following sad truth is to be attested.

Namely, when Lutherans, that is, orthodox Christians, from man-pleasing and false love of peace unite ecclesiastically with the heterodox, and thereby deny the true love for God's pure and clear Word and for the confession of their church founded thereon: then must necessarily thereby and therein at the same time the fresh courage of faith be essentially broken, the joyful spirit of confessing and witnessing be dulled, yea, paralyzed; for this, equally far from fear of men and from fleshly zeal, is possible only where a Christian is divinely certain of this, that God's Word, as it reads, is his sole ground of faith, and that the confession of his church founded thereon is the pillar and ground of the truth unto salvation.

But where, as among the men of the Union cannot be otherwise, either an uncertain and