# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1851 11 11_S45
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

45

devout than in the church and at prayer, which the clergyman speaks. The exorcist is in earnest with his purse, and the sick man and his relatives naturally part with their money only in the earnest hope that the exorcist's art and word will bring the longed-for help. That God's Word is present in the exorcism only makes the matter worse.

Use no sorcery, say not: God's Word is there.
The holier the word, the greater the sin, For God abhors such things!
Have mercy, Lord!

You surely know that verse from the old hymnbook! We learned it in school, and even if it is no longer sung in church, we sing it all the more diligently at home. Is that not so?

Mich. (turns red and tries to hide his embarrassment, but pulls himself together and replies:) A saying occurs to me; I do not know where it stands, but I know the words: "It is sanctified by the word of God and prayer." I think that might be applied to exorcism as well.

Ch. Surely you did not fetch your scriptural wisdom from the wilderness and from the pinnacle of the temple? The one there — it was not one in white shining raiment — understood that business too! Well, well, Michael! — you want to wash the devil white with God's Word, and put a holy appearance upon sin? The Second Commandment — mind yourself — it strikes you on the mouth!

Mich. The Second Commandment?

Ch. Yes, the Second Commandment; for it commands us that we shall not take the name of God in vain, and declares that the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh His name in vain.

Mich. But is it then already settled that exorcism is an abuse of the divine name?

Ch. For one who has really learned his Second Commandment and understands it, it is settled. Ask your boy, he will tell you out of the explanation of the Second Commandment that old Luther already counted sorcery among the sins against the Second Commandment; and exorcism is also a sorcery.

Mich. How so?

Ch. Because the exorcist pretends that he possesses superhuman powers and is able to do superhuman things. In doing so it does not matter to him whether these powers are from hell or from heaven, whether these things redound to the benefit or to the harm of the neighbor. Yes, still more: Exorcism amounts directly to a mockery of God, for one does or says so much that is senseless, strange and fantastic in connection with the divine name that one must come to the thought that it is aimed precisely at a mockery of God's majesty.

Mich. I always thought that only invoking the devil and swearing oneself to the devil, and with his help performing evil things in a supernatural way, would be sin?

Chr. Certainly it is far more culpable to make hellish powers serviceable through the help of the devil in order to perform superhuman things; but it is already a great sin to abuse the Word of the triune God for all sorts of forbidden things.

Mich. Yes, if one abuses the Word and name of God to bring about evil, I will readily grant that it is sin; but if one wants to accomplish good with it, as, for example, to heal diseases, can the use of the divine name and Word then be sin?

Chr. Yes, even then it is sin; for in the first place it has not yet been granted that such a healing of the sick is really something good, and then God's name and Word must be used only according to God's will. Every use that goes beyond this will is sin. God has assigned to man a certain domain of powers; within it he is to remain and to use them according to God's will. If he strives after something higher, if he wants to appropriate to himself what is superhuman, he falls into the sin of Satan, who also wanted to be God. Both are true: whoever acts against God's will is of the devil, and conversely: whoever is of the devil (has a devilish disposition) commits sin.

Mich. Tell me, do those also sin who have exorcisms performed?

Chr. Certainly those also sin who take refuge with sorcerers and exorcists; for only such will do so as have more faith and confidence in them and in their word and work than in God and the promises of His holy Word.

Mich. One should indeed think so. Yet I can imagine the case that they place their confidence for help not in the sorcerer, but in the triune God, whose name and Word the sorcerer speaks.

Chr. If the people believed that, why would they need the sorcerer? Could they not call upon the triune God for themselves or for their own?

Mich. They could indeed; but they think, you see, that the sorcerer's words help more.

Chr. I would let this opinion pass if the sorcerer had a special commission from God for his doing. But he has none; for in the first place God has every man invited in His holy Word: "Call upon me in the day of trouble: I will deliver thee." In the second place: if God had given to particular men the commission to pray for others and to speak His holy name and Word over them, would He not have chosen above all the servants of His holy Word for it? Do you not know what the Holy Scripture says, James 5, 14-16: "Is any sick among you? let him call for the elders of the church; and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil (applying medicine) in the name of the Lord: and the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up; and if he have committed sins, they shall be forgiven him."

Mich. Yes, but it is James himself who also lets the prayer of others than the servants of God be effectual and powerful, when he says: "Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed."

Chr. Quite right; but only consider that this is no incantation, as with the sorcerer, but a brotherly opening of burdens of conscience, wherein one takes the burden of the other upon himself and brings it before the throne of grace of God. If such a prayer is to be effectual, it must come out of true faith, which alone makes righteous before God; for it is said: "The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much." When that happens, honor is given to the triune God, to whom alone it is due, and it is thereby acknowledged and confessed that the power of the living God, not the art and power of the sorcerer, has helped.

Mich. I should think that even without this express confession of faith the actual occurrence of the help pointed to the presence of faith, to which help is promised.

Chr. You are mistaken! Not everything is good that helps. If a man steals so that he may not starve, that helps too, does it not? but can you for that reason call stealing good or praise it? do you find in it a deed of faith?

Mich. Far be it!

Chr. You see, then, that help having come is as yet no proof that the thing is right and divine; yes, it looks like blasphemy to assert this of a thing with which there is bound up a profanation of the divine name and a mockery of His majesty. If the help follows, the one who helps cannot truly be God *); neither can the nonsense that was spoken or done in the process; nor yet a mere natural force aroused by senseless exorcists' words. Then the help comes from the kingdom of darkness, which does not offer its help for nothing, but rather, for the small evil from which it has delivered us, throws upon us by the neck the far more terrible one, that we lose God's grace and fall to the service of darkness. No, one may not use everything that helps; and the circumstance that help is at times granted to the people who turn to exorcists and sorcerers excuses them as little as the other excuse, that no one is harmed by it if they turn to a cunning man. Much else, too, brings no harm and yet redounds to the greatest harm of him who does it.

*) It is not to be said in this, of course, that God, according to His almighty working, does not also work this healing; but it does not take place according to His good, gracious will, but according to His holy and righteous punitive will, that the despisers of His Word may believe a lie. In a similar way He also works the departing of poltergeists at the conjuration of the papistical priests, whereby the people become all the more firmly fixed in papistical superstition.