# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1851 11 25_S52
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

52

God visits them and theirs is a sign of His love and grace, and turn to forbidden means, seek help among the unbelievers, the superstitious, the false-believers, and forget that a commandment has been given to the Christian: "Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers! And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them."

Mich. Well, when people are in real distress, they simply do not know how to help themselves!

Chr. Why, a true Christian knows well enough where help is to be found when he cannot help himself. Though he might have forgotten everything that he learned in the confirmation instruction and in the catechism and heard in sermons all his life, one thing he yet knows: that He in whose name he is baptized, Jesus, that is, Savior, is called Helper in every need. To pray and to call without ceasing in confidence upon this name, in faith in this name — that has a promise. In such faith the Apostle Paul says: "We glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulation worketh patience; and patience, experience; and experience, hope; and hope maketh not ashamed." And Jeremiah in the Lamentations 3, 26: "It is good that a man should both hope and quietly wait for the salvation of the LORD.

Mich. So you mean that sorcery, etc., and the seeking of help from such people is never to be excused?

Chr. Certainly it is not to be excused, least of all among Christians, who in baptism have renounced sin and all help that is not of God, and who ought to be converted from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God, to receive forgiveness of sins and inheritance among them which are sanctified by faith in Christ." But to be sure, to many people repentance is a troublesome matter; they find it more convenient — so to speak — to run to sorcerers and witch-masters, who do not inquire how it stands with the breastplate, but with whom perhaps it is: the worse, the better.

Mich. You make it too bad: it sometimes seems to me as if our conjurers, sorcerers, charmers had something in common with the old prophets?

Chr. I know not what. You would have to compare them with the false prophets, whom the Lord rejects, Deut. 13, 1-5. I find just the contrary. The true prophets were servants of God, who followed not their own but God's will, who acted not in their own power but in God's power, not in their own name and to the honor of their own name, but to the honor of God! The sorcerers ascribe the power to themselves, act on their own hook, seek their own honor. Those led to God: these lead away from God. And how does the unselfishness of the prophets agree with the word of the sorcerer and charmer: "It must be paid in silver, else it will not help?"

Mich. Yet it says in Holy Scripture: "The laborer is worthy of his hire."

Chr. That is true, but it does not say: It must be paid in silver. That saying holds only as an exhortation to those who have experienced help, but not for the helpers. To cite to you the example of a prophet: Elisha accepted nothing at all as a reward, in spite of his entreaties, from the rich Naaman, the minister of the king of Syria, whom he had cleansed of leprosy, and his servant, who let himself be secretly presented with gifts, had to pay for it with leprosy for life. 2 Kings 5. Or if an example from more recent history is more agreeable to you, I remind you of the blessed Stilling, who in the many thousand eye-cures which he performed had to make the experience that almost all whom he treated without charge were healed, whereas with the others the operation for the most part failed.

Mich. Well, I think I have also read in Scripture of people who worked wonders for money.

Chr. Yes indeed, it tells of such: but what sort of people were they? Black necromancers, like Jannes and Jambres in Egypt, who aped the wonders of Moses, Ex. 7, 11-12, cf. 2 Tim. 3, 8. — The witch of Endor, to whom the prophet Samuel is a terror, 1 Sam. 28. — Bar-Jesus or Elymas, Acts 13; 8. — Simon, Acts 8. — The sorcerers at Ephesus, Acts 19, 13-19. Upon all these, as upon their followers, the sentence is pronounced in Rev. of John 21, 8: "But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death." A fine company; would you like to have a share in it?

Mich. Certainly not.

Chr. And yet all have a share in it who forsake the living God and seek help from creatures, who for unbelief in God's help despair, and throw themselves into the arms of the devil and his servants and become idolatrous. Michel, it is a solemn word: "Cursed be the man that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm, and whose heart departeth from the LORD;" and: "For without, outside the heavenly Jerusalem, are dogs, and sorcerers, and whoremongers, and murderers, and idolaters, and whosoever loveth and maketh a lie."

Mich. Dear God, if sorcery and charming is sin, then a curse rests upon every house in our village.

Chr. That may well be, and hard as it sounds, I must tell you: if the people do not turn and repent, there will come upon them all that the Lord has threatened in His Word.

Mich. Then it surprises me indeed not that so much misfortune comes upon so many people who are known to practice the devil's mischief.

Chr. You had better have said: let it not surprise you that so few people come to a true living faith, because the most still hold fast to the unspiritual and old-wives' fables, and are stuck up to their ears in superstition, wherein the devil so holds them captive that they can hardly set a foot down without being anxious about it. I maintain that a catechism of superstition would count more pages than the greatest catechism of faith; but superstition also will furnish hell with tinder enough.

Mich. You are zealous today, mightily, against superstition; I should think your zeal ought rather to turn against those who believe nothing at all.

Chr. Everything has its time; today the B . . . people have thrown superstition between my feet. Another time, something else. Yet I doubt whether zeal against unbelief is more needful than against superstition. The unbelievers, to be sure, throw out the child with the bath; but I know not which is worse, to serve the devil with fear and trembling, or for a while to behave like a fool who does not know that he is in chains and fetters. I am pretty well sick of the stuff, of the one as of the other. Let us leave it, dear Michel, and in the conflict let us not forget ourselves. Neither at the yoke of the unbelievers, nor at that of the superstitious will we pull. We would rather hold with those who sing with our man of God, the blessed Luther: "A mighty fortress is our God," etc. Only today I read, in Kraußold's Prayers for Catechism Instruction, the beautiful explanation by Luther of the first article of the Christian faith, which pleased me so much that I must read it to you, because it fits our conversation; it runs thus:

"I believe in God, the Almighty Maker of heaven and earth. That is: I renounce the evil spirit, all idolatry, all sorcery and false belief. I put my trust in no man on earth, not even in myself, nor in my power, art, goods, piety, or whatever I may have. I put my trust in no creature, be it in heaven or on earth. I put my trust alone in the bare, invisible, incomprehensible God, who created heaven and earth and is alone above all creatures; again I am not terrified at all the malice of the devil and his company; for my God is above them all. I believe none the less in God, though I were forsaken or persecuted by all men. I believe none the less, though I be poor, unwise, unlearned, despised, or lack all things. I believe none the less, though I be a sinner, for this my faith shall and must hover over all, whatever is and is not, over sin and virtue, and over all, so that it in God purely