# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1852 01 20_S81
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Der Lutheraner.
"God's Word and Luther's doctrine shall pass away now and nevermore." (Rev. John, Chap. 14, v. 6. 7.)
Published by the German Ev. Lutheran Synod of Missouri, Ohio and other States.
Edited by C. F. W. Walther.
Vol. 8.  St. Louis, Mo., January 20, 1852.  No. 11.
Terms: Der Lutheraner appears once every two weeks at the annual 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.

Winfrid or Boniface, Apostle of the Germans.

A Presentation from the History of Missions,
by Karl Graul.

You have surely heard the name above more than once, my dear German fellow-brethren. Many a time, when you were addressed and urged to remember the many great heathen nations, and to help bring them the Gospel, this man was held up to you. The English, it was said, once sent their Winfrid to your heathen fathers; so send you now also Christian messengers of the faith to your brethren in the heathen lands. As Paul calls himself a debtor both to the Greeks and to the Barbarians, so the name of Winfrid is to remind the German people of their debt for the precious pearl which we have received through him from the Lord. The English do not yet count their debt as paid, for they still do the most for the conversion of the heathen, although they accomplished the conversion of our people already 1000 years ago through bands of evangelists. We Germans, then, did not fetch Christianity for ourselves either; neither did it spread of itself into our land; for over 200 years it cost the pious messengers of the faith hard and bloody labor. Among these Winfrid was indeed one of the last, but as a successful preacher, and especially as the founder of a settled church order among us, the most important. Except Luther, no German teacher of the Church is so important to us as this Winfrid, of whom I will give you a short account, according to what I have found in old writings and particularly in his own letters.

If Luther was, out of the midst of our people, a true, thoroughly German man, Winfrid on the other hand left fatherland and friends and became our brother; yet he belonged to a people which is akin to us in stock. He was born, namely, about the year 680, at Kirton in the south of England. His parents were people of rank. They hoped to make something truly great of him, since he showed excellent gifts already in earliest childhood. But the Lord directed his mind to the hidden treasure in the field. Eagerly the boy questioned clergymen who stopped at the house about heavenly things and about the salvation of his soul, and already in his fifth year he longed for the quiet of a cloister. The cloisters, however, were at that time not yet such seats of work-righteousness and of sloth as in later times, but rather holy places of rest, in which quiet minds found a refuge from the general din of arms and the rudeness of life, — the only nurseries of the sciences, and therefore of the highest importance for the training of capable servants of the Church. Only very unwillingly did his parents do their little Winfrid's will and give him into the cloister Adescancastre. Here he was so diligent in learning that he overtook his teachers. Therefore he went into another cloister, Nuizell, and attained there, for that time, so considerable a knowledge of Christianity, and particularly of the Bible, that he himself became a teacher. The fame of his learning drew to him monks and nuns eager for knowledge, and the people from the surrounding congregations gathered in whole crowds about his mild and powerful preaching. Since he besides performed several important and difficult affairs in church matters with great skill and to the satisfaction of his superiors, he soon gained general esteem and greater renown than if he had entered upon a worldly career according to his father's wish. The Lord has not promised in vain: Whoever leaveth anything for my name's sake, he shall receive it back a hundredfold. Yet it is expressly remarked that with his rising reputation his own opinion of himself sank ever deeper.

Therefore neither renown nor distinctions could satisfy his heart; it thirsted only to spread abroad the glory of his Lord and Saviour. After he had been ordained a priest in his thirtieth year, the way to the highest ecclesiastical offices stood open to him. He scorned them, and did not rest until he obtained permission and authority to go to Germany