# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1852 01 20_S82
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

82

to go and preach the Gospel to the heathen.

Germany and heathen — that sounds so strange to us side by side. Not so then. How very differently our fatherland looked then from today, after it has been made fruitful for 1000 years by the blessings of Christianity. The older among you know it well enough, how only in the last 40 years agriculture and trades have risen, how roads and posts have become better, travel and traffic easier, than one could ever before have imagined. But 1000 years ago! When Winfrid came over, he found no other roads than those which men and horses had trodden out, and only slight commerce on the Rhine and on the great road from Frankfurt a. M. to Thuringia. For miles dense forests and marshes stretched out, where now blooming fields and meadows smile upon the traveler. The bold messengers of the faith had to break a way for themselves through the wildernesses. The waters had their free course and could tear and wash as they pleased: wild bands of warriors on their expeditions might see how they got through. War alone led the people from their homeland into the distance; it was the favorite business of our fathers. Cities there were only in the border lands along the Rhine and the Danube, still from Roman times. Farther inland, over the whole wide space from the Rhine to the Elbe, there was not a single proper city to be found: small beginnings of such were formed there only with the planting of Christianity. Everything dwelt in villages and single farmsteads. The old German hated the cities with their walls, gates and narrow streets; he loved free nature and was glad to be his own master. What he needed he made for himself, and the thousand useful and useless things and trifles from the cities, without which we can hardly subsist any longer, were unknown to him. For what should he have bought them, since he was not accustomed to raise more provisions than he himself consumed. His gods he likewise worshiped in the open, in consecrated groves under holy trees, more seldom in little sanctuaries built of wood. Moreover, the German of that time, for all his rudeness, was good-natured, truthful, faithful, upright and chaste, and of a deep, thoughtful disposition, so that with a faithful, simple mind he took the Gospel deep into his heart as soon as he was convinced of its truth and saving power.

Such was the land and people to which Winfrid let himself be sent as a missionary. Christianity was by now no longer wholly unknown. For a considerable time it had been penetrating gradually from Italy and France across the Rhine and the Danube. Through acquaintance with it many had learned to despise their old idolatry, and had even renounced it publicly; numerous messengers of the faith from Ireland and England had planted it for almost 200 years in Bavaria, Swabia and Franconia, as far as Thuringia. But it had not yet really gained a firm footing; there was still too great a want of a coherent system of church arrangements. The Gospel could not work powerfully through these remnants of the old heathenism. It stood best still on the Rhine, where the Rhenish Franks in what is now Rhenish Prussia had been converted already 250 years before. They were at that time the chief people, and had not only subjugated France, named after them, where they had found the Christian Church long since ruling, but had also brought most of the other German tribes under their power. Their duke Charles Martel was glad to see the spread of Christianity, because he recognized in it a means for the orderly arrangement of his realm, even if he perhaps was not so much concerned about the truth and the salvation of souls. Most firmly clung to their old heathenism the Frisians and Saxons, who held all of Northern Germany from the Netherlands to the Elbe. They feared to forfeit by conversion not merely the custom of the fathers, but also their freedom from the yoke of the Franks. Several messengers who had come from England had already been slain by the Frisians. Nevertheless they had succeeded, especially the last, Willebrord, in gathering numerous Christian congregations. But just as Winfrid arrived, the wild king Radbod, in a war with Charles Martel, had destroyed all the churches, scattered the congregations, and driven out the clergy. In vain he betook himself to him at Utrecht and sought to convince him of his wrong; in vain he sought from him only the permission for a new proclamation of the Gospel. Without having accomplished his purpose he had to return home in the same year. That was in the year 716.

A sad beginning for so great an undertaking! Well fitted to quench the fire and to cool the courage of youth. But in Winfrid's heart there burned no fire of his own, but the Holy Ghost; therefore he had rightly reckoned the cost, and let himself not be frightened off by this first failure. Even that the monks of his cloister pressed him to become their abbot, since the former one had meanwhile died, could not make him unfaithful to his calling. He obtained at last that he was sent out once more, and in the autumn of the year 718 crossed again to Germany, never to see fatherland and friends again. After a stormy passage he went with with several companions up the Rhine. A letter from his bishop Daniel to all Christian kings, princes, bishops, clergy, etc., procured him a good reception everywhere, for he wished now first of all to go to Rome. On the way they entered the churches diligently, to call upon the Most High that He would grant them a happy passage over the Alps, safe passage through the territory of the Lombards, and protection from the wild malice of presumptuous soldiers.

Safe and sound he arrived in Rome before the beginning of winter, delivered to Pope Gregory II. his letter of recommendation, and had almost daily conversations with him. Although men did not yet at that time think of revering the Pope as a god, whose decisions must be accepted as articles of faith; yet he was already regarded in the whole West as the rightful spiritual head of Christendom. Although in Germany especially it occurred to no one to ask him for his commands, yet his name stood in great esteem. And nowhere else, indeed, was there at that time to be found so much experience and so wide a survey of ecclesiastical things as in Rome. Therefore for Winfrid, who from the beginning seems to have had in view not the preaching of the Gospel in single districts, but the establishment of a settled church order for all Germany, the stay in Rome was of the highest importance. Encouraged by the friendly reception, instructed by good counsels, he set out at last in the spring of the year 719 for his field of labor. By a written commission the Pope formally appointed him preacher of the Gospel among the heathen, with the instruction to arrange the divine service after the Roman pattern, and in doubtful cases to seek counsel of the apostolic see. He turned first through Bavaria to Thuringia, and sought here to move princes and people and the wholly sunken clergy to the restoration of the decayed Christianity. Before he could accomplish anything, he followed, in the same year, a call of Willibrord, to help him, upon the just-occurred death of Radbod, to restore his destroyed work among the Frisians. Through three years' labors the two pious men succeeded in laying a new foundation; then Willibrord as bishop of Utrecht took over the further conduct of the work alone, but Winfrid moved in the year 722 again into the interior of Germany.

On the journey thither this man gave a proof what power of the divine Word was in him, and with what force he knew how to draw souls to himself. For when he had stopped at a cloister near Trier, a fifteen-year-old boy, Gregor, had to read aloud at table from the Latin Bible. At Winfrid's question: You read well, my son, but do you also understand what you have read? the simple lad wanted to read the passage over once more, so little did he grasp what Winfrid really wanted. But the latter interrupted him and said: "I do not mean that; I should like to know whether you can tell me in German what you have read." The boy confessed that he could not do this, and now Winfrid translated the passage for him into German and thereupon delivered an earnest address to the company at table. This discourse made so deep an impression on the young mind that the boy declared at once to the abbess, his aunt, that he must follow this