# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1852 02 03_S95
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

95

then it is just and good, even if it had no effect at all, or the opposite effect; but if it is contrary to the divine law, and accordingly proceeds in the doer from unbelief or superstition, then it is unjust and evil, even if for the moment it had the intended effect, yes, the most brilliant success.

Accordingly it remains the case that Kossuth's personal disposition, although on the one hand it is very much to be distinguished, indeed separated, from the infamous wickedness and enmity against God of the common red Republicans and of the men of radical overthrow, of the Socialists and Communists, of the free men and the like, is on the other hand not again to be distinguished, indeed is to be separated, from the evangelical disposition of true and thorough Christians, in whom faith and love essentially govern their whole life and in whom there is a submission of the whole heart and will to the divine Word.

Kossuth stands, in our judgment, in his disposition between that devilish and this divine disposition, as it were in the middle, and appears to us as a man who in his beginning cherished and fostered no base and selfish ends, nor yet any decided enmity against God and His order, and does not even now nurture any, but rather, with much personal self-denial and self-sacrifice, keeps steadily in view as the goal of his life and striving the civil freedom and self-government of his fatherland, which he appears to regard as its greatest and noblest good. But since he, out of ignorance of the evangelical truth, has employed means contrary to Scripture for the attainment of this goal, namely has helped to bring about and promote the violent rising of his people against their sovereign, the Emperor of Austria; since he further, though in vain instructed by the victory of the Russian arms that this his goal is at present not God's purpose, nevertheless unceasingly pursues the same and really strives with all his might for the armed intervention of England and the United States, in order to procure for his fatherland civil independence and self-government, although thereby a monstrous war of the nations would be kindled, streams of blood be shed, and the remedy be far more terrible than the evil: so we can regard him only as an honest enthusiast, but not as a sober evangelical Christian, who is sufficiently and thoroughly informed from the Word and the ways of God concerning His training of the nations.

Since now with this his favorite delusion and plan, namely the liberation of his fatherland from Austrian rule and its constitution as a republic, a kindred chord is here struck; since he is endowed with mighty eloquence and a winning personality, address and shrewdness, to present his favorite idea brilliantly and impressively with the ravishing fire of speech: it is no wonder that he everywhere produces so mighty a movement and sweeps along young and old, men and women, the educated and the uneducated, the masses as well as individuals. It is therefore further no wonder that Kossuth also enraptures the crowd of the American preachers with his enthusiasm, since moreover a mutual sympathy exists between them; for they, as Americans, who, mostly overestimating their constitution, seem to concern themselves more often with political questions of the day than with vital questions of the Church, and to be more eager politicians than thorough theologians, sympathize with Kossuth with regard to the liberation and political Americanization of Hungary; and he, as a religious man, as he called himself before the ladies in London who presented him with a German Bible, sympathizes in turn with the preachers with regard to the recognition and piety (pious reverence) toward the Bible, although, as has already been sufficiently shown above, he possesses no sound and thorough knowledge of the God of the Bible and of His government over the nations and states of the earth, and does not scorn unchristian and violent means for the attainment of political ends. And since now among this mass of sympathizing American preachers there is also His Reverence, the so-called Lutheran Dr. Kurtz, it goes without saying that he too, as once for Ronge, so now for Kossuth raves along with the rest.

But that Pastor Stohlmann also, a German Lutheran, who moreover without reserve confesses with us the sound confession of the Lutheran Church, and who ought in fairness, in the biblical judgment of such phenomena as Kossuth, to hold fast the churchly standpoint according to Scripture, that this preacher also raves along and celebrates along, is heartily to be lamented and earnestly to be rebuked, as a dishonor which he has thereby done to the Lutheran Church.

It would well have become him, yes, it would have been his duty, even if he had thereby become ever so unpopular and odious before the multitude intoxicated with Kossuth, to give Kossuth and all his hearers a thorough instruction from God's Word, first, concerning the true and proper bondage, namely that of sin; thereafter, concerning the true and proper deliverance, namely that through the LORD Christ, and how the man who is a born slave of sin becomes partaker of the same and a free citizen of the eternal and heavenly kingdom, which shall be manifest in glory and shall abide when all earthly kingdoms burn with the earth; and finally, concerning the Christian manner in which such citizens of heaven and true Christians, in their earthly calling as subjects, have also to bear the cross through tyrannical and godless authorities, and, only out of and according to God's Word, as the sword of the Spirit, may make representation, entreaty and admonition to the hard taskmaster. If these should pay no heed to it, and as before let force take the place of right in many ways, yes, made the yoke still heavier, then it would nevertheless by no means be proper for the oppressed people, if it be a Christian one and would not deny God's Word and the faith, to fight with weapons in hand, in a violent manner, against the wicked authority which, according to God's holy punitive will, has power over them, to break the yoke if possible, and to free themselves by such arbitrary self-help, and thereafter in some form to take the reins of government themselves into their own hands; for even though, according to God's peculiar judgment upon the princes, such a violent undertaking should succeed, as God is wont to punish one unjust man by another, both in the individual and in the whole, yet the insurgents, in their success, would have no security of the divine blessing and no certainty of the divine good pleasure, but would retain rather an evil conscience and would have all the more provoked God's wrath and displeasure against themselves, since they had attained the goal of their wishes in a thoroughly unchristian, yes, unlawful way. God's punishment, too, upon the people thus carnally liberated and governing themselves would soon enough show itself in this, that the mass of the people would cast off yet more all fear of God, and on the contrary make their so-called sovereign power and their new constitution their god; that political parties would arise which hate and persecute one another, and that out of the representatives and spokesmen of the same, in their party papers, paper tyrants enough would rise up; that the periodical election of higher and lower officials would be bound up with countless morally pernicious intrigues and solicitations of favor, and the authorities thus elected by the grace of the people would have very little authority and strength to execute vigorously the laws, though good, so that the security of life and property would now in the end be more endangered than under the former government; that the spirit of this new liberty would also have a very pernicious influence upon the training of children, and so forth. Had Pastor Stohlmann now delivered a sermon of about this content, and, for all I care, with all the display of city eloquence, he would have acted as a faithful servant of the Lutheran Church; and even if Kossuth and his followers had gone out of the church in the midst of such a sermon, and Pastor St. had come into ill repute in all New York, he could yet be inwardly cheerful about it; for he would then have conducted a truly holy and just cause, and the comfort of the Holy Ghost out of His Word would have made him easily bear the hatred and wrath of the world; for he would have been a friend of God. And had Kossuth even remained in the church, he would perhaps, for the first time in his life, have heard the evangelical truth so highly needful for his cause, and his understanding and conscience would at least have been thoroughly informed from God's Word, so that it would now depend only on his