# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1852 08 04_S198
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

198

and ends also with corruption, with the dissolution of this life itself. But death, which affords a release from present evils and leads to a higher life, I know not whether one ought properly to call it death, since it is formidable more in name than in fact. . . There is only one life, to look unto the (divine) life; there is only one death, sin; for it is the destruction of the soul. But everything else, on account of which some exalt themselves proudly, is a dream-vision, a seductive phantom of the soul. If we think thus, O my mother, then we shall not be puffed up on account of life, nor be afraid for the sake of death. For what evil, after all, do we suffer when we press through from here to the true life, when we, freed from all change, from all whirl, from all weariness, from all bondage to what is evil, shall be there with the eternal things that are no more changeable, circling as little lights about the great Light!"

These words of the son seemed to the mother, whose whole life had been a preparation for death, a still nearer admonition of the end. Probably the aged woman did not long survive her husband. She had a beautiful death. Without being bowed down by sickliness or age, she went to church for prayer. Here in the house of God, which her husband had for the most part built, and before the altar where he had so long served as a faithful shepherd, the goal of her life's course was set for her. Probably stricken with apoplexy, she held fast to the altar with one hand, raised the other imploringly toward heaven, and then sank down with the words: "Be gracious to me, my King Christ!" She too was buried, mourned by all, especially by the poor, widows, and orphans, among the martyrs at the side of her husband. The only surviving son celebrated her by an oration and by several poems. In one of them he says: "Weep, ye mortals, for the mortal race! But if any one has died praying as Nonna did, then I weep not."

C. Ullmann.

The Dispute about Precedence.

The renowned Württemberg theologian Johannes Brentius had a son of the same name, who, however, as so often happens, though he bore the name of his great father, was equal to him neither in learning nor in godliness. Whereas, however, the old Brentius had never accepted the doctor's degree, the son, on the contrary, was quite willing, even in the lifetime of his venerable father, to be created a Doctor of Divinity. This would, to be sure, in itself have been nothing wrong at all. It was rather a veritable folly of the notorious Carlstadt, who, when he imagined by Satan's prompting that he had come to higher knowledge and spirituality, would no longer be called "Herr Doctor!" but simply "Neighbor Andrew"; for the theological degrees also, when they are conferred according to merit, are a good, laudable, and wholesome order of the Church. But our young Brentius, to whom that distinction had fallen chiefly in honor of his father, knew ill how to bear the honor that had befallen him. Once he was walking along beside his father, the father, as was fitting, on the upper side, the son on the lower. When they had walked on thus for a while, the son at last begins: "Father, I am now a Doctor, but you are no Doctor; therefore it is only fair that not you before me, but I before you, and so on the right side, should walk." The father answered: "To be sure, for do you not know how the miller's man does with his donkey? He, whether he carry the sack of grain into the mill or out of the mill, always goes before the miller everywhere."—Dear reader, consider here, that although ambition is never more shameful than when it is found among preachers and divines, who, according to 1 Pet. 5:3, are not to lord it over the people, but to be examples to the flock, also in humility; yet it is said, a few verses further on in that passage, to all Christians: "Yea, all of you be subject one to another, and be clothed with humility: for God resisteth the proud, and giveth grace to the humble." 1 Pet. 5:5.

Yielding in Doctrine.

Thus Luther writes in the year 1530:

"If one were to set forth ever so highly what benefit and advancement would result therefrom to the common peace and welfare, to all pious people of the German nation, to the Holy Roman Empire and to the Christian faith, if one yielded somewhat in some points and articles; and at the same time were to adduce what defeats, injuries, and hardship would follow if it came to war and insurrection, since in such a case religion and evangelical doctrine on both sides would go to ruin, and the most wretched confusion of all laws and orders would follow, and the Turk and other kings and princes would overpower the German people, divided and distracted among themselves; therefore one must not break and tear the peace for the sake of petty disputes over a few articles—: to such objections the answer is poorly made, and I say: Let what is right take its course, even if all the world should go to pieces over it. For I say that the peace is to be consigned to the lowest hell which is purchased at the cost of the Gospel and of faith, and hinders and injures them. Next, although such a pretext has a fair appearance, yet we must, in the ground of the doctrine which God would have of us, and which we know to be true, and for the sake of which we shall be preserved in all wars, distresses, and dangers, not yield a hair's breadth for the sake of temporal and common peace, since such a pretext can easily seduce and deceive us all. Thirdly, since it is commanded and enjoined upon us that we confess the Word of God and not so lightly depart from such a command, one must commit to him all the danger that may come upon us on account of the confession of the Gospel, who even without our counsel and prescription already knows how he is to protect his Church in the time of the most grim tyrants, as he also did before these times in a world that was full of tyrants and fanatics (namely in the time of Arius and other heretics). He then who hitherto, when no hope of salvation appeared, has helped and counseled, and will do so henceforth, may he so rule and lead us that we may confess with confidence the pure and sincere doctrine of the Gospel, to whom be honor and praise forever. Amen!"

May these words of the faithful champion quiet those who take offense also at the present contests for the pure doctrine, and suppose that the most Christian thing would be this, if men mutually yielded somewhat, kept still silence, and made peace.

Conversion through the Reading of the Bible.

At the beginning of the 17th century there lived at Recklinghausen in Westphalia a Jew by the name of Gerson. Besides the sin of usury, which wholly mastered him, there dwelt in his heart a bitter enmity against Christianity, which often vented itself in blasphemies against JEsus. He too seemed to lie under the judgment of hardening with which unhappy Israel, after the rejection and cruel murder of its Messiah, has now been punished for 1800 years. But what happened? One day a poor Christian widow came to the usurer to borrow of him a few stivers at high interest. But she had nothing she could pledge for it except a fine copy of the New Testament writings in Luther's translation. Gerson at length accepted the pledge. But when he sees that it is the book of the Christians, a desire arises in him to know what foolish things might be in it. He takes two other Jews with him and reads the holy book through with them. At first all pour out grievous blasphemies upon what was read. But Gerson, the deeper he gets into it, grows ever more uneasy. He feels stirrings within him which he never felt before. He looks up the passages of the prophets in which, according to the testimony of the Evangelists, JEsus of Nazareth is spoken of as the Messiah of the people of Israel and of all the nations of the earth,