# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1852 08 31_S1
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Der Lutheraner.

(Rev. John, Chap. 14, v. 6. 7.)

"God's Word and Luther's doctrine shall pass away neither now nor evermore."

Published by the German Ev. Luth. Synod of Missouri, Ohio and other States.

Edited by C. F. W. Walther.

Year 9.  St. Louis, Mo., August 31, 1852.  No. 1.

Terms: Der Lutheraner appears once every two weeks at the yearly 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.

Preface of the Editor

to the ninth year of the "Lutheraner."

With this first number of a new year our "Lutheraner" passes an important turning-point in its career. The conflict which it has fought during the past eight years was, as the readers know, directed chiefly against those who wel- either are avowed open opponents of our Evangelical Lutheran Church and of her pure, holy doctrine, or who have themselves at least confessed that they indeed wish to belong to the Lutheran Church, but can no longer agree with her doctrine and practice. In short, the main conflict of the "Lutheraner" has hitherto been directed partly against the sects, partly against the so-called New Lutherans (it ought to be called: Pseudo-Lutherans). We may also well confess here with joy, to the honor of God, that this conflict has not been a fruitless and unblessed one. In the last eight years behind us things have in many respects really become better, and according to many testimonies that have been given concerning us, God has also used and blessed our slight testimony to this end. Yet not only is the conflict already waged hitherto by the "Lutheraner" not yet fought out: a new adversary has also placed himself in its way in recent times, whom it will henceforth have to take into account before others. This is a party of a peculiar kind. For it departs, indeed, no less than the so-called New Lutherans, from the pattern of the doctrine of our Church, yet pretends at the same time to hold fast most faithfully and strictly the pure doctrine of our Church, indeed to be the true representative of Lutheran orthodoxy, if not in the whole world, yet here in America. We mean the party of Pastor Grabau in Buffalo.

How it came about, however, that a collision occurred between our Synod and this party, has the following explanation. In the year 1839 several Saxon pastors, with the well-known Pastor Stephan at their head, immigrated hither with about 800 souls, namely into the State of Missouri. These pastors, to whom the writer of this also belonged, were under the delusion that they were the most faithful sons and servants of our Evangelical Lutheran Church, but they were anything but this. Led astray by Stephan, they rather entertained thoroughly Romish notions of Church, of the ministry and of ministerial authority. And these errors had precisely the consequence that not only they themselves left their offices and congregations in Germany, but that they also misled so many souls who had been awakened in Germany through them to emigrate with them, in order to build up here the "true saving Church." But what happened? When we Saxon preachers were just on the point of setting up here a church according to the false Romish principles which we then held concerning Church, office and ministerial authority, it became manifest that our teacher and leader was a hypocrite, indeed secretly a gross sinner! Upon this discovery it soon became manifest that our faith had been founded in many respects upon human authority, and not upon God's Word alone. We now began to subject to a strict examination what we had hitherto held to be true and genuinely Lutheran, and behold! with astonishment and dismay we recognized that until now we had looked at the Bible and the symbolical books of our Lutheran Church through colored spectacles, and, especially concerning Church, office and ministerial authority, instead of in a biblical-Lutheran way, had actually believed and taught in a Romish-papistic way, had misled our congregations, had robbed them of their Christian liberty, so far as in us lay, and had finally led them into the greatest spiritual and bodily misery. God, however, gave grace that both we preachers and our congregations repented from the heart, confessed our sins and errors privately and publicly, and with great earnestness sought now to learn the doctrine of our Church from God's Word, the Symbols and the writings of the old orthodox teachers, and returned to it with our whole heart.