# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1852 10 12_S29
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

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tion to a spiritual vital power, which from within remodeled the hearts of men. They recognized and laid hold of the truth preached by Luther as a living thing, because they could convince themselves from the Scripture itself that what he preached was truth. Old and young, woman and man, all learned and searched the Scripture. The laity learned to recognize and to exercise their spiritual priesthood. Against this vital power of the truth and of the light, which pierced through the hearts, the paltry statutes of an arrogated church despotism could indeed not hold their ground.

And the other vital power in the Reformation was the living faith in JESUS Christ, which Luther preached so mightily and powerfully, and which in himself brought forth such glorious fruits. The people learned what faith in JESUS Christ is. Thousands of anguished, broken hearts, who had sought rest in vain in their own works, came through Luther's doctrine of justification to the joyful faith that they were children of God, accepted and reconciled, made free through Christ not only from all the statutes of the world, but also from the curse of the law. They experienced in their hearts the power of faith, the new life of Christ; they learned to pray in spirit and in truth; they learned to do right works, which faith brought forth in them as its noble fruits; they felt in themselves the power and the impulse of the Spirit of God to all that is good. In short, there arose a people that was born to God the LORD as the dew from the womb of the morning. The Church was transformed by the Reformation into a garden, whose fragrance of blossoms still wafts toward us today as freshly as the morning breeze of eternal life.

Now was all this the work of a man? No, never! For how could God's work have come forth more mightily, more gloriously, more visibly? One had to see plainly that the LORD had himself taken up the care of his flock, had sought his sheep and led them to the pleasant pastures of his Word. We should have to concede that God had his work in the Reformation, even if it had wrought only some good, and had brought about a partial improvement in doctrine and life; but it has wrought more than this; through it the Church has regained the whole, pure, unadulterated doctrine of the divine Word. Luther was a man; he might have erred; this and that error of the papacy might have remained hidden from him even later, or he might, in the good intention of finding what was more correct, have failed of the truth in this or that point. And behold, the Holy Ghost has led him into all truth; he has so clearly developed and expounded all the articles of doctrine out of God's Word that the truth of his doctrine shines forth upon every heart eager to learn with convincing power. I do not say this in order to prove thereby that our Luther was infallible, but only so much, that the Reformation was quite unmistakably God's work, and that he was only the foremost instrument which God made use of in the Reformation.

There are nowadays critics and fault-finders enough who believe themselves called to bring the Reformation first properly to its completion. And even if it must be admitted that, in respect of church government and church discipline, not all evils could be overcome by the Reformation, about which Dr. Luther himself and all Lutheran teachers after him made many a complaint; yet that very thing which is nowadays charged against the Reformation as a reproach is its virtue and its strength. It is complained that through Luther's severity a union of the two Protestant churches, the Lutheran and the Reformed, was prevented; but if the dear man of God had not been so firm and unbending in this matter, the Reformation would justly have incurred the heavy reproach that for the sake of human peace it had given up the truth, and had granted to human reason in matters of faith an equal right alongside the Word of Scripture.

Such wretched critics and fault-finders are also those who, because they see that Protestantism has fallen apart into so many sects, seek the origin of this sad disruption in the Reformation itself. They look with longing across to the fair unity of the Roman Church, and complain that this unity has been lost in Protestantism. But their error is that they seek unity only in the outward constitution, instead of looking to unity in spirit and faith. What does the Roman Church profit by its unity in error? And what would be gained for Protestantism if, over against Rome, it could show itself in such outward unity and compactness, while inwardly it presents a picture of disruption? The true Church has indeed the right unity in faith, and in this all those will surely be found together who stand upon the eternally firm foundation which Luther's Reformation has laid.

Therefore let us also, Lutheran fellow Christians, abide by this foundation. If our doctrine, if our faith is such as the Church of the Reformation had and confessed, then it is no delusion if we regard ourselves as members of the true Church; provided, namely, that this faith be also living in us, and prove itself by the fruit of an upright Christian life and conduct. We have, God be praised! no doubt whether the doctrine of our Church is the true doctrine of the divine Word, for it shines brighter than the day; but we have to apply our diligence to this, that through God's grace we may more and more ground and establish ourselves in the knowledge of this doctrine, and follow it with our life. Precious treasures have been handed down to us in our Lutheran translation of the Bible, in our Lutheran Catechism, in our Lutheran hymn-books and confessional writings, in the many glorious, spiritual writings of our Lutheran teachers. We have in all these a rich, precious, blessed pasture. Ah, that we only made right use of it all. We Lutheran Christians will surely one day have a heavier responsibility than others, because much has been given to us.

Now may the faithful God enlighten us by his Holy Spirit; make us thankful and grateful for all his spiritual blessings and benefits; fill us with love for our dear Lutheran Church; grant us the spirit of testimony and confession, as it was in our fathers, that we also, for the sake of his truth, may be ready to stake goods and blood. May he preserve us from the unbelief and apostasy of our time, preserve to us and to our posterity the light of his Word, and at last let us come to his eternal light, to the assembly of all the elect in eternal life! Amen.

(Contributed.)
Methodism.

The Methodist sect is hastening to its end, to its dissolution. The reader knows that the membership of this sect in Europe and America, as the public papers report, decreases considerably every year. It is at the point of death. Yet a little while, and it will be said: it is no more, like all the children of former times. Already for a long time it had been sick with false doctrine, but its condition grew considerably worse after it was seized by the error of "entire sanctification." Alas! the poor patient imagined that man could here below already become perfectly free of sin and spotless, and thereby frightened away her most honest friends from her deathbed. Compassionately and tenderly the "Lutheraner" thereupon took charge of the patient and sought with the Word of God to heal her of this delusion so perilous to the soul. But in vain; with feverish heat she clung, alas, ever more tightly to it, and in spite of her great shortness of breath she did not cease to rave about it. She now sought to restore her lost health by other little remedies; she kept night-watches and love-feasts, and often we saw, to our sorrow, the sufferer stagger out of the cities into the open, to recover on the advice of a quack on the heights and under the green trees by camp-meetings. But all in vain; her consumption only became the more dangerous. One ought not to disturb the last hours of a man, even of his adversary. Therefore the "Lutheraner" also remained in the deepest silence of late toward the Methodist sect, although it had suffered much bitter wrong from the patient during her life. But the poor patient does not seem to want to expire with the inwardness that befits a dying person. As so often in life, she has again quite