# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1853 05 24_S134
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134

Mission College supported the missionaries against Egede, so that he saw himself hindered everywhere in his work. The old faithful confessor naturally hated from the bottom of his heart the fickle, self-willed ways of the enthusiasts; they, on the other hand, despised Egede's Lutheran simplicity and stubbornness. On the 5th of January 1747 Egede laid down his office. He writes at that time: "Had I only been so fortunate as to reap the fruit of my labors, which I had wished and hoped for, then I should easily bear all other losses,—but as it is, I must see and endure that the foundation of doctrine which I laid, which is Christ and His merit, is, if not wholly overthrown, yet that all manner of wood and straw, which is easily burned, is built upon it instead of the pure and abiding gold of faith; this grieves me to the utmost and makes me weary of life, which, as I hope, will not last so long, since through the wounding of my soul my inner weakness is increased from day to day. Besides, he was able to lay the training of the missionaries in the hands of his son Paul, reserving to himself the chief oversight as long as he lived.

For a full decade and somewhat more Egede enjoyed a well-earned rest in the little town of Stubbekjöbing on the island of Falster, which he had chosen as the haven of his old age. Nor did he lack the staff which God Himself reaches to His pious pilgrims when evening draws on, or the oil with which the head may be anointed, that man may be glad in his God and Redeemer. It seemed to go with him as with the Israelites in the wilderness: that his shoes were not worn out at the goal: until past his seventieth year his eyesight was not yet dim and his strength not broken. He occupied himself much with works of love, always taking care that the left hand knew not what the right hand did, and was moreover to all an unforgettable example by his venerableness, cheerfulness and frankness. He had come into the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, and keepeth hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Somewhat before his blessed departure he said to his family, still altogether well: "Children, ye will not keep me long." And when they, sorrowfully, asked their father how he came to suspect this, since he was surely not sick, he answered: "It seemed to me in the night as if some who had died in the Lord beckoned to me." He gave orders for his burial; yet he did not take to his bed, but grew weaker and weaker. One day he lay still, without speaking: — it was the 5th of November 1758, in Egede's 72nd year — then God called him to eternal life.

Reason does and serves in matters of faith, not before, but after faith, as also the tongue and all human powers and members. Reason, after it has been enlightened by the Holy Ghost, serves faith, but without faith it blasphemes God, together with all powers and members, both inward and outward. Luther.

(For the "Lutheraner.")

The Evangelical Review,

Edited by C. P. Krauth, D. D., & Wm. M. Reynolds, D. D.

The April number of this quarterly publication for this year contains the following articles.

1. A critique of the education given in the high schools (Colleges) of this country. This article betrays a discerning and experienced schoolman as its author, and is rich in excellent remarks. It is especially gratifying to find in it the fundamental view that the teacher, in all his activity, must keep Christ constantly before his eyes, and so teach and train as though he taught and trained Christ, according to the direction of Eph. 6:5, 6. For where this is the highest principle of education, all the important requirements of it follow of themselves. Among the individual remarks we single out as particularly worthy of heeding this one, that the high schools should not make it their task merely to supply and especially to teach what the great majority of the public, and in the manner in which it desires it; but rather to form for themselves a picture of what the public would desire if it took its temporal and eternal welfare rightly to heart and judged wisely, and to offer it that, and so to exert a wholesome, formative, elevating influence upon it. The defects which are censured in the present article in the high schools of this country are, unhappily, to be found more or less also in other lands.

2. A lecture by the Rev. L. Eichelberger in the Lutheran theological Seminary at Lexington, S. C., delivered on entering upon his office as Professor of Theology, and entitled "Reasons of the Difficulty and of the Success in the Study of Theology." The style is unpleasing, and the reasons are weak; the whole gives the impression as though the theological sciences were a barren field which everyone would rather leave aside; and since that is now once for all not the case, as though one must be induced by all sorts of motives to submit to the study of them. We think that whoever has undertaken to teach the sciences of a subject would also regard them as a treasure in which he has his delight and joy, and which he burns with longing to impart to his hearers, not doubting that they, though in different degree, will also awaken their lively interest, and therefore rather to give them at the outset an insight into the treasures which are to open themselves to them. This applies most especially to theology.

3. A critique of (an American edition of) the lectures of Cardinal Wiseman in England, so lately become well known, "on the principal doctrines and practices of the (Roman) Catholic Church," by the Rev. W. J. Mann, in Philadelphia. According to this critique, this product also bears the usual character of the polemical literature of the Antichrist; the Cardinal speaks with the most fatherly mien and the friendliest words to the straying children, the Protestants, and pretends the strictest love of truth and the most conscientious investigation, while he seeks to deceive and mislead them with clever juggleries concerning the principles of the Reformers on the one hand and of the Pope on the other. In the critique we miss a clear distinction between the multitude of the pious who doubtless are also to be found in the Roman Catholic Church, and the abominable antichristian spirit from which the symbols of the Roman Catholic Church have proceeded, and which characterizes that church-fellowship, on account of which we cannot call her a sister, as the critic does, although the believers in her are brethren of the believers in the Lutheran Church.

4. Continuation of the translation of "the Contributions to the Christology of the Church by Dr. G. Thomasius, Professor of Theology at Erlangen." The translator remarks in the words introducing this continuation that the subject may perhaps seem to some too little practical and too speculative, but that the times and their needs require the like also in this country, since the God-denying elements which gave occasion to that very work of Thomasius, and which are apt to blind and befool even the educated, yea, precisely those who are most easily blinded and befooled, are penetrating here also in mass, not only in living individuals, but also in books.

5. "Cultus of the Lutheran Church," by the Rev. M. Loy. An interesting treatise, in which it is shown that the doctrine of every particular church expresses itself in its cultus; it is demonstrated how this is the case in the Roman Catholic, Reformed and Lutheran Churches, and it is lamented that the cultus in a large part of the Lutheran Church has departed far from what it ought to be.

6. Continuation of the translation of the account of the journey of the delegates of the Synod of Missouri, Ohio and other States to Germany, printed in the "Lutheraner."

7 "Remarks on the kingdom mentioned in the prophet Daniel, chap. 7, v. 7. The first part of this treatise contains the well-known interpretation of the passage indicated as referring to the Roman Empire; the other a brief presentation of the birth, life, suffering, death and resurrection of the LORD, connected with the former by nothing more than the remark that this happened in the time of the 'fourth beast.' The reader is therefore tempted to ask: What is the whole article for?