# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1853 05 24_S135
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

135

Of One Who Was Said to Have Hanged Himself, and of Another Who Is Said to Have Sunk Deep.

It is told of Gellert that his enemies once spread the rumor that he had hanged himself. A friend wrote him this. Gellert answered that his adversaries were right to this extent, that he must indeed say with that hymn:

I hang and also hang on still
To Christ, as to a member's place;
Where my Head hath gone through,
There it takes me along also.

We were reminded of this story when we read the last number of the "Informatorium" of Pastor Grabau. This paper, namely, continues, leaving our chief arguments lying aside, above all to run down our person and our character as much as ever it can. We shall make no further reply to such sallies (also avoid all empty wrangling about words, not make what has already been proved the subject of contention once more despite the repeated bold assertions of our opponents, and take regard only of the real matter at issue between us.) Among other things we are called in that number of the "Informatorium" a "deeply sunken" man. To this we must answer the "Informatorium" much as Gellert did. Indeed, as a poor sinner we do sink ever deeper and wish to sink ever deeper — namely into the sea of grace, and the more the "Informatorium" lowers us, the more it helps us to descend ever deeper there and to seek our joy and honor there. This our Herr opponent will, we hope, leave us?

In Jesus' vine we stand and bide,
Engrafted and with God made one;
This is the highest joy and pride
(Though unbelief denies it done),
Whereby the Spirit drinks life's spring alway,
The soul in God's love-ocean sinks away.

Once more: it remains so, henceforth we shall do nothing but furnish the proof that our separation from Pastor Grabau and his adherents has its ground solely in his false doctrines and Romanizing tendency, and that for the sake of the truth and of our conscience we were and are constrained to bear witness against him. As to everything else, we let the "Informatorium" go on in peace, whether it grows weary of scolding at last or not.

We cannot refrain, on this occasion, from expressing our thanks to the dear brother who so kindly addressed our Synod in the number of the "luth. Herold" of the 15th of April. May the well-meaning man be assured that we ourselves know right well how we carry the treasure in earthen vessels, and therefore hear every brotherly admonition and correction with joy, and, where it agrees with the truth, are ready to accept it. As to the doctrinal points that have been touched upon and their relation to Luther, we cannot, however, agree with the friendly censor. Why? To show that we reserve for another occasion.

Out of the Depths I Cry to Thee.

Dr. Luther composed this hymn in the year 1524, after the pattern of Psalm 130; it is one of the eight hymns of which the first evangelical hymnal, Luther's Enchiridion, consisted. Still in the year 1524, on the 6th of May, an old poor man in Magdeburg offered this hymn for sale and sang it to the people on the street. When the burgomaster Rubin therefore had him thrown into prison, 200 citizens betook themselves to the town hall and demanded his release. Luther himself held this hymn in high esteem, as when in the year 1530 at the fortress of Coburg, during the Diet at Augsburg, just after he had awakened from a swoon, he called to his servant: "Come! let us, in spite of the devil, sing the Psalm: Out of the depths . . . . in four parts and praise and laud God therewith." At the burial of the Elector Frederick the Wise in the year 1525 the hymn resounded in the castle church at Wittenberg, and when Luther's body was conducted on the 20th of February 1546 from Eisleben to Wittenberg and on the way through Halle was carried by night into the Church of Our Lady, the people, who crowded around the coffin, sang this psalm with a pitifully broken voice, more wept out than sung. In the great Minster at Strassburg in Alsace, during the severe siege of the city by the French, on the 15th of January 1687 "Out of the depths . . . ." was sung, the last evangelical hymn that resounded in that glorious German church, since right afterward it was handed over by the French to the papists and is still in the same hands.

About the year 1704 a Jew in Frankfurt on the Main passed by the Church of St. Peter with his sister and heard this hymn sung. Thereupon he said to his sister that the hymn so seized him that he could not stop thinking of it. She rebuked him for it, saying that he surely should take no pleasure in such foolery of the Goyim (heathen). But he could no longer kick against the pricks, and after a short time he had himself baptized.

Matthesius, the pastor in Joachimsthal, relates as follows: Not far from Joachimsthal a noble lady, at the time of her hard labor and the distress and danger that had lasted several days, when almost all who were present let their courage fall, heard in the evening a poor little schoolboy before the house sing the verse: "And though it last until the night . . . ." Such a voice God let sound into the ears and heart of the troubled woman, and the Holy Ghost wrought thereby that from the boy's singing she took heart, courage and comfort again, and said: "Let us not despair nor fret, God sends us His baptized little schoolboy and admonishes us that we should not cease to wait upon God, though He tarry now. Let us knock once more, and cry to Him upon His Word, blood and precious oath; He will help, "that we shall learn in a short time." Thereupon the women fell upon their knees and said their Lord's Prayer in strong hope and comforting devotion, and before their prayer was quite ended God helped graciously, and the mother was gladdened with a healthy son, so that everyone praised and extolled the Helper in need.

The Elector John George I of Saxony, who for 45 years ruled his land in blessing and from 1631 – 1635 carried on the struggle against the Catholic League, had often sung this hymn, especially the 4th and 5th verses, at home as well as in the field camp. Therefore a chief court preacher, Dr. Weller, at his deathbed also prayed these two verses for him, whereupon he prayed along most devoutly, and after their conclusion on the 8th of October 1656 commended his spirit into God's faithful hands.

The beautiful melody "Out of the depths . . . ." was in former times sung so diligently and eagerly in the houses themselves that even a siskin, belonging to an innkeeper's wife at the Ziegenschacht in the Meissen Upper Ore Mountains, learned to sing it also. When in the Thirty Years' War the soldiers once plundered everything, the innkeeper's wife, as she snatched together her best belongings, threw the cage together with the siskin under the bench. There the poor little bird had to stay and suffer hunger. At last, when the soldiers were gone and the innkeeper's wife came back, she stands thus in the room and looks sadly into the devastation. Suddenly my siskin under the bench begins its little song: Out of the depths I cry to Thee . . . . , so that the tears came into the poor woman's eyes. If the bird in anguish and distress has sung so, how much more ought we to do it!

"There will never be a Council, where the people should agree together, from the Holy Ghost. God also lets this happen for the very reason that He Himself will be Judge and not suffer the judging of men. Therefore He commands everyone that he know what he believes; it will not help that thou sayest: thou hast heard and preached it so, the devil asks nothing after that. But when thou hast God's Word, thou canst say: there I have the Word, why should I ask further what the Councils say; so he must retire.

Faith is not a quality, a skill, that is, a human thought, according to reason; the same is worth nothing in itself, but that is faith which, set forth and enwrapped in the Word, apprehendeth Christ through the working of the Holy Ghost.

Luth. Werke. S. 195. Eisl. A.