# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1853 09 23_S20
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

20

Notice of a Death.

With deeply afflicted hearts we hereby discharge the heavy duty of informing the dear readers of a death which plunges all who love our American Zion into the deeper mourning, the greater the hopes were for this our Church, which sink with him into the grave.

For it has pleased the inscrutable God to call away our dear young brother, Georg Volck, late pastor of the German Ev. Luth. St. John's Congregation at New Orleans, in the State of Louisiana, from the midst of his faithful, scarcely begun labor, by a gentle and blessed death, and to receive him into the tabernacles of peace and rest.

From a letter of our blessed brother, in part communicated in the first number of this volume, the dear readers have already learned that, up to the 15th of last month, in the midst of the ravages of yellow fever round about him, and despite the most strenuous labors at the beds of the sick and dying, he still enjoyed, by God's grace, the best of health. From letters of later dates we learned that the dear man, also in the weeks that followed, could attend to his office among the healthy and the sick with unimpaired strength and joyfulness. The number of those falling sick and dying in the city began, as we read here with trembling joy, to diminish. It seemed that the threatening storm which we had seen hanging over shepherd and flock would perhaps soon pass away. But while we were just thinking that we might soon breathe freely again, without that peculiar, oppressive anxiety, it was just then that the LORD, who says: "Your thoughts are not my thoughts, and your ways are not my ways," made arrangements to take His servant from our midst. On the 29th of August he had still retired to rest in the evening healthy and well. But early in the morning of the following day he is awakened to visit a sick man who had been awakened and alarmed out of his security by him on previous visits, and who now, lying in the agony of death, desired spiritual aid, because he was anxious for comfort and with full force the question had awakened in him: "What must I do now to be saved?" Whereas otherwise our Volck, as had been urgently advised him, had always taken something before he visited anyone lying ill of yellow fever, this time his whole soul was so filled with concern for the helpless, terrified sinner that, without first applying that precaution, he hastened at once, fasting as he was, to him, in order to lead him into the wounds of Christ. He succeeds. Highly rejoiced, he therefore leaves the one who had been comforted in Christ, and tells one of the elders of the congregation his great joy over this precious first-fruit of his labor in office. Here he hears, to the doubling of his joy, that a few hours before likewise two souls, of whom one, a young man, had also first come through his ministry to a living knowledge of Jesus Christ, had gone comforted in the true faith into blessed eternity. During this whole day a certain odor of death would not leave him, which had clung to him from the moment when he had bent over a sick man already attacked by inward decay, to call out to him yet the last words of evangelical comfort. Notwithstanding, he yet held on the same day for those two who had died the night before the funeral address, the one in the morning at eight, the other in the afternoon at four o'clock

Wholly exhausted in body and soul he came at last toward evening back from the God's-acre, wrote yet a short letter—his last—to a pupil of the institution here, and betook himself thereupon, somewhat earlier than usual, to rest. In that last letter it says among other things: "For the present all my sick are indeed either dead or nearly well, but who knows what the coming night brings!? 'Deus providebit' (God will provide.) But I am too tired. The pen will no longer go in my hand. Therefore farewell. Greet your dear parents and schoolmates heartily from your G. Volck."—

On the next morning, the 31st of August, early at 5 o'clock, a fever chill awakens him. He goes to one of the elders, Mr. Hollander, who at once takes him into his house and, with his wife, into careful nursing, has a footbath prepared for him at once and calls in a skillful physician. The physician also appears at once and declares the sickness to be yellow fever, yet expresses the hope that God, since the sickness did not appear violent, would soon let the danger pass over. This hope, however, is not confirmed, despite all the helpful means applied and the most attentive nursing. The course of the sickness is indeed not a rapid one, yet the sickness increases in violence from day to day, and when the 5th day of the sickness comes, every trace of hope of life has vanished. So the dear man prepares to deliver his soul into the hands of his Savior, asks that the writer of this be told that he should announce his departure from this world to his dear father and his dear mother, gives the direction that his estate of books and other things be handed over to Concordia College, and then says—it happened early at half past six o'clock on the 5th of September—his confession of faith aloud and distinctly before those standing by. Thereupon he turns to Mr. Hollander with the question whether he could give him the testimony that he had proclaimed to them the pure and unadulterated doctrine of the Word of God? Mr. Hollander answers this question with a loud, confident "Yes!"—whereupon the dying man, gathering together all his strength, sings the following first verse from the 370th hymn of our hymnal:
"Soar up to thy God,
"Thou troubled soul!
"Why liest thou, to God a mockery,
"In the cave of melancholy?
"Dost thou not mark the cunning of Satan?
"He would by his striving
"Quench thy comfort, which Jesus Christ
"Hath won for thee."
Already before this he had exclaimed from the 362nd hymn:
"I am yet thy dear child,
"In spite of devil, world and all sin."

His last words, finally, were: "O Jesus, thou Son of God, have mercy on me! O Jesus, be gracious to me, a poor sinner." Whereupon he fell gently and blessedly asleep, namely on the day named, early at 8 3/4 o'clock, in this his Jesus, in whom he had believed in life and whom he had confessed with word and deed and preached faithfully and zealously, having brought his life no higher than to 22 years and not quite three months. He had, as a testimony of his faith, expressly declared his will not to be buried by a preacher of that place. So the members of the now orphaned congregation themselves undertook the solemn burial of the dear body. After they had laid it in a coffin and, as a testimony of what the departed had taught, had laid a Bible and a catechism with it, they carried him, amid loud weeping and sobbing, first into the church, where they set him down before the altar. After the singing of hymn No. 430 of our hymnal and after the reading of the 40th Psalm, Mr. Hollander, requested by the congregation, then delivered a short address, upon which the solemn interment followed in the Protestant churchyard, and indeed in the family burial plot of Dr. Wolff, in the presence of an assembly very numerous under the present circumstances. The congregation had indeed wished to lay the mortal body of its pastor, become so dear to it, to rest upon its own church ground, but had not been able to obtain permission for it.—

The departed was born at Augsburg in the Kingdom of Bavaria on the 15th of June 1831 of godly parents, from whom he received the most careful Christian training. The parents later exchanged their residence at Augsburg for Nuremberg, where they still are at present.*) After our Volck had attended the gymnasia of the two cities named for a series of years, he resolved to devote himself to the American ministry and therefore to prepare himself for it in America itself. His dear parents consented heartily to this Christian purpose. Becoming acquainted first with our institution at Fort Wayne, he entered it here in the spring of the year 1849 and enjoyed here, besides the instruction of Prof. Dr. Sihler, for some time yet the faithful teaching of the late Prof. Wolter and Prof. Crämer. Since

*) See "Lutheraner", Volume 8, p. 113.