# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1853 11 23_S53
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

53

to obscure the sun-bright words of God concerning the saving and regenerating power of holy Baptism is not worthy of a refutation. Whoever allows himself to be seduced by such miserable babble to depart from the clear words of his God and Saviour is worth nothing better than to be robbed, by such frivolous, high-minded and self-righteous men, of the dearest comfort of God that is laid in the wells of grace of holy Baptism. O ye dear Lutheran Christians, let yourselves be warned on this account! Hold fast to those words of God concerning your holy Baptism, and whoever would make you waver in them, would darken their bright light for you and twist and pervert it with his glosses of reason, to him cry out: "Get thee behind me, Satan, thou art an offence unto me: for thou savourest not the things that be of God, but those that be of men." (Matth. 16, 23.) As often as the Anabaptists say to you: "Yea, hath God said" (1 Mos. 3, 1.): that man is saved through Baptism? "Hath God said": that one is washed from sins through Baptism? "Hath God said": that Baptism is a washing of regeneration? and so on, and so on,—know that it is then Satan who speaks again through them, as he once spoke to Eve: "Yea, hath God said?" and as he spoke to Christ: "If thou be the Son of God?"—and do not then, like Eve, let yourselves be drawn into disputations of reason with him, but say with Christ again and again: "It is written!" (Matth. 4, 4. 7. 10.) Before this weapon all perverters and destroyers of holy Baptism will flee and take themselves off.

Only one thing do we wish to mention here concerning the objections of the Anabaptists. They seek, namely, to give a semblance to their godless error, that there is nothing to Baptism, by saying: How can Baptism save, since Christ alone saves? By this objection, however, the poor Anabaptists prove with what dreadful lack of understanding they are possessed. They confuse, namely, the meritorious cause of salvation and the means that offers the same. To be sure, Christ is the only meritorious cause of salvation, and would to God the unhappy Anabaptists knew and believed that from the heart! But they not only do not know and believe that,†) but they would now take from us poor men also the means ordained by God, whereby God offers, presents and seals to us the salvation dearly earned by His dear Son Jesus Christ, as the only Saviour. The blind men do not see that one must indeed say: Christ alone saves,—namely as the only meritorious cause; the Word and the holy Sacraments alone save,—namely as the only efficacious means of grace; faith alone saves,—namely as the only hand that grasps the proffered salvation; grace alone saves,—as the only inward cause moving God, etc. It is just so with the objection that St. Peter says plainly that holy Baptism is the covenant of a good conscience with God, 1 Pet. 3, 21. Therefore it is not a washing of regeneration! This is a counterpart to the objection of the Reformed, who also say, since Christ says: "This do in remembrance of me," therefore in the holy Supper there is not the body and blood of the LORD! Such objections can be explained only from a judgment of God, which comes upon those, and through which those are given over to ever greater blindness who wilfully shut their eyes to the splendour of the Gospel. For what man of sound senses does not see that when one thing is said of a matter, it is not thereby meant that the other, which is also said of the same, be denied? What man who still has sound senses will, when it is called out to him: "Eat and be merry!" conclude from the last words that therefore he should only be merry and not eat? What man who still has sound senses will, when God says to us that He establishes a covenant with us in holy Baptism, conclude from this that therefore Baptism is only a covenant, and all the other promises of the forgiveness of sins, of regeneration, of salvation, etc., which God has attached to His dear holy Baptism, are null and nothing?

†) Precisely in that the Anabaptists regard Baptism as a good work of human obedience, which they perform only in order, like Christ, to fulfil all righteousness, they overthrow by this their doctrine of Baptism the fundamental doctrine that Christ alone and no work makes righteous and saved, and that Christ alone, and no man, not even a high-minded Anabaptist, can "fulfil all righteousness" and fulfil it. Matth. 13, 15.

May God have mercy on these poor blind men!

(To be continued.)

(Sent in by A. H.)

News from Europe.

Letters just arrived relate that Pastor Eichhorn, the faithful champion of the Lutherans in Baden, has been thrown into prison again. For some time already the Lutherans in other countries, for example in the Kingdom of Hanover, have gathered love-gifts to stand by that brave witness of the faith in his distressed situation.

At Stade, in the Hanoverian province of Bremen and Verden, on the 9th of September several Christian women, on behalf of many Christian sisters, delivered 350 Rth. to the treasurer of the "Society for the Support of the Lutheran Church in America," that this sum might be applied to the support of our Concordia College and Seminary in St. Louis. It is the proceeds of women's handiwork, which was brought together by those friends of our good cause.

The directions for German emigrants, which were issued by the Immigration Committee of our Synod through Messrs. P. Brohm, Bergmann and Birkner in New York, have already been printed in full in the Stade Sonntagsblatt, and may also be had singly in Stade at 4 Pfennigs a copy. Would that the readers of the Lutheraner, when they write to their relatives in Germany, might call their attention to this excellent undertaking.

For some years there has existed in Hermannsburg, a beautiful village in the midst of the forests of the Lüneburg Heath, an institution for the training of missionaries among the heathen. The pastor there, Harms,—or rather I should say, the peasants under the leadership of Pastor Harms,—have founded this mission house, whose director is Theodor Harms, the brother of the founder. However much we must lament that that highly gifted preacher, the elder Harms, often scorns the sound and wholesome form and manner of teaching of the Lutheran Church and follows the violent and enthusiastic method of the sects, yet we must also rejoice that in probably no mission institution of Germany, the Leipzig one excepted, is the Lutheran doctrine taught so purely as in Hermannsburg, and that altogether there, among teachers and hearers, churchly character and churchly discipline more and more prevail. Pastor Harms has placed his mission institution under the supervision of the Lutheran Consistory at Hanover, and many who until recently regarded the whole undertaking and its leader as un-Lutheran and sectarian have become warm friends of it. No institution of the kind in Germany costs so little as this: in the last year they spent only 1000 Rth., although eight young men could just be sent out for missionary service. Granary, cellar and kitchen are, that is, constantly filled with provisions of every kind brought in by the peasants. 128 shirts had been sewn, 80 were just in the making; of stockings there is a supply for many years. When the time drew near that 8 pupils were prepared for missionary service, Pastor Harms looked about among the heathen peoples to see whither God's finger might point him. He resolved to send all 8, namely 6 preachers, Cohrs, Hohls, Meyers, Schrader, Schütze, Struve, and 2 teachers, among the wild people of the Gallas in eastern Africa (descendants of Ham), and, if possible, to give them some peasants to go with them, in order thus to lead a small Christian congregation into the midst of the heathen. But what ship was to bring the missionaries to those regions? There are no ships going from Germany thither. Harms resolved to build a ship himself for the mission service. The writer of this laughed himself when he heard the story, and said, that is dreadfully impractical! But the ship is finished, a brig of 120 la-