# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1854 02 14_S99
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

99

begin, and you know, there is also a permitted cursing! but with God's help I will compose myself and be calm. Meanwhile, with the festival program it is nothing for this time, your boys may quite calmly take off their Sunday trousers again, and if your turkey is to be eaten only at a feast of victory and peace such as I had just in mind, it has prospect of dying a natural death. It is right as you thought. It is again the old devil's game with the Union, as before, only much more hideous, stupider and more shameful, because played with more expenditure of truly very palpable hypocrisy. You see, Martin, that above the letter, where I wanted to begin with the festival program, is interrupted. The Pastor, namely, came for a neighborly visit. As he enters the room, he says: Good day, Master Hans, you are surely writing, certainly again to our old good friend Martin; I thought so when your wife fetched the sheet of paper from the parsonage. Well, I tell him everything so open-heartedly, whereupon the Pastor begins to laugh—you know, it is his way so, when the devil has once more hatched out his tricks, and I think there often lies more faith and joyfulness of faith behind such a laugh than behind many a long vinegar-sour face.— "You might have spared yourself all that, Master Hans," says he, "it is again nothing. The poor people are once for all harnessed in the treadmill of lies and hypocrisy, like a horse whose eyes are bound, and which must always turn in the same circle. What can the poor people bring out other than devil's dung, since their lord and master naturally pours nothing else upon the stones for them." I did not understand the dear man at all, and got somewhat into a temper, and said: "With your permission, Pastor, the Unaltered Augsb. Confession is surely no devil's dung, and that is surely what has come out this time." Thereupon the Pastor laughs still more finely, and says: "Neighbor! Neighbor! where have you had your eyes?" "Well, in the Friedensbote No. 12," say I, "and there it stands with clear words: 1530 Emperor Charles V."

Now you know, Martin, I have it so with me, when I have got hold of the main sentence of a writing, especially when it is marked with quotation marks, or printed in spaced type, and I want to read further, I fit the rest, which I often do not clearly understand, to this main sentence as best I can, and think, it must surely agree with it. The "Friedensbote," however, has it also in this way with it, that it makes a blue haze for its readers, as you did formerly at school, when you did not know whether you should write Mir or Mich. Then you wrote Mirch, and indeed indistinctly, and made also perhaps a blot upon the word, and let it come to what the schoolmaster wanted to read out of it. Enough, I had read the whole quackery of the "Friedensbote" after the resolution with quotation marks, according to my sense and the quotation marks, and rejoiced how earnestly and sincerely the messenger could speak therein. But the Pastor uncovered to me that in fact nothing else came out than the usual hypocritical lying talk which the Unionists always have in their mouths when they speak of their Union, to confuse simple Lutheran people, and with their tricks to paste up their eyes.—Besides, he then also fetched a bundle of newspapers out of his pocket, English and German, and think, Martin, there it stands in clear plain words that the 2000 in Berlin, after the resolution quoted above, drew up another, that with regard to the 10th Article of the U. A. C. every one may believe how and what he will!! And that was not perhaps a company of merry students who in a Shrovetide play wanted to make the Union ridiculous, such as we once saw on our travels in Jena. They were also no cobblers and tailors, like you and me, whom the devil cannot at all use for such shameful nonsense in their simplicity, but, as the Pastor says: professors, pastors, high state officials, counts, etc. No, that goes beyond all conceptions into the ash-gray. The people come together from every region of the world, go into church, preach, sing, pray, and make a mighty ado, speak of repentance, knowledge of sin, bowing of the heart, resolve at last to lay hand to the work, confess themselves publicly and solemnly with heart and mouth to the Unaltered Augsb. Confession, so that the angels in heaven are to begin to rejoice over it, and then by another resolution they twist the matter so that they come to stand quite again upon the old point from which they set out, like, as the Pastor says, horses in the treadmill of lies and hypocrisy. Thinking meanwhile, they have now already made the poor Unionist peasant and burgher people so stupid and confused that if they only once a year, with great pomp, rattle a little with the Unaltered Augsb. Confession, it is enough, whereupon every head falls again quite quieted upon the pillow, from which God had perhaps startled it through unrest in the conscience over the shameful falling away from the orthodox Church. That is indeed shameful. Ah God in heaven, look down, and have pity. And the dear Friedensbote is also quick at hand, shoves the lies into his messenger's sack, arranges his sweet-friendly face of love and peace before the mirror, and brings them to his patient "Evangel." sheep in the house, who let their eyes be pasted shut as well as I with the oath of the colors, and the resolution with quotation marks, and swear by stone and bone that the Union is as Lutheran as any synod in America or Germany. I would not like to be in the messenger's skin, Martin, I should become quite uneasy, yes anxious and afraid in it. For I will suppose even the best case, that it be as thick as a rhinoceros hide, when the Lord once with His terrible fist grips him on the cap and begins to conduct His arguments a posteriori, as our schoolmaster said when he swung out in earnest, he will surely feel it, and so that he will not get on his legs again in the whole long eternity. Martin, you know, Popery stinks me, very extraordinarily it stinks me, but the Union almost more. In Popery the devil still seems to me almost like an honest devil, in the Union he is quite the old serpent again out of Paradise. There he treads the Word pretty openly under his feet, here he comes sneaking up with the friendliest and most pious face, and will with his "Hath God said" bring better and worthier conceptions of God and His Word to simple people, which he twists and thereby corrupts men. There he kindles his stakes openly, and takes away bodily life from the children of God fresh in their joyfulness of faith, here he puts the poor wavering consciences into the thumbscrews and Spanish boots with his accursed pious-pretending maneuvers of falsehood and lies, and presses, and screws, and presses, until blood, marrow and life come through the bones, and confuses the poor people so with his hypocritical speeches of love, conversion of the heart, peace, etc., that such a poor fellow no longer knows where his head stands, and thinks that the way to heaven goes once for all through such thumbscrews and Spanish boots, while the great crowd finds with them the still convenient way, to proclaim the Lutherans dead dogs, or at most bastards, because they will not so love-ify and peace-ify and piety-ify, and despise the Word and the holy Sacraments, but stay by the Word, and go straight on their way to heaven.

Verily, Martin, this Church Diet is an important and worthy act, but hardly the final act in the play of the Union. What strange things we have lived to see! First a royal head, whom several potentates follow, abolishes the sworn rights of a whole Church, thus lays the curse of perjury upon the unhappy land, Ezek. 16:59, and decrees in good papistical fashion: there is no difference between lie and truth, and that you shall believe. The consciences awake, and say: "Royal Majesty, that we cannot believe, we are Lutheran, and must reject the Reformed error, and can also have no church fellowship with false believers." Thereupon it is said: "Fellows, you have not the love which is the chief sum of the Gospel, besides you are rebels who want to be wiser, and to have a more tender conscience, than your Prince, and his bishops and clergy, for that let the best cows be drawn from your stall, and be distrained upon, and your preachers go to jail, that you may learn better what Evangelical love is. And as to the perjury, and