# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1854 02 28_S106
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

106

Yet, my hearers, the work of spreading the Holy Scripture in the language of the people has not only Rationalists and Atheists for its opponents, but also a great party in the midst of Christendom, namely the whole Romish Church. And while the host of the unbelievers of our day mock our work as a vain and foolish one, the Romish Church, on the other hand, itself rejects it as a pernicious and wicked one. She says: What are you doing, you Protestants, in putting the Bible into the hands of all men without exception and inviting every one to read, to examine and to decide for himself? Do you not see what mischief you have already wrought thereby? — Whence come among you Protestants the hundreds of different sects? Whence come among you the thousandfold different opinions? Whence comes among you the brazen unbelief which you yourselves lament? — Does not all this come from this, that you have given up the Bible to every one without distinction and have called upon every one to judge and to pass sentence? —

How now? my hearers! Can these objections against the spreading of the Bible in the language of the people really take away our joy in our work? Can these objections really make us waver in the conviction that this work is a good work, pleasing to God and blessed? — Foolish thought! — A look into the holy Bible itself scatters all grounds against its spreading, as the rising sun drives away the mists that veil it. Let us therefore take such a look now into the holy Book, in order then to pursue the work all the more joyfully to which we have bound ourselves.

Text: John 5:39.

My hearers, I have read to you here a word of Jesus Christ which has always burned like fire upon the conscience of all enemies of Bible-reading and Bible-spreading in Christendom. It contains too clear a testimony. Therefore the opponents have also always been zealous to weaken precisely this word of Jesus Christ by all manner of twistings, and to get it out of the way. But whatever has been brought forward against the proof lying in it, all the labor has hitherto been lost. The word: "Search the Scriptures," and the mighty testimony lying in it, stands fast until this hour and will stand fast though heaven and earth pass away, and at the last day it will yet bear witness against all those who wantonly resisted Bible-reading and Bible-spreading. On the strength of this word, let me therefore now set before you:

The Spreading of the Bible in the Mother Tongue a Good Work;

that it is, for it is

1. a work commanded by God, and

2. a work blessed by God.

1.

Every one, my hearers, will admit: if it is permitted, yea commanded, to all men, thus also to the laity, to read the Bible in their mother tongue, then it is also permitted, yea commanded, to spread the Bible among all men. That it is not only permitted but also commanded by God that whoever can read at all should read the Bible, this is so self-evident, and is so often and so clearly stated in Holy Scripture, that when one is to prove it to Christians one is embarrassed only because one hardly knows which proofs to choose out of the thousands of them.

Consider first: the Bible is the book which God Himself has written, namely through the hand of His holy prophets and apostles; is it then even conceivable, is it possible, that there should be a man in the world to whom it were forbidden by God to read this His book? The Bible is the sun for the souls of men, and God should indeed let His bodily sun rise upon all men without exception, upon the evil and the good, upon the just and the unjust, but His sun for the souls of men He should grant only to a few? The Bible is the great well of the world, filled with the water of eternal life; and while in all the world every one is free to quench his bodily thirst with the water of springs, wells, brooks, streams and lakes, should God, on the contrary, forbid many men to quench the thirst of their soul with the water of eternal life which wells up and flows in the writings of His prophets and apostles? We already abhor the man, and prophesy to him God's sure curse, who shuts up his well against the one who is bodily thirsty, and we would ascribe to eternal love that it shut up the well of eternal life to even a single soul? The Bible is the revelation which God has graciously bestowed upon us men languishing in darkness concerning God and that life, and God should forbid even one man to look into that which He has revealed? yea, God should hang a curtain, as it were, before His revelation for most men? The Bible is the letter which God has written to all men, and God Himself should forbid most men in the world to open and read this letter addressed also to them by Him? Yea, still more, the Bible is, as all Christians admit, the heavenly law-book which God has laid before mankind and in which He has caused to be written down what He demands of every man, and according to which He therefore will one day judge all men — and God Himself should forbid a man to read in it and to learn the will revealed and prescribed to him by God?

But here perhaps some one will say: "I admit that, according to this, it indeed seems as if the reading, and therefore also the spreading of the Bible, must be commanded by God; but may one not err in such inferences? What if God had nevertheless forbidden the reading and spreading of the Bible in the mother tongue for reasons beyond our comprehension?" — Well then, let us go into the Bible itself and hear God Himself on the matter.

How does Christ Himself first speak in our text? — He says: "Search the Scriptures!" He thus utters the command to read the Bible so clearly and definitely that no man can misunderstand it. And who are they to whom Christ addresses this so unambiguous command? Is it perhaps only the so-called clergy, the high priests, priests and Levites? or at any rate only the learned, the scribes, the elders of the people, the chief men of the Pharisees and the like? No, in what precedes it is expressly attested to us that Christ addressed these words to the "Jews," that is, to the whole assembled people thronging about Him. And indeed Christ requires of these that they not only read in the Scripture, but "search," that is, according to the original text, search into it most exactly and with diligence and zeal seek to penetrate its meaning. Is it not clearer, after this, than the noonday sun, that it is Christ's command that all men, also the laity, should read the Bible?

But let us go on. Do the prophets and apostles, on the other hand, express themselves otherwise on this point? By no means. Not only did all the prophets from Moses on, from time to time, have the whole Scripture existing in their times read to the whole people, men, women and children, word for word, but they also in their writings summon all the world repeatedly and solemnly to hear and read their written word. Thus Isaiah writes, among others, right at the beginning of his prophecies: "Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth, for the Lord hath spoken." The whole world under all the regions of heaven, all the peoples of the earth, Jews and Gentiles, Isaiah thus summons to hear what he has written; whence he continues in the 34th chapter: "Seek ye out of the book of the Lord, and read: no one of these shall fail, none shall want her mate: for my mouth it hath commanded, and his spirit it hath gathered them." — And what do the apostles do? They addressed nearly all their writings and epistles, partly to individual laymen, partly to whole congregations in cities and countries; but that there might be no doubt that All should also actually read their writings and epistles, they give this to understand here and there also expressly. Thus John writes, among others, in his 1st Epistle: "I write unto you, fathers, I write unto you, young men, I write unto you, little children." Again Paul closes his 1st Epistle to the Thessalonians with the solemn words: "I charge you by the Lord that this epistle be read unto all the holy brethren";