# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1854 05 23_S158
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

158

And now, dear readers, behold how fine and lovely our Indian brethren show themselves, since the Gospel has enlightened and warmed their hearts. Behold how they have resolved to emigrate for the sake of the faith and to seek out the brethren, among whom they can be provided better and more orderly with the preaching of the Gospel than has hitherto been the case, since their missionary also no longer had an interpreter, and therefore could no longer preach to them.— The station Shebahyonk will now be given up and united with that of Bethany; thereby much expense will be spared the Synod in the future, a consideration which has contributed not a little to move the brethren in Shebahyonk to the removal.— So let us then be enticed by such fruit of the sweet Gospel among these newly converted heathen, that we may willingly help to found a new home for them! But may the LORD cause the united Indian congregations to grow a thousand times a thousand, that their seed may possess the gate of their enemies! Amen.

Frankenlust
the 14th of March
1854.
Ferdinand Sievers,
at present President of the Mission Commission
of the Ev. Luth. Synod of
Missouri, Ohio and other States.

Marriages Among Blood Relations.
The "Fredericksburg (Md.) News" says in an article on marriage among blood relations: "In the county in which we were raised, marriages in a rich and distinguished family have for a series of generations been contracted exclusively within the family, and the (visible) result of it is that scarcely a healthy person is to be found among them. — One of them has (as a sign of the divine wrath) bad eyes, another scrofula, a third is imbecile, a fourth blind, a fifth has a head the size of a turnip, and all have mental or bodily defects. In one part of Ohio there is an unusual number of lunatics and imbeciles, of which the blame is likewise laid to marriages among blood relations. — Several related families from the East settled together in single parts of the State many years ago, who always marry among themselves, whereby such afflicting consequences are brought about." (Bauernfreund.)

Deification of the Pope.
The Jesuit Thomas Maria Caraffa published a thousand theological theses and dedicated them to the Pope with the words: Paulo V. Vicedeo, that is, to Paul the Fifth, the Vice-god.— If one adds together the letters contained in these words which signify numbers, there come out 666, which number is that of the Antichrist. Rev. 13:18.

How an "American-Lutheran" Doctor of Theology Writes of the Lutheran Confession.

Under the heading: "The Symbolical Books," Herr Dr. Kurtz wrote, among other things, the following not long ago in his "Lutheran Observer" (No. 1075):

"When one considers that the originators of the symbolical books were born and brought up in the deepest darkness of ignorance, of superstition and of the corruption of the Roman system, and that the documents in question were written for the most part soon after their authors had come forth from that fallen and besotted system, it is no wonder if they contained error. To expect that people who had just ventured to break the fetters of centuries, who, so to speak, had only yesterday emerged from the thickest darkness and from the most deep-rooted prejudices, would be able all at once to distinguish and fully to grasp the whole truth of God on every essential point in all its length and breadth and height and depth, so that no possible error could creep into their system, and in particular that no additional facilities and advances in the art of interpreting the Scripture*) could enable their descendants to make improvements;—to look for such a result would be like the demand for a miracle, and nothing less than a miracle indeed could realize so absurd an expectation. . . The Reformers themselves opposed error, in contrast to the old doctrines and in open resistance to emperor, pope, cardinals and princes. And to tell us now, in the present enlightened age(!!), that we must revere the symbolical books including the error which they may after all contain, since the same were written by such great men, etc., that is to palm off on us the worst heresy. We can have no sympathy for error, from whatever source it may flow, or however venerable it may be through its age. We have no sympathy for church-political agreements and none for the faults of the symbolical books or for the theologians who defend these faults. We hold it the most thankless business with which one who professes to be a Lutheran can occupy himself, to contend for an error merely because it is found in the symbol. BB. No Lutheran should honor error, treat it with respect and defend it, because his fathers or the Reformers appeared as advocates for it."

*) It is indeed true that one now understands arts of interpretation of which our dear pious fathers had no idea, arts of interpretation which relieve men of the difficulty of believing more than what they can grasp with common sense and their five senses. Note of the Editor.

These and similar abominable utterances Herr Kurtz had made in consequence of an essay of the "Evangelical Review" in favor of the symbolical books. Called to account for it by correspondents, he prints the article once more word for word, and adds among other things: "We have gone through the editorial essay in question once more, and after a careful revision we find ourselves unable to retract even a single thought; it must therefore remain, with other essays of the editor, unrevoked, unaltered and unrepented of. . . We cannot accept every doctrine set forth in the Symbols as true. We believe and are convinced that they contain error, not essential, but nevertheless very considerable error, namely in regard to the Sacraments. We taught so when we entered the Lutheran ministry; those who examined us, and the Synod which invested us with our official commission, knew this;**) the majority of that Synod, the majority of the Lutheran preachers and the great mass of our lay members have imbibed the same views on this subject which we have. It is consequently impossible for us to take our stand upon the symbolical books." Herr Dr. Kurtz, then, cannot do otherwise; he must after all go with the majority, with the great crowd!

**) Fine principles come out here. Herr Dr. Kurtz thus thinks that his examiners and his Synod take the responsibility off him, since both, in spite of his hostile disposition toward the Lutheran Church, made him a servant of it and so let him into the fortress of the Church as a traitor.

Terrible above all, however, is what the Herr Doctor now says in what follows. He continues namely: "We remain on the standpoint of the Bible, and with the Bible alone, far from tradition, from human confessions of faith and human inventions; the pure unadulterated Bible, which alone is God's pure unaltered Word, is the proper standpoint for every Lutheran preacher. It was the eternal foundation upon which the highly celebrated Luther and his associates placed themselves and from which they would not let themselves be driven away for a moment or the thousandth part of a hair's breadth."—We are astonished at this appeal to Luther's abiding by the Bible. It is the non plus ultra, that is, the highest summit of all impudence. Is it not precisely Herr Dr. Kurtz who hears the words of God: "This is my body"—"by the washing of regeneration" (Tit. 3:5.)—as if a goose had cackled, and who says: "I cannot believe that, that is against common sense!" Is it not, then, Herr Dr. Kurtz together with his entire apostate majority, become a traitress, who just on that account will not accept the symbolical books, because they do not wish to be bound thereby to the Bible and its letter? For to what end are our Symbols, other than to bind to the Scripture, to the unadulterated Word of God?