# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1854 06 06_S165
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

165

tel, smiled in its childlike simplicity at everyone.— And yet the LORD had so graciously protected them on their toilsome and long pilgrimage that on the whole journey only some hundreds of people died, and many aged, sick and weak persons were able to complete the whole return journey safely. But soon after their arrival in Prussia several died as a result of the hardships they had endured.

So long as they were in Berlin, they were preached to not only on Sundays but also nearly every day of the week, and were catechized. The King also gave immediate orders that four candidates should be examined and ordained and sent with them to Prussia as their preachers and pastors. One of these was Benedikt Friedrich Hahn of Gardeleben in the Altmark. The others were named Bräuer, Knoch and Haak; the last of these, however, soon turned back, and in his place came Tobler, a native Salzburger, whose parents had fled earlier to Switzerland with the countrymen of Schaitberger, who then studied in Tübingen and Strassburg, afterwards came back into the Salzburg mountain valleys and secretly strengthened his countrymen from the Word of God, without however being ordained, which he now became, since he was following after them. The Salzburgers received these their new and first pastors with love and joy. In the Garrison Church they were ordained. Field Provost Gedike performed the ordination and preached, to the great edification of the Salzburgers and of all present, on the words of Matth. 9, 36-38: "But when he saw the multitudes, he was moved with compassion on them, because they fainted, and were scattered abroad, as sheep having no shepherd. Then saith he unto his disciples, The harvest truly is plenteous, but the labourers are few; pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he will send forth labourers into his harvest."—

From Berlin those who had not remained there, or had already stayed behind on the way, now went to Old Prussia. They went through Pomerania to Stettin and from there by water to Königsberg, but some went thither by land through the two Werben. Their new preachers Bräuer, Knoch and Hahn were now already traveling with them, and 250 persons first took ship at Stettin with the preacher Bräuer. As soon as the ship sailed from the shore, they began to sing: "Von Gott will ich nicht lassen." Wet eyes watched them from the shore.—The Salzburgers served the LORD diligently also on the way, and all the more since they now had their own pastor with them. On Ascension Day, which fell during the sea voyage, as well as on the Sundays, their preacher held divine service with them on the deck, and morning and evening a prayer hour. Their attention and desire for the Word of God was very great, and the longer they heard their preacher, the more gladly they heard him; indeed, when he fell sick on the way, the grief and lamentation over him were exceedingly great. But the LORD strengthened him again, and he arrived with them happily and safely (only four persons had died during the sea voyage) on the 27th of May, 1732, at 3 o'clock, in Königsberg. A great multitude of the inhabitants streamed out to meet the dear guests so long awaited and longed for, welcomed them and distributed gifts among them. The next morning they, together with those from the second ship, which had arrived during the night, were solemnly conducted into the city. The preachers of the cathedral, the school children and several thousand people met them. They were led, amid continual singing, into the cathedral, where Dr. Masecovius preached them a powerful sermon, by which they were greatly uplifted. On the 30th of May those from the third ship were met in the same solemn manner and led to the Altstadt Church, where Abraham Wolf preached to them. On the 31st of May the fourth ship came. It was already late in the evening, yet the Löbenicht preachers, together with the school, fetched them that same evening into the city and conducted them at 9 o'clock to the Löbenicht Church, where Lysius preached them a sermon, and the service lasted until after 11 o'clock. The fifth ship was met by the preachers of Sackheim, and nothing was allowed to be lacking to any of them in spiritual and bodily refreshment. When those who were going to Lithuania (several tradesmen and also cattle-keepers had already stayed behind in Königsberg) marched on again, Dr. Quandt gave them a farewell sermon on Luke 6, 22. 23: "Blessed are ye, when men shall hate you, and when they shall separate you from their company, and shall reproach you, and cast out your name as evil, for the Son of man's sake. Rejoice ye in that day, and leap for joy: for, behold, your reward is great in heaven." In conclusion he called out to them: "So go forth, then, my brethren and sisters in Christ, inhabit the land which the LORD your God has appointed you, fear God, honor the King!"—

And they had cause to praise and thank the LORD their God, as they also did, who had at last, after all the storms, brought them to rest, and had kept them on the way, and as his flock had snatched them from danger and gathered them to himself. They had cause also to honor the pious King highly, for in Lithuania they found everything gloriously prepared for their reception; the favor of Frederick William had provided for them like a father.—

Unionistic Passage to Rome,

Recommended for Non-Use, by K. Ströbel.

Under this title there is found in the first quarterly number of Rudelbach's journal for 1854 the review of a writing by a certain Lütkemüller, who, first a Prussian Lutheran, afterwards a pastor of the Prussian-Union church, has finally gone over to the Roman church, and seeks in the writing reviewed to justify this change of church. We cannot refrain from communicating to our readers some things from Ströbel's excellent review.

Ströbel writes first of Lütkemüller's earlier departure from the Lutheran church: "Mr. L. imagines that he has renounced the Lutheran heresy (Ketzerei). By no means! How can he renounce it, since in reality it never was his religion? His whole book is witness that he has not lived through the Gospel within himself. He went out from us, but he was not of us. Whoever has had the Gospel become experience to him thinks of Popery only with disgust."

After Ströbel has then communicated Lütkemüller's description of the bottomless nature of the Union church, he shows that Lütkemüller finds his own image in the bottomless Union church, and that the Union church sees in Lütkemüller, her fully reared son, the end toward which she is hastening. Ströbel writes among other things the following: "Mr. Lütkemüller's wanderings bear the stamp of the Union, those of the Union the Lütkemüller stamp. He is for that very reason the most dangerous enemy that has ever risen against it, because its own heart's blood pulses in his veins. He holds up to the Union state church in his book the mirror of experience, in which it can behold its unavoidable future. Yes, its unavoidable future! For all religious adventurousness, as a breaking loose from the eternal norms of divine right, leads unavoidably into the arms of the Antichrist. The frivolous hope of seeing a rich Christian life bloom and ripen on the stem of the Union planted in 1817 has already now come wholly to nothing; from the inner driving force of this tree no one any longer expects any other fruit than friendship of the Lightists, Free-congregationism and similar wild berries, or at most a hollow pietism, a dead work-righteousness. The only hope still rests on the attempt to ennoble it from without by grafting and budding; but every experienced gardener knows that in this way no new strength, no rejuvenated blood, but only twigs and eyes can be supplied to a stem, and that the fairest shoots of the fig tree wither at once when they are planted in the sap of the thorn bush. All endeavors to awaken and to fix (firiren, make fast) confessional, especially Lutheran, religiosity in such a Union are like violent blows in the water, which after a momentary (instantaneous) agitation leave no trace behind.*) Lütkemüller's

*) Oh that this might be considered by those among the Unionists here to whom it is truly a matter of the spreading of the kingdom of God, and who therefore appropriate more and more of what is Lutheran! That they might not let themselves be ruled by the thought that the Union is now once for all an historical fact and has, just as well as other church formations, a right to live! that they might not employ the noble powers for the further building of a house that on the sand