# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1854 08 30_S2
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

2

the Church now not only wages foreign wars with those who will not belong to her, but that even the terrors of civil war rage in the midst of the city of God, in the midst of the Church's fortress, in the midst of the very camp of Christ. For it cannot be denied, all such strife and conflict is certainly a bitter fruit of the sin and depravity of men. If all Christians were as they ought to be, there would at least be no conflict and strife in their bosom. It is especially lamentable that so many who are not yet Christians stumble and take offense at this disunity among the Christians themselves, and are lost over it. It is further certainly true that those preachers who stir up quarrel and strife in the Church and split and rend it by their contentiousness, their obstinate insistence on being right, their self-will, their conceit, their stubborn adherence to errors once uttered, and the like, thereby sin horribly; it is true, it is a terrible sin when someone not only separates himself from the orthodox Church, but also gives occasion for divisions, parties, factions and sects to arise within it.

Yet, beloved reader, however lamentable, yes, however deplorable the discord now taking place within the Church may be and in fact is, there is nevertheless also a side from which, viewed, one may very well be comforted and set at rest about it. To state and prove this in this preface, we are urged by something we hear from many of our readers, well-meaning also.

As we hear, there is namely a considerable number of readers of the "Lutheraner" who indeed heartily agree with its confession of faith, but who are thoroughly dissatisfied, yes, grieved, that the "Lutheraner," instead of making its swords into plowshares and its spears into pruninghooks, has, especially in the last years, on the contrary turned the plowshares into swords and the pruninghooks into spears, or, to speak without figure, instead of building up peaceably, has almost only fought and quarreled and so, as they think, has only increased the present discord in Christendom.

To this we must first answer as follows: It is true, the "Lutheraner," which is intended in the first place not for preachers but for their hearers, has in the last years contained many controversial matters with which those for whom it is chiefly intended, and who also make up the great majority of its readers, ought not to have been troubled. But we must ask you to consider that our Synod has hitherto had only the "Lutheraner" as its organ, through which it therefore could also discuss exclusively what otherwise could interest only its preachers. At the beginning of the last year, therefore, the readers were indeed promised that a periodical intended especially for the preachers would appear within our Synod and that then everything that is palatable only to theologians would be left out of the "Lutheraner." Alas! this has indeed not come to be carried out; and so the poor "Lutheraner" has still had to carry, though with reluctance, much from house to house of which it itself foresaw that it would make it a not very welcome guest in many a house. For the comfort of the dear readers, however, the assurance can now be given that the "Lutheraner" will no longer give this ground for complaint. The Synod has taken the matter still more to heart in its last sessions. The editor of the new preachers' paper has now been appointed, and unless God lets some special hindrance come in the way, it will shortly go forth beside the "Lutheraner" as a sister.

However comforting it will be for the readers to hear that we, the hitherto editor of the "Lutheraner," will then leave the publication of this paper to more skillful, better hands, we yet believe we must not conceal from the dear readers that the "Lutheraner," under the new editorship also, will in any case retain its hitherto character, that is, will not so much be a paper for edification in the ordinary sense, but will be used above all to defend the pure doctrine of our Lutheran Church and to discover, to combat and to refute the false doctrines which want to force their way in here into our Church. Our Synod proceeds from the conviction that newspapers have by no means the task of furnishing the material for the daily edification of Christians. For that are the Holy Scriptures, the public preaching and the old, glorious, unsurpassable devotional writings of our Church, and it must be regarded as directly most pernicious if the religious newspapers have the result that Christians are thereby led away from the reading of those incomparable core writings, or even from the reading of the Bible. Religious periodicals, moreover, which are constantly filled with a great quantity of all sorts of edifying trifles, produce a certain spiritual daintiness, which more and more takes a disgust at the right wholesome food for the soul. Still more dainty do those religious newspapers make the readers which communicate all sorts of romantic so-called Christian stories, which are meant to serve half truth, half fiction, half edification, half the entertainment of the fancy, and which would, as it were, smuggle Christianity or Lutheranism also, with all manner of adventurous tales, in among people who are prejudiced against it. Most wretched of all are certainly those papers which, because they have no aim at all except perhaps to obtain paying readers, give a Russian salad of everything.*) Our Synod is convinced that the proper task of a religious newspaper at any time consists partly in making known the events concerning religion and the Church or the kingdom of God in the course of its time and in illuminating them with God's Word, partly in taking upon itself the defense of the truths especially endangered in the course of its time and the exposure, combating and refutation of the opposing errors. This aim, according to the determination of our Synod, the "Lutheraner" will also keep in view henceforth. The "Lutheraner" shall and will remain a polemical paper, that is, a paper for the defense of the truth and for the combating of error.

At this many a one will perhaps call out to us: So the "Lutheraner" wants to go on stirring up and feeding the fire of discord which now burns within the Church? It will, then, be no messenger of peace, which it ought to be as a proclaimer of the gospel? How will it answer for that before the LORD?

The answer to these objections we intend to give in the next number of our paper, and to show there how we are to regard the discord concerning the doctrine of the divine Word and the participation in it according to God's Word. In the meantime we ask the beloved reader to compare the following passages of Scripture and to reflect on their true sense: Matth. 10, 32—37. and Luke 12, 49—53.

(Continuation follows.)

(Sent in by P. Röbbelen.)
Sermon
on the 7th Sunday after Trinity on
the Gospel Mark 8, 1—9.

That the LORD Christ has to do also with bodily goods has been set forth in former years on this Sunday. I will only remind you that whoever would exclude our Savior from the food and necessities of this temporal life would deny the faith. For Christ is, as true God, Creator of heaven and of the

* Of the pernicious character of sectarian papers, in which all kinds of errors are defended, or in which, as we find, for example, in the "Amerikanischer Botschafter," the principle is followed that all sects are good churches, that the differences in the various Christian religious parties amount to little, that the few (!) errors of the erring are not to be rated so highly; by which the most wretched unionism, religious indifference and religious mixing is promoted — of the pernicious character of such papers we naturally do not yet speak here at all. It is remarkable, by the way — that we mention this also — that among others the "Amerikanischer Botschafter," while it embraces all sects brotherly except the Roman, from time to time at least spews out its poison and its gall against the Lutheran Church. Proof enough that with this paper a bitter enemy is invited as a guest into Lutheran congregations.