# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1854 10 24_S35
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

35

in itself, which any people of modern times can show. I do not, of course, mean the German literature of recent times, which under God's heavy judgments has become a channel of the apostasy and wickedness of the last times, and if we were to speak of that, we could only wish that it had never found its way across the sea to America. We mean rather the German literature of earlier times, especially of the time of the Reformation, to which no other in European Christendom can be set beside. What are all the English ascetic writings of a Goodwin, Baxter, Bunyan and others, compared with a book like Luther's Haus- und Kirchenpostille or Scriver's Seelenschatz? Or what is the whole hymnological literature of England compared with a single old hymnal of the Lutheran Church? If our children forget their mother tongue, the English language, in which the Lutheran Church at present has, so to speak, no literature, offers them not the poorest substitute for it. And whence came the decay of the Lutheran Church in America? Did it not come for the most part from ignorance of the German language, whereby the rising generation fell into the hands of the English churches? The writer of this has himself heard from the mouth of a grandson of one of the first German Lutheran preachers in America that ignorance of the German language was the occasion of his joining the English Episcopal Church.

But what can we do? Without doubt we must make the beginning with our youth and lay the foundation in the school. German Lutheran parents should speak nothing but good German with their children in their family circle. Sadly, many Germans are the foolish apes of foreigners; one thinks nothing is decent and genteel enough unless it is put on an English footing. Sensible Germans ought also in this to show a manly sobriety, and that far from pedantic German-mania, yet also not to be ashamed in a disgraceful way of their German origin, especially also in their language. Further, the German language should be cultivated in our parish schools with still greater care than is necessary in the old fatherland, so that a pupil might learn to speak and write it with fluency and the greatest possible elegance and correctness. A half-learned, bungling acquaintance with German can naturally awaken no fondness for German. Further, our pupils should early be made familiar, in suitable selection, with good models of German writers of old and recent times. To this the introduction of good German readers for schools contributes. I recall only the excellent readers of Wackernagel and Sartorius, also the reader edited by the North German Society, one or another of which ought not to be lacking in sufficient supply in any of our schools. To gain a taste for the German language, also a facility in reading, it does not suffice to use only the Bible or Hübner's Historien as readers. Finally, every one of our schools should, where at all possible, possess a small, select school library, from which pupils might take home a book every week as a reward for diligence and good conduct. One would not believe how children rejoice at it, how eagerly they read, from how much idleness and harmful company they are kept, how gladly also the older brothers and sisters, even the parents, have the lovely children's stories read aloud to them in the long winter evenings, and how thereby an intimate, cozy family life is promoted. Thank God! recent times are becoming ever richer in good children's writings, which one can unhesitatingly put into children's hands. Many of the writings of Schmidt, of Barth, of Stöber, of Schubart, above all the writings of Redenbacher, supply excellent material for a school library; gradually this would be enlarged by good accounts of travel, such as the older ones by Harnisch and the newer by Grube, or by children's writings on natural history, secular and church history. The children would gladly contribute their cents, which they otherwise readily spend on sweets, if they have the prospect of soon getting a new book to read again. Attention cannot be called earnestly enough to the founding of such school libraries. Should some passages not up to the standard occur in some of these writings for the young, a Christian teacher will know how, by timely correction, to render them harmless, and at the same time to awaken and exercise the gift of testing in the young Christians.

But above all this it seems to us not the least means of keeping the love of the German language from being extinguished among our youth, if at the same time the amplest opportunity is offered them also to learn the English language thoroughly. If one tried to keep the English language away from the child's field of vision, one would bring forth the direct opposite of love for the mother tongue. The more unreservedly one introduces the child into the English language, the more sober and natural a weighing of the two languages will develop in it, and it cannot fail that the more thoroughly it knows both languages, the more gladly it will give the preference to the originality of the German over the English language, decked out in gaudy borrowed feathers.

(Submitted.)

Eph. 4, 11. 12.

Since this passage is misused to distort the doctrine of the ministry at the expense of the royal priesthood of all Christians, it is well worth the trouble to examine it closely. The submitter of this lays it therefore before a kind reader according to the original text, which here serves especially to preserve Luther's translation from unlutheran interpretation.

V. 11. "And he hath set some to be apostles, and some to be prophets, and some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers." Here in the Greek, where Luther has translated "hat — gesetzt" [has appointed], there stands a word which means: "he has given," whereby it is also to be noted that the "he" is likewise expressly stated, which in Greek happens only when a particular emphasis lies upon it. The sense of this verse is accordingly: And He has given to the Church all the men who, either as apostles had the authority to proclaim in all the world the message of the resurrection of the LORD, or as prophets were equipped with the gift of expounding the Scripture to others, or as evangelists like Philip, Acts 8, to draw to them, by a living testimony of the grace of God, those who still stand afar off, or as pastors and teachers to administer the office which we know under the name of the holy ministry. Accordingly this passage is not concerned with how a servant of the Church is installed in his office by regular call, but only with how he receives the gift required for it, which he has in germ from his mother's womb, always long before he is placed in an office. One cannot therefore prove from this passage that the congregation does not appoint the preachers, although that could still hold even if "he has appointed" here meant as much as called and ordained, because the LORD does it nonetheless, when He does it in and with the congregation, when this acts in His name and thus in His stead. Cf. Matth. 18, 20.

V. 12. "That the saints be prepared for the work of the ministry, whereby the body of Christ may be edified." In the Greek this is given quite differently. Where Luther has: "daß die Heiligen zugerichtet werden" [that the saints be prepared], there stand only two words, namely one that corresponds to our German zu [for] and indicates the purpose for which the LORD has given apostles and the like, or what He wants to accomplish thereby. This Luther then expressed, according to German idiom, by the "auf daß" [in order that], as it also could not be better translated, unless one wished to speak like a foreigner. But this "auf daß" in turn brought with it that the following also had to be, so to speak, recast. For whereas the other of those two words, which stand in the Greek in place of the sentence quoted above, "that the saints be --," is only a simple noun with its attendants, which, as said, expresses the purpose which the LORD has in view when He adorns His Church with gifts, in German there stands a verb. It is understood that the sense is thereby not altered in the least: for what difference is it, to say according to the Greek: for the preparation (of the saints), or according to the German: in order that (the saints) be prepared? One would not need to speak of it at all