# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1854 10 24_S39
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

39

I doubt not that every one, for the sake of his health, would obey the warnings of the physician. Now, however, He who is the Physician of soul and body, and at the same time the LORD, commands us to avoid the herb of drunkenness and intoxication, just as much as the care of this present time, like deadly juice. Intoxication with wine is altogether destructive, for it alone it is that makes soul and body wretched together. For otherwise it may happen that, according to the Apostle, when the body grows weak, then the spirit is the stronger, and while the outward man perishes, the inward is renewed. But in the plague of drunkenness the body is ruined together with the soul, and the spirit is defiled together with the flesh. It weakens all the members, lames foot, hand and tongue, darkens the eye and wraps the spirit in forgetfulness, so that it neither knows nor perceives that it is a man." (Homil. 7. in cap. 10. Levit.)

Basilius Magnus, Archbishop of Caesarea, died in the year 379, writes: Drunkenness is an evil spirit, which storms upon the souls. Drunkenness, this mother of wickedness, this enemy of virtue, makes the brave timid, the temperate unrestrained, knows no justice, destroys prudence. For as water is contrary to fire, so intemperance in wine-drinking puts out reason. He who by drunkenness is robbed of understanding sinks down to the unreasoning beast and becomes like it. Yes, I might say that drunkards are more without reason than the beast; for all animals have ordered desires, but those whose soul is fettered by drunkenness and whose body (so) is filled with unnatural heat, are at all times and at every hour excited to unclean and shameful lusts; and not only does this unreason come over them, but the derangement of the senses makes a drunkard also worse than any animal." (Homil. cont. ebrios.)

Ambrosius, Bishop of Milan, died in the year 397, writes: "Drunkenness, a tinder of sinful lust, drunkenness, a stimulant of madness, drunkenness, a poison of frenzy; it changes the senses and the form of men; through it men become neighing stallions. Inasmuch as they, warm by the natural heat of the body and glowing by the unnatural warmth of the wine, cannot restrain themselves and are excited to bestial lusts. They lose their voice, they change color, their eyes glow, they pant with the mouth, they become senseless. Hence come dangerous madness, hence the heavy punishment of the stone in the bladder, hence the destructive indigestion, hence the frequent vomiting of the food taken in excess, so that the bowels give up blood. Hence come also the empty phantoms, the uncertain eyes, the staggering gait; often they leap over shadows as over ditches. With their sight the earth reels for them and seems to them suddenly raised and sunk and as it were turned upside down." (Lib. de Helia et jejun. c. 16.)

(Continuation to follow later.)

World Affairs.

Several times I have undertaken to tell the readers of the Lutheraner something of the latest world affairs, but it would never succeed. What could I have reported from the United States? Pestilence, dry weather, dearth, these visitations of God have befallen us, but who heeds them? Every newspaper reports atrocities of all kinds, murders, frauds, evidences of a rudeness and godlessness scarcely heard of among heathen, evidences in part also of an education of the youth in the United States, which has not its equal in levity, carelessness and folly upon the face of the earth. Railroad companies, owners of steamboats, manufacturers drive with their avarice and greed the murdering on a grand scale, but no one asks any more, in a mishap caused by want of supervision or of the necessary number of workmen, whether men have been killed. Capitalists and money-grubbers with grand swindles bring the poor, widows and orphans out of their small possessions, to which so much sour sweat clings, but one is inclined to scold the poor man for having let himself be cheated; the rascality of the rich swindler remains unpunished. Soothsayers and fortune-tellers advertise their arts in all the newspapers; the newspaper writer pockets the fee for the insertion and writes an article on the enlightenment and culture which is spread by the American press; the soothsayer finds more customers and earns more than an honest workman; and we, finally, are to believe that we dwell among the most enlightened and best educated people in the world. One roars from all sides against the Jesuits, and it is true, Jesuitism is antichristian through and through; but in order to fight against them one chooses a thoroughly base, mean-spirited, cowardly means; one gathers the opponents of the Jesuits into secret societies and thus confesses that one holds a bad, godless means just as well as the Jesuits to be serviceable, where it is a matter of attaining a good end. More than the constitution of any other country the constitution of the U. S. requires that the inhabitants and citizens thereof possess and practice the virtue of self-control, of self-restraint, keep themselves in right discipline, maintain themselves within the limits of the divine commandments and of all good human order, law and custom, but those who still practice such virtue and exhort others thereto are called Old Fogies (crotchet-mongers, nightcaps), and unbridled the younger generation rushes onward—whither?

In Europe God has given a richly blessed harvest, the dearth is at an end, one scarcely thinks of it any more. For a moment the eyes turned to Spain, where there was again a revolution, that is, a change of ministry forced upon the Queen and the banishment of the Queen-Mother Maria Christina. Now all look again to the East, to the theater of the war between the Turks, English and French on the one side and Emperor Nicholas of Russia on the other. In the Baltic the English Admiral Napier has razed a strong Russian fort on one of the Aland Islands, Bomarsund, and taken some merchant ships, but now, since there will soon be ice there, returns home; in the White Sea the English bombarded some monasteries on the coast. With the fighting on the Danube it is over; Omar Pasha is encamped on the Danube, Gortschakoff with the Russian army on the Sereth, and like a wedge pushed in between lies a strong Austrian army between the Danube and the Sereth, between Turks and Russians, in Moldavia and Wallachia, and prevents further fighting. An Austrian army, you ask, has Austria and Germany with it given up its neutral position? — No; but when the Russians were just besieging the strong Turkish fortress of Silistria on the Danube, and the English and French were marching up to help the Turks, Austria, in agreement with Prussia and the other German states, made the demand upon the Emperor Nicholas that he should at once evacuate Moldavia and Wallachia; at the same time an Austrian army advanced to the frontier. Nicholas yielded and withdrew his army from the said principalities. According to an agreement then with the Turkish government Austria occupied Moldavia and Wallachia and declared that the nearest occasion of the war, namely this, that the Russians seized and held those principalities, was removed and thereby a basis gained for new peace negotiations. But Emperor Nicholas had occupied the principalities because he wished to extort from the Turks the concession that he should be the protector of the Greek Christians in Turkey before all the other great powers. So the English and French now demanded of him through Austria that he should desist from that demand and open the mouth of the Danube to ships of all nations, etc. Nicholas refused: he had already conceded enough, was willing indeed not to make the war more complicated by further conquests, but to defend himself to the utmost against all attacks. Straightway the admirals of the Anglo-French fleet in the Black Sea, Hamelin and Dundas, received orders to carry out the undertaking against the strongest Russian seaport Sebastopol in the Crimea, long since prepared. A fleet of more than 700 ships with 3000 cannon, 25,000 [illegible]