# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1855 01 02_S79
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

79

stormed, the defenseless monks murdered, and the bloodthirsty hatred turned especially against the priests and missionaries? how the persecution also broke out in the plain of Beirut, and the Christian families, fugitive, breadless, homeless, wandered about the land and fell from one robber's and murderer's hand into the other? And the Turkish officials? they did not check the atrocities, but made themselves accomplices, and the Turkish troops supported the persecution. At that time — nine years ago — agents of the French government endeavored to put a stop to it, but who worked against them? who hindered them? the English agents!!

At last, at the urging of the envoys of Christian powers, the Turkish government sent its Minister of Foreign Affairs to Syria to establish quiet. How did he go about it? Have they then forgotten everything, everything? He ordered a general disarmament! that is: from the Christians, who could hardly defend their lives, the weapons were taken; it was promised to protect them, and they delivered up 15,000 guns! Their persecutors, however, were allowed to keep their guns, the chieftain of these Christian-flayers was acquitted, while the foremost among the persecuted were cast into prison, and the persecution now first broke out in earnest! the Turks beat to death whom they pleased, on the pretext that not all the weapons had yet been delivered up; they fell upon the monasteries, maltreated the defenseless inhabitants in the most dreadful manner, hung the monks up by the feet and dashed them with their heads against the ground, plundered far and wide, levied contributions, tortured the women with quite choice satanic torments in order to learn from them where their husbands might be hiding, or where treasures were to be found. At Gazir a bishop, priests and other Christians were beaten, gagged, thrown into a cave, into which water was then let, etc. This is what the Turkish commissioners and troops did, who had been sent to Syria to establish peace.

What the Turkish peace commissioners practised in Syria was a system of continued oppression, a planned and regular persecution of Christians, a chain of humiliations, abasements and shameful torments, which were to drive out of the heads of our fellow-believers there every shadow of a recollection of their human dignity, and which were inflicted on them intentionally only in order to make them atone as severely as possible for the offense of the sympathy which Europe seemed to take in them, in order to torture them into submission.

And the envoys of the Christian powers wrote back and forth and forth and back, and the Turk laughed in their beards. Yes, that Minister of Foreign Affairs, the author of the dreadful "work of peace," was appointed envoy in London. And Sir Charles Napier said at that time (thus not yet ten years ago) publicly in the English Parliament: the Turkish government is the most disgraceful that exists under the sun. That same Charles Napier said this who is now in alliance with the Turks commanding the fleet in the Baltic. But in ten years one can forget much, lose much sense of honor, and forfeit a hand and both hands to the devil, after one has first given him a finger.

In Smyrna at the same time almost the whole quarter of the city which the Armenian and Greek Christians inhabited went up in fire, more than 4000 houses lay in ashes, and when the incendiarism renewed itself in the remaining houses — who was then caught at last in the act? the police soldiers of the Turkish pasha! At the same time the Turkish rabble threatened the Christians with new arson and general massacre. In the year after, the persecutions still did not cease. In Bosnia the Christians were pursued across the Austrian frontier, and Austrian subjects also were maltreated and murdered, and their heads stuck on poles on the frontier. Colonel Jellachich with eight companies undertook an expedition for the chastisement of the Turkish rabble, but almost fell into their hands himself, and new severed heads adorned the frontier. Only a larger division of the army succeeded in forcing quiet upon the Turks.

Such were the Turks up to the year 1845, and such they still are in 1854. But we witness the appalling spectacle that in 1854 Christian kings vie with one another in zeal to receive the Christian-flaying Turk into the circle of the European sovereigns!!

There is in the history of fallen mankind infinitely much of crime and outrage; but there is in the whole history of the world no people that has so gigantically, massively, and so systematically through centuries without interruption, heaped atrocity upon atrocity of the most monstrous kind, as that of the Turks! The pure voluptuousness of cruelty, the consummate dehumanizing of all human relations, the naked, absolute bestiality, combined with absolute faithlessness and with absolute pride carried to madness — in a word: the complete revelation of the devil is Turkdom, and in three continents the transformation of the most flourishing countries of the earth into dreadful deserts, into places of misery and woe, is this devilry's work and fruit! (Pilger a. Sachsen.)

Rabot, Duke of the Frisians.

Charles Martel, leader of the Franks, had in the year 734 overcome the Frisians together with their duke and brought them under his sway. He therefore had the heathen idols torn down and had them instructed and converted to the faith by Bishop Wolfram and other Christian teachers. When now this Rabot already stood before the baptismal font and was about to be baptized, he asked where his forefathers had gone, whether they were in heaven or in hell. When the bishop answered him: All who do not know Christ go to hell, Rabot went back again and said: Then it is better that I go with many than with few, and come where my forefathers also have come. — Was that not foolishly said? But you, child of the world, who follow the great crowd, do you do better?

Dr. H. Göde Dies Unprepared.

At Wittenberg there was a jurist and canon, Henning Göde, an Epicurean man. When he was sick, Dr. Luther came to him to comfort him. When he now saw that he was very weak, he said: O Mr. G., you are a weak man, you ought to be reconciled with God, confess, receive the absolution and the Lord's Supper, that you may be ready, when God calls you away, to die blessedly in Christ. The Epicurean man gave him the answer: There is no need yet, God will not deal so Swiss-like with me and surprise me thus; but soon speech failed him, and he died the next day without confession, prayer and sacrament. Therefore it is said: To-day, to-day, if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts, but turn to God.

The Seven Sacraments.

We have already once heard in the Lutheraner that a popish preacher proved from this that there are precisely seven sacraments, because the lansquenets never swore by two, but always by seven sacraments, and because at Cana there were six (!) water-pots in the wedding house. Another acute Roman theologian, Santius Porta, says in a sermon delivered before Pope Benedict XIII., for the sake of which he was elected Magister s. Palatii: it is exceedingly clear that there are seven sacraments, because the word "Dominus" (LORD) occurring in the Ave Maria consists of seven letters, of which D (Dimissio peccatorum, forgiveness of sins) signifies the sacrament of penance; O (Ordo, clerical state) the sacrament of ordination; M (Matrimonium, marriage) the sacrament of marriage; I (Initium, beginning of Christianity) the sacrament of baptism; N (Nexus, bond) the sacrament of confirmation; U (Unctio, anointing) the sacrament of extreme unction; S (Sanctum, the holy) the sacrament of the Lord's Supper. — Who can now deny that there are no more and no fewer sacraments? — From this one also sees how a man must set about it in order to attain places of honor in the Roman church.

The Baptism of Bells.

As is well known, the Roman Catholics go so far in the abuse of holy Baptism that they are accustomed to baptize bells themselves and to give them a baptismal name. Montanus, in his "historical account of bells," has himself communicated, from the time shortly before the Reformation, a letter of sponsorship in which several nobles ask the council at Tennstädt, at the forthcoming baptism of several new bells