# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1855 07 17_S188
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

188

A master stepped down from the loom
And in this house kept school:
He taught, among other things,
The children to sing Luther's hymns;
One heard here and there the hymns' sweet sound:
That gave occasion to the Reformation.

In the Reuss-Plauen lands of the elder line (Gera and Greiz) it was ordered that every preacher, five weeks after the festival, should send in to the consistories the jubilee sermons delivered, "neatly in folio and indeed in extenso (in full) and not in outline." In the Hohenlohe territory the pastors had to send in to the consistory, besides the sermon, also a description of the whole celebration.

In Wittenberg, on the occasion of the jubilee celebration, and indeed on the day before, five doctoral promotions took place. The Castle Church, in which this ceremony was performed, was partly hung with red and otherwise splendidly adorned with paintings and the like. A collection was taken up for poor Lutherans, and respectively for their church building in Thorn and Moscow. Before the break of day there resounded from the two towers of the parish church, brightly lit with lanterns, from two musical choirs the Te Deum laudamus, A mighty fortress, and Now thank we all our God, with trumpet and kettledrum, while the people assembled in the churchyard, the market and the nearest streets sang along. At 5 o'clock the early sermon began. At 6 o'clock the Rector of the University, accompanied by all the professors, by the doctors of theology created on the day before, and by the Ministerium, betook himself to Luther's former study, where those present struck up "to the honor of God, who has granted religious freedom," A mighty fortress, etc.; the students, who had followed in solemn procession, joined in the singing before the house under the sound of trumpets and kettledrums. At 7 o'clock the latter (the former at the head) went with song and sound and with the ringing of all the bells into the academic church for the holding of the principal academic festival service; after its conclusion the same procession moved to the parish church, where the youth from the German and Latin schools of the city had already entered solemnly under the leadership of their teachers. Here the service lasted until 1 o'clock in the afternoon. At 2 o'clock the vesper service with festival sermon began again in several churches, after the conclusion of which the "Maidens' School" made a procession around the church and the city school a procession through the city, singing "spiritual hymns to the praise of God and for the preservation of the pure doctrine of His Word." Meanwhile all the students of all the faculties, led by adorned marshals, had assembled and had marched with two musical choirs to the market. Here they formed a circle, sang the Lord God, we praise Thee, with bared heads, and at the close fell upon their knees in the middle of the market, whereupon one of them offered a fervent prayer to God. The less the spectators, of whom a great multitude were assembled, had expected this, the deeper was the impression this act made upon those present. All fell upon their knees along with them, without any summons to it having been given. One wept tears of joy. After a thrice-repeated thundering Vivat given by the students to His Majesty the King, the assembled finally dispersed and went to their dwellings. The close of the festival celebration of the day was made at 7 o'clock in the evening by the singing of several more hymns by the school choirs from the illuminated church towers of the city, in which the inhabitants in the streets and at the windows joined devoutly. At 8 o'clock in the evening, finally, the Wittenberg "Citizen Constables" set off outside the city a brilliant display of fireworks. —

Finally we remark further that at this Lutheran jubilee celebration the Catholics also stirred here and there. They not only published several writings opposed to the jubilee festival, but also made counter-demonstrations in many places. Since about that time in Augsburg a former Lutheran candidate, given to drink, who on account of his dissolute conduct had been unable to obtain any office in the Lutheran Church and had therefore become Romish, died, his burial was most solemnly conducted by the Romanists. A great number of the most distinguished inhabitants of Augsburg of the Roman Catholic faith, among others 64 clergymen and 59 servants of the nobility, accompanied the corpse of the deceased to the grave with great pomp, and at the same time had it made known in the newspapers that precisely on the Peace Festival of the Lutherans the corpse of a great saint, who "for 24 years before had been a Lutheran preacher, but, enlightened by the Holy Spirit, forsaking his own, had turned bitterly to the holy Rom. Cath. Church, had persevered in it constantly amid many hardships and had ended his life piously," had been most solemnly interred. — An Augsburg Jesuit wrote a writing under the title: "Whether there is a fruitful means of uniting the three religions of the Holy Roman Empire?" He begins with the words: "The Lutheran gentlemen are already preparing again for a jubilee festival in remembrance of the Religious Peace, which was concluded here in 1555 to the advantage of Lutheranism, to which the free exercise of the Augsburg Confession was thereby granted." Nevertheless, he adds, the hearts still stand in discord, and he concludes at last with the words: "Ah, my dearest Augsburg, resist the Holy Spirit no longer. Give to the Roman Empire, to the Church of Christ, to heaven the joy that thou be the first imperial city which, after the apostasy, is converted entirely and at once. Under a thousand Te Deums we will celebrate this Peace Festival and glorify it by a joyous love-feast in the golden hall of the excellent town hall. I take the liberty of inviting myself to it. Merry in the Lord we will drink, amid the booming of the guns, under the sound of trumpets and kettledrums, to the confirmation of the outward and inward Religious Peace: Long live the whole Catholic Augsburg! Once one! never more two! ever faithful! faithful to the Empire! faithful to the Church! faithful to God! Amen! May it come true! Amen."

In the next number we intend to give extracts from the addresses and sermons delivered, announcement forms, prayers and the like, and to indicate the texts and hymns chosen.

(To be continued.)

(Sent in by Pastor Hoyer.)

Build Churches and Schools.

We were earnestly admonished to the work named in the heading while considering the political liberty and the constitution of this land. We ourselves shall not enjoy the freedoms of the United States for long, nor will our children be able to rejoice in them, if we do not take care that true morality, Christian culture, Christian education be promoted, maintained and preserved among us by Christian churches and schools. This ought to be our first and chief care; for not merely does each individual act truly reasonably when he seeks first the kingdom of God and His righteousness (Matthew 5, 33), but we also, as immigrants who wish to found a home for ourselves here in a strange land, seek our best interest only then in truth, when we first prepare a firm place for the Word and kingdom of God among us.

By the building of Christian churches and schools the building of the houses for those institutions is, to be sure, also meant; and we ought to erect worthy houses of the kind, whose outward and inward appearance bears witness of their noble purpose. But the chief matter is that we and our children be built up in those earthly houses into a habitation of God in the Spirit, that is, into Christian congregations, founded on God's Word and Sacrament through living faith and united with one another through upright love (Eph. 2, 20. ff. and 4, 15. and 16.). For this we need proper preachers and schoolteachers.

Proper preachers and schoolteachers are always members of the congregation able in faith and life, examples to the congregation. But however earnestly we must look for this quality in them, if they are to be proper servants of the Word of God, yet we must not think that in able members of the congregation we already have proper preachers and schoolteachers. Another necessary quality which makes one fit for this office is aptness to teach (1 Timoth. 3, 2; Tit. 1, 9.), without which someone may well be an excellent member of the congregation, but never a serviceable preacher and teacher. Aptness to teach, considered in itself, involves two things: first, the comprehensive and ordered knowledge of Christian doctrine, which we call theological science, to distinguish it from the knowledge of faith that underlies it; second, the ability to preach the Christian doctrine simply and clearly and in general to administer the means of grace for the edification of the Christian congregation. He who wishes to attain both must on the one hand the gifts