# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1855 07 31_S196
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

196

light was now set publicly upon a high candlestick, so that it could be seen in the whole world. There followed upon it an undisturbed proclamation of the Gospel .. There followed the great advantage that we are no longer subject to the spiritual jurisdiction of the Roman bishops .. How many millions of men have now enjoyed these advantages in 200 years! Who, then, can tell the benefits which God has shown merely through this peace! Therefore it is meet that we hold public festivals of thanksgiving." — In the transition from the text to the theme Fresenius says: "When we look at the whole 147th Psalm, we find that King David praises God partly for His benefits in the realm of nature, partly for the benefits in the realm of grace. As to the latter, he thanks especially for the peace which God gives to His people. That, however, he has in view chiefly a religious peace, one can perceive from verses 15, 19, 20, where he speaks of the preaching of the divine Word and of the removal of the hindrances which had previously held it back." In the first part the festival preacher shows, among other things, that all, even the ungodly, have cause to give thanks for the religious peace, for, says he, as regards the latter: "how easily could they under persecutions fall away altogether from the outward true religion, whose power they do not experience in their hearts, and thereby lose, for themselves and their posterity, the use of the means of grace whereby they can still be converted!" In the 3rd part it says further, among other things: "As the benefit is, so must the praise also be. The religious peace is a public, a general benefit for whole peoples and lands: therefore our praise must be a public one." In the 4th part it says: "The first reason why God is to be praised lies in the words of v. 13: "For He hath strengthened the bars of thy gates." Here he looks to the founding of the peace. He pictures to himself the condition of the people of God as a city on which at first the houses, afterward the walls are built and finally the gates are set in, erected and made fast with bars. Thus God is wont to promote the welfare of His people by degrees. In the religious peace one has seen this especially. Before, for almost 40 years, work was done piecemeal, as it were, on the city of God, the evangelical Church, but now in the peace itself the gates were made fast. The second reason David expresses thus: "And He blesseth thy children within thee." These words refer to the enjoyment of the peace by posterity .. The third reason David cites thus: "He maketh peace in thy borders." These words refer to the spreading of the peace. It spreads out to the farthest borders .. The fourth reason reads, v. 14, thus: "And filleth thee with the finest of the wheat." These words refer to the outward prosperity of the Church of God in peace. The husbandman can sow and reap; the merchant can follow his trade; artisans, craftsmen, laborers, down to the humblest day-laborer, can carry on their business undisturbed, support and provide for themselves and their families, and every man can enjoy the blessing of God in quiet and peace ... The fifth reason stands in v. 14: "He sendeth forth His commandment upon earth." These words refer to the purpose of the religious peace. For just as the enemy of the human race stirs up wars of religion and persecutions for the sake of this, that the pure doctrine of the divine Word may be checked, suppressed, yea, if possible, wholly rooted out: so God grants the religious peace for the sake of this, that His Word may be proclaimed undisturbed. The Word of God is here represented as an ambassador of God. When the Lord gave His people a public peace, then, as it were, His Word was sent with a new authority; its rights of embassy were also, as it were, publicly acknowledged and confirmed by an everlasting law of the Empire, as had never happened before. The sixth reason David expresses thus: "His word runneth very swiftly." Here David looks to the spreading of the Word which the LORD has sent .. Now God by the religious peace gave His Word a cleared way, that it could run as an acknowledged ambassador of God. As indeed also since that time the evangelical confessors of the faith have carried the Word of God into other parts of the world, so that the pure Gospel is preached in the East and West Indies, (Asia, South and North America)."

(Conclusion to follow.)

(Contributed by Pastor Selle.)

Mormonism.

Among the signs of the times to which we as Christians have diligently to give heed belongs without doubt also Mormonism, which already in the course of a few years has found so extraordinary a spread that in the various countries of the old and new world it counts over 300,000 adherents, and in which, evident to every enlightened Christian eye, the satanic powers stir most mightily, whereby the arch-enemy is intent upon holding those dearly bought with the blood of Christ in his snares and bonds, or upon catching them again therein. In the "Grenzboten" appearing in Leipzig, of March and April of this year, there are found quite detailed reports about it, which I gratefully use in order to give the members of our dear Church as faithful a picture as possible of this remarkable phenomenon of modern times, that they may with me thank God the more joyfully that He has made our hearts firm in the eternal, sanctifying truth which is in Christ Jesus, our Savior, and which alone leads to heaven; and also that they may help to pray for the poor seduced souls and for the speedy appearing of His great Day, that the cunning and fury of the liar and murderer from the beginning may at last be quite restrained.

In the year 1830 it was reported in the neighborhood of Palmyra, N. Y., that Joseph Smith, the son of a farmer at Manchester, had, led by an angel, found in a hill a book, consisting of golden plates and containing the primitive history of America, and was preaching on the basis of it a new religion. Smith had hitherto enjoyed no particularly good reputation. Shy of work and ignorant, he had until then sought to support himself by frauds, but especially by befooling the superstitious as a treasure-digger. At first, therefore, he also could not win many adherents when that document, purportedly translated by him "at God's command out of the New Egyptian into English," appeared in print as "the golden Bible," which in the second edition called itself "the Book of Mormon." According to this book God, at the confusion of tongues at Babel, left to the children of Jared, as pious people, their language, and led them in nine ships to America, where they became a great people, but at last degenerated, and on account of their sins and vices are said to have been entirely destroyed by war, diseases and earthquakes. Later, in the time of Zedekiah, the Book of Mormon relates in another part, the pious Lehi of the tribe of Joseph, with his wife Saraih and his three sons, was led out of Jerusalem into the wilderness by the Red Sea and thence likewise to America, where they likewise multiplied rapidly, but then split into two hostile tribes, Nephites and Lamanites, and gradually peopled both North and South America. The Nephites attained to a high culture, and God blessed them with prosperity and thriving on account of their piety, which was regulated by a copy of the books of Moses and of the prophets down to Jeremiah. The Lamanites, on the contrary, were wild and wicked, and therefore received, as a punishment, instead of the originally white skin, a dirty red one. But the Nephites also became overweening through a prosperity of 300 years and departed from righteousness. Often warned by prophets, they nevertheless sank ever deeper, until, visited by terrible plagues, the greater part of the nation perished. The remnant, on the other hand, were favored with a personal appearing of Christ. After His crucifixion, resurrection and ascension, namely, He descended again to earth in America before the eyes of the Nephites assembled about their temple in the land of Bountiful, to proclaim the Gospel here also. He did wonders, prophesied and sent out apostles, who after His second ascension went through the land, in consequence of which the Nephites were again for almost 300 years a very godly race. But then unbelief and unrighteousness broke in anew, grace had to turn into wrath, and the Nephites, now living only in North America, were utterly exterminated by the Lamanites advancing against them from the south in a three days' battle on the hill Cumorah. Only the prophet Mormon and his son Moroni remained. The former had made an abstract from the traditions of his forefathers, which the son continued and, shortly before his death, at God's command, in that