# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1848 09 19_S11
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

11

ing. When Ulrich von Hutten, a nobleman from Franconia, offered him bodily help against the spiritual tyrants, he answered: "The world has been overcome by the Word, by the Word the Church has been preserved, by the Word also it shall be built up again: the Antichrist also, as he began without hand, so shall he also without hand be consumed by the Word."

Luther's whole labor was, who dares deny it? directed to leading Christendom back again into the Scripture. Therein his doctrine was rooted in all its articles. Whoever could convince him by it, to him the otherwise unbending man yielded, even if it were a child; what was contrary to Scripture, that he rejected, even if it had seemed to be confirmed by a heavenly apparition. When, therefore, Luther saw the Scripture brought again to light, he was willing to die gladly, for now Luther esteemed his work accomplished. Not yet had he completed his Kirchenpostille by half (1522), when he already wrote: "O that God would grant that mine and all teachers' expositions might perish and every Christian himself take the bare Scripture and pure Word of God before him! In, in, dear Christians, and let mine and all teachers' expounding be only a scaffolding for the right building, that we may grasp the bare, pure Word of God itself, taste it, and abide therein; for there God dwelleth alone in Zion."

It is therefore certain: if a heathen in the midst of heathen lands should find the Holy Scripture, read it attentively, and in doing so yield himself to the guidance of the Holy Ghost, and take the Scripture word not as the word of man, but (as it truly is) as God's Word, he would come upon no other doctrine than upon Luther's doctrine and become a Lutheran with mouth and heart.

Let the world, then, my dear Lutheran readers, with its prophets slander and revile us, saying we hang idolatrously upon a man, when we return to Luther's Reformation and hold fast and firm to his doctrine even in these last times, in which the seductions grow ever subtler and therefore also ever more dangerous. We know that the world lies in this. We should not despise a man, we should despise God, if we despised Luther, whom God called and chose for the Reformation of His Church. We should not deny the word of man, but God's Word, if we denied Luther's doctrine and were willing to surrender the same, even in a single point, to the enemies; for his doctrine is nothing other than the everlasting Gospel. We should be unfaithful not to a churchly party, but to the Church of Christ itself, if we faithlessly forsook our dear Evangelical Lutheran Bible Church: for this is as surely and truly Christ's true Church as it surely has for its foundation the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ for the chief corner stone.

Let others, this is our conclusion, go on with the times even in matters which concern the unchangeable eternal truth: in these matters the "Lutheraner" remains, with God's help, by its old motto:

God's Word and Luther's doctrine
Shall pass away now and nevermore!
Amen!

"We (Christians) are all saints, and accursed be he who does not call himself a saint and glory in it.  Luther.

Correspondence from Hanover concerning the present ecclesiastical conditions and prospects in Germany.

.... I presuppose that you have received news, through newspapers and in other ways, of the tremendous events which have transformed the whole physiognomy of our people; therefore I will not trouble you further with them at length. The spirit which has long been stirring among us, and could only with difficulty be kept back by artificial means, has broken out, has attained to dominion, and if it develops its whole consequence — which without question, unless God interposes in an extraordinary manner and speaks His "hitherto and no further," must happen — then everything will be loosed from its joints, and we shall then have experienced only the beginning of the end. But who knows, then, what He has in mind, who has searched out His counsel? This, however, seems to me certain — if we are not chastened by heavy divine judgments even unto blood, so that in anguish we seek Him — it is all over with the German nation. How the upheaval has begun amid bloodshed through wicked rebellion and aimless riot, how the German nation has sold its noblest possessions for a mess of pottage in slavish imitation of the French hereditary enemy, this you will know; likewise, how our princes sit only on tottering thrones, which may soon be completely overthrown, unless God speaks otherwise. The most important consequence is probably to be seen in our own field, that now also, avowedly and by recognized measure, the German national or state life has renounced Christianity as such, I mean through the recognized principle that henceforth religious confession, whether it be Christian or not, is entirely indifferent for obtaining participation in all rights; in this respect we have quickly arrived where you in North America have been from the beginning. How a healthy development of the national life is thereby cut off, as long as it stands so, at least on the straight road, this you will, I hope, perceive; although I do not mean to say by this that it is not, in the end, regarding the matter as a whole, nevertheless a salutary catastrophe, that what has long been the case in fact now is also really there before the eyes of all, that optimistic delusions are now no longer possible. What lies at the foundation, as idea, of the spirit which now rules in our political life is nothing other than abstract humanism; men want the development of the natural man, therefore at bottom nothing other than heathenism. Our people, to be sure, is only partly swept into the movement, and even of those really swept in there are only some, as always, who pursue their goal with full consciousness. Whether, then, from the innermost core of our people, from the country folk (I look here chiefly to North Germany; in the South I am not exactly acquainted, only I know that in South Germany it looks throughout much wilder) a reaction will follow, when they notice and recognize whither they are being led, or whether all those who know nothing of it are to be drawn into the whirlpool as a judgment for this, that nowhere is the Word of God any longer ruling consciously in the hearts of the masses, that I naturally cannot know. How completely the outward form of the Church has been affected by the upheaval of events is plain to everyone who knows how, hitherto, even if in part only as to form, Church and State converged in their summits. And naturally the Lutheran Church faces a complete transformation in its outward position. This has been shown, if not, so far as I know, yet among us, then in Italy, which is in similar agitation, how the Roman Church knows how to make its reckoning in revolutions by ungodly ways; it is right with her, in the end, if all civil authority totters, that she alone may rule; and in the end she has also nothing at all to fear, that the growing spirit of the age will make her first of all the object of its attack, precisely because she is akin to it herself. Our Lutheran Church, however, stands at the point where she knows herself drawn into the midst of the current of the movement; she can no longer go hand in hand with the State, for her presupposition in her fraternal union with the State was that the status politicus, at the same time as status hierarchicus, was an organic member of the ecclesia. From the moment, however, when the State legally publishes its indifferentism (which will happen within a short time), the church government which it conducted until then is entirely annihilated, and the task will arise, and must arise, for the Lutheran Church to put it forth out of herself. I for my part, and I believe most with me, can, notwithstanding all the pains and throes which such a solution will bring about, as matters have long stood, see therein only the dawning of a blessed epoch for God's kingdom under divine grace. For even if it is to be feared that the Lutheran Church among us will lose in external power, I mean in numbers, as soon as the compulsion of the State, which has hitherto prevailed, ceases; that sects upon sects will form; that perhaps even the confession-true Lutherans, clergy and laity, will have to go out from their present possession and found a congregation entirely anew; that the goods of the Church