# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1848 09 19_S15
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

15

others, on the contrary, approached the opposite, in that they held that grace works irresistibly in conversion. Whence, then, came these and other controversies? Not from the correct demonstration out of God's Word, namely from the proper compilation of such proof-texts of Holy Scripture as are directed against both opposite errors; likewise not from the confessions and doctrinal books of the Church in a similar manner, but thus it happened that the contending parties tore out of God's Word and out of the Symbols single passages which seemed to confirm their error, from their wholesome connection with the passages that stand against them, one-sidedly, and drew them to their error.

Now what can a knife, for example, which is intended for cutting food, do about it if a man injures himself and others with it? What blame has a rightly made man's suit, if perverse heads get at it and make the sleeves into trousers and the reverse?

But in order to settle thoroughly the last-named and other opposing errors and doctrinal controversies out of the rightly composed words of Holy Scripture, it came about that believing, churchly-minded and thoroughly learned theologians drew up the Formula of Concord; and where the above errorists and contenders accepted the same with sincere hearts and gave ear to its acute demonstration, there indeed concord was restored, and the unity and purity of doctrine regained. But where stubborn and haughty spirits rejected it and flared up all the more fiercely in the strife; where perhaps out of an earlier error of the understanding, with lack of sincere disposition, there now became a malicious heresy of the heart, was the Formula of Concord then to blame for it, as Dr. K. thinks?

In sum, Dr. K., as, it is to be hoped, has now been sufficiently shown to the impartial reader, has spoken not at all like a Doctor of Divinity, but as an ignoramus and pretender, or even as a malicious partisan, in that he gives out the symbolical books and the fitting pledge to them and upon them as the cause of all manner of dissensions and controversies.

(To be concluded.)

(Sent in.)

Stoppage of the Russian Proselytizing among the Lutherans in Livonia.

(See: Lutheraner, Volume 3, page 18.)

The periodical published in Leipzig, “Die Grenzboten,” contains in its 13th number of the 1st of April of this year the following in substance:

In the report of accounts which the Minister of the Interior, Parowski, caused to be published last year, it was said: “The most remarkable event of the past year is the conversion of about 20,000 Livonian peasants from the Lutheran to the orthodox Church.”*) The report of this year also reads in a similar manner, but the number of the con-

*) As the united church calls itself the evangelical, and the papistical the only saving one, so the Greek church calls itself the orthodox church.

verts (the converted) is smaller. About the eighth part of the Livonian peasants has already been led over to the state church, namely the Greek church; the figures, however, stand still more favorably for the Greek church if one takes into account that in the official tables the children of the converts are not entered, whereas according to the general law of the state the descendants of every family in which either the father or the mother belongs to the Greek church must follow the religious confession of the same. Hitherto this law has not yet been applied, but it will come. At present the delusion which for a year and a half had seized the peasantry and drove them toward the sheepfold of the Greek church seems to have evaporated; they have at last been disillusioned, and in consequence there have been almost no conversions during the last half year. The Greek popes look about in vain for souls to be saved, and put off the obtaining of the number required for a presentation of orders to a more favorable time, at whose appearing they do not doubt at all; but so much is certain, for the moment all is quiet. After the converts had hoped for a long time in vain for the obtaining of the “land of souls,” which, in contradiction to the official declaration of the government, had been promised them by the emissaries and popes spread throughout the whole land as the reward of their conversion to the “religion of the Emperor,” they at length grew weary of this fruitless waiting and of the mere putting off with promises, and pressed their apostles of conversion earnestly, with admonitions and threats. Suddenly the rumor spreads, first among the Esthonian population of Livonia, that the expected “land of souls,” as it was very significantly called, was being distributed at Pleskow to all the “people of the Emperor.” The whole frontier fell into an uproar; a frenzied joy over the final reward of their religious sacrifices swung its destroying torch. The little property is squandered, and taken over by the Russian speculators for a mere song; what cannot be knocked down is smashed to pieces, above all the dwellings which belong to the landlords, partly set on fire, partly laid waste with such energetic vengefulness that not a window, not a stove, not a door, no destructible part was left. And now the poor deluded people marched out in many separate bands of 100, 200, 300 men to take possession of the land of souls. Arrived at Pleskow, they are received by the governmental authorities, and receive for the present no land of souls, but man for man cudgel-blows quod satis, and perhaps a few over. Horses, wagons and other belongings are taken from the emigrants by the Russian police to defray the costs of maintenance, etc., and they themselves are sent back in separate bands under strong military escort to their Livonian homeland.

The misery was indescribable: hundreds of hunger-faces clothed in rags, sickly women, languishing children, who opposed to the rough ill-treatment of the Russian Kalpusniks partly loud whining and howling, partly also a bitten-back, vengeance-brooding fury. After a repeated, wholesale execution the several families were handed back to their respective landlords at grace and disgrace, and herewith ended the dream of the land of souls.

The consequences of this temporary emigration are lasting and significant in several respects. First, it drew after it a failure of crops, which is already making itself felt in pressing need; for since the departure took place in the spring, a great part of the summer field remained unsown, especially as the plundered peasants on their return, because of the squandering of their horses, had no more working power left to make up what had been neglected. But then the contemptible dismissal which the converts experienced from their new “brethren in the faith” has scared away all religious illusion and left no doubt about the real intentions of the government. Hence all renewed promises fell on unfruitful ground, and all desire for conversion has since vanished.

(Sent in.)

Lutheranism in Nassau.

Probably some readers of this paper still remember that in the first half of the third volume the conversion to the Lutheran Church of the congregation of Steeden, situated in the wholly unionized Duchy of Nassau, and the expulsion, impending on that account, of the pastor of that congregation, Mr. Brunn, was reported. For a long time nothing was heard in this country of the further course of this matter, and many sorts of apprehensions gained ground. Recently, however, it is communicated in a private letter that Pastor Brunn's expulsion has actually taken place, but that the congregation of Steeden, while he was staying in neighboring countries and especially with his Prussian brethren in faith and office, provided for his family, and at the outbreak of the political disturbances intended to request their former faithful pastor to return and further administer the holy office in their midst, so that he is now probably already preaching to them again the Word of the cross. Outside this congregation also many have, in consequence of these occurrences, found themselves moved to examine more closely the symbolical books of the Lutheran Church, and some, especially also schoolteachers of that country, now thank the LORD that He has led them to a decidedly Lutheran standpoint. A. S.

He who preaches Christ before empty benches with humility and joyfulness stands on a very high step in the kingdom of God; while he about whom many thousands throng, if in the process, as is well wont to happen, something human stirs in him, stands much lower in God's eyes. Theremin.

(Sent in by P. Fick.)

Oregon.

We take from the “Missionary Herald” the following communications about Oregon and the murder of Dr. Whitman, which has already been briefly mentioned in these pages.

Introductory Remarks.

The readers of the “Herald” have already been informed of the misfortune which has befallen the mission among the Oregon Indians. One of the stations is destroyed, and the laborers employed there are murdered by the tribe which they sought to rescue from the degeneracy and vices of heathenism.

Until the most recent time there were in Oregon only three stations under the direction of the Society, namely the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. These were Wai-