# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1848 10 31_S39
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

39

day of this his last battle he gave as the watchword: "God with us!" Shortly before the beginning of the engagement he rode once more before his army drawn up in battle array, and called aloud to the soldiers: "Now we go to it, may dear God rule it! JEsu, JEsu, help Thou me to fight today, to the honor of Thy holy name!" So he went into the battle in which he received his mortal wound. He fell dying from his horse with the sigh: "My God! My God!" —

Which Persecution is most to be feared?

Not only the open persecution and assailing, with expulsion and banishment of the servants of God, is to be feared; one can guard oneself more easily when that which one has to fear is open; and when the enemy says outright that he is our enemy, the heart is already prepared beforehand for the combat. The enemy is then more to be feared, and one has more to guard against him, when he comes creeping in secretly, when he glitters with peace and thereby steals in hidden attacks. . . . But what can be more crafty, what more subtly laid, than that the enemy, discovered and cast down by the appearing of Christ, when he sees the idols forsaken and his dwellings and temples laid waste because of the great multitude of those who have become believers, has devised a new deceit, to deceive the unwary under the title of the Christian name? He has invented sects and divisions, to overthrow the faith thereby, to falsify the truth, to rend asunder unity. Those whom he cannot keep in the blindness of their old way, he outwits and deceives by a false new way. He tears men out of the Church, and while they imagine that they have now drawn nigh to the light and escaped the night of this world, he brings into them, without their knowing it, another darkness, so that they, without abiding by the Gospel of Christ and by the Law, call themselves Christians and walk in darkness, and think they have the light, the wicked enemy flatteringly persuading them of it, who, according to the saying of the Apostle, transforms himself into an angel of light and adorns his servants as preachers of righteousness, who give out the night for day and destruction for salvation. (Cypriani Tract. de simplic. prael.)

(Communicated.)

The Deathbed of an Indian.

Pushmataha, a chief of the Choctaw Indians, died in Washington. When his companions had gathered about his deathbed, he said: "I shall die, but you will return to your brethren. When you go on your way thither, you will see the flowers, and hear the birds sing; but Pushmataha will see them no more and hear them no more. When you come home, they will ask you: where is Pushmataha? and you will say to them: he is no more! They will hear the tidings, like the fall of a mighty oak in the depth of the forest!" (From Thomas L. McKenney on the origin etc. of the Indians, pag. 88.)

What dreadful comfortlessness in these words! The poor heathen Indian consumes his whole life in hunting and war, until he hopelessly takes leave of the flowers and song-birds of his fatherland.

How wholly different is the deathbed of a Christian! To his believing gaze the blessed meadows of eternal life shine forth, with confidence he commends his soul into the hands of his JEsus, and falls softly asleep in him; for death has become to him a sleep.

Reader! JEsus is the comfort of all the heathen, also of the poor heathen Indians. Pray for them, that they too may soon be comforted by him. Fick.

Royal Toleration.

As intolerant and persecuting as Emperor Ferdinand II. once showed himself toward the Lutherans in the Thirty Years' War, so far was King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden, who had hastened to the aid of the Lutherans, removed from it. Remarkable is one great word which this truly great man once uttered after the taking of a Catholic city, when he was urged now to use force for the conversion of the Catholics. He said: "In the state everyone is orthodox who lives according to the laws: to preserve men from hell is the business of preachers, and not of kings!" — What a glorious perception of the difference between the spiritual and the temporal government is revealed at the same time by this word of truly Christian toleration!

Union.

When the Toleration Edict of Joseph II. had appeared and toleration (forbearance toward those of other faith) was the third word of the Viennese, an innkeeper had painted on his signboard, recognizable by their dress, a Catholic, a Lutheran, and a Reformed clergyman, shaking hands, with the inscription: "Gasthof zum Toleranzel."

The Salutary Seduction.

Once a learned man asked Luther: how he would answer for it at the last day, that he rejected the opinion of so many learned men, especially among the Sacramentarians, and thus held himself alone to be wise? Thereupon Luther gave the following answer with a laughing mouth: "So will I answer for it: Dear LORD Christ, I will say, that they were all learned I knew well, but I acted so foolishly because I had the confidence in Thee, Thou, Christ, wert more learned and wiser than they and all the world; hast Thou then seduced me, so will I gladly be seduced."

Weak Faith.

Once a woman complained to Dr. Luther that she could not believe at all any more. The Doctor asks her: Can you still say your childhood faith? Yes, says the woman. And when she had now devoutly recited the three articles of the faith, Luther asks her further: do you hold this also to be true? The woman says: yes, indeed! Verily, replies Luther thereupon, dear woman, if you hold these words for true in faith, as they are indeed nothing but the truth, then you believe more strongly than I; for I must every day pray also for an increase of faith. At these words the woman thanks God and goes away with peace and joy.

The Temporal Power of the Pope and the Bishops.

Once when a prince-bishop was riding in great pomp and splendor, with a great retinue of soldiers, past a farmstead, the farmer stepped to the door and, beholding the princely train, crossed himself with visible signs of horror. The bishop halts and asks the farmer what is the matter with him. The farmer answers that he was frightened at the worldly splendor of His Grace; for so far as he knew, the old pious bishops had gone about quite simply and humbly. When now the bishop replied thereupon that he was riding about now not as bishop but as prince, and that at home as bishop, without any worldly dignity, he kept himself in his church in great devotion and humility; then the farmer begs the bishop to be so gracious as to allow him a question, and adds: "But tell me, most gracious lord, if now you as prince, on account of your pomp and luxury, should go to the devil, where then will the bishop remain?" —

The Abashed Emperor.

The Roman Emperor Trajan once said to Rabbi Joshua: You teach that your God is everywhere, and boast that he dwells among your people. I should like to see him once. "God is most certainly present everywhere," replied Joshua, "but he cannot be seen; no mortal eye can behold his glory." The Emperor, however, insisted on his demand. "Well," said Joshua, "let us first try to look at one of his ambassadors." The Emperor consented. Then the Rabbi led him at noontime into the open, and bade him look at the sun in its midday brightness. I cannot, said Trajan, the light blinds me. "Thou art not able," answered Joshua thereupon, "to bear the light of one of his creatures, how canst thou expect that thou shouldst behold the shining glory of the Creator? Would not such a light annihilate thee?" —

Luther's Greatness according to the Testimony of a Reformed Writer.

When one speaks of Luther's greatness, one would have to consider not only the great qualities which he possessed, but also the faults which he might so easily have had, and from which he remained free. Many of those who labored before him for a reformation of the Church let themselves be misled by their impatience to go beyond the circumstances, and to anticipate things which were not yet ripe. And how easily might not Luther also, with his fiery temperament, have fallen into such a precipitation? But we see that only then, when Providence had already formed the circumstances for him, and as it were built the house, he enters into the circumstances, to fill them with his activity, and takes possession of the house. It is especially worthy of reverence that with the extraordinary height on which he was placed, with the tremendous movement which was occasioned by him, his heart remained free from vanity and pride, which under such circumstances might easily have stolen upon human weakness. With these qualities it is connected also that a milder lot has fallen to him than is usually the case with those