# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1849 02 06_S89
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Der Lutheraner.

"God's Word and Luther's doctrine shall never pass away."

Published by the German Evangelical Lutheran Synod of Missouri, Ohio and other States.

Edited by C. F. W. Walther.

Volume 5.  St. Louis, Mo., February 6, 1849.  No. 12.

Terms: Der Lutheraner appears once every two weeks at the yearly subscription price of One Dollar for subscribers living out of town, who must pay it in advance and bear the postage. — In St. Louis each single number is sold for 5 Cents.

Only those letters which contain communications for the paper are to be addressed to the Editor; all others, however, which contain business matters, orders, cancellations, money, etc., are to be sent hither under the address: Mr. F. W. Barthel, care of C. F. W. Walther, St. Louis, Mo.

(Contributed by Dr. Sihler.)

God's Word on the Doings of Men with Regard to the State of Affairs in Germany.

It is indeed sufficiently known to all our readers how things went on in our old fatherland in the course of the past year and are still going on, how in most countries the subjects here and there have risen up against their authorities, and have extorted from the princes and lords by violent self-help, partly the removal of oppressive burdens, partly the fulfilment of promises given. But not this alone has happened; in several districts the peasantry also have risen up and burned the castles and palaces of the nobility, and have laid waste and destroyed whatever lay in their power.

Now it cannot indeed be denied that the Germans are in many respects heavily burdened and narrowly kept in tutelage by their various princes. There are, for example, the mighty standing armies, which here and there cost more than half of the revenues of the State and lay a great mass of taxes upon the necks of the laboring classes; there is the immense number of officials with their immeasurable meddling government, by which they lace the people into an unnatural strait-jacket and make every free movement almost impossible for them; there is a narrow-minded, distrustful supervision over everything that is written, which forcibly suppresses every candid utterance about the defects of the existing government, while it puts no hindrance in the way of antichristian and blasphemous writings. There is — yet this oppresses the children of God more than the children of freedom — there is the lamentable captivity of the Church in the bonds of the worldly authority, which is not content merely to wield the outward protecting rule that belongs to it, but also the inward government of the Church, which does not belong to it; but lesser local evils, which have likewise sprung from this over-governing*) misconduct of the German princes, are found everywhere in abundance, and exert a most burdensome pressure upon the people.

*) If in Germany there is too much government, here there is too little. The authority here undeniably does not have the respect due to it, and this comes from the fact that the people (as electors) regard it not as God's, but as their own creature, work and ordinance. And since here the authority is thus a creature of the popular election and popular favor, there arises from this again the evil that it not seldom, in order to remain popular and liked and perhaps to be elected again, shows so little earnestness and wholesome strictness, especially in the execution of the penal laws. Hence, for example, the countless and often so considerable accidents on railroads and steamboats, of which one hears nothing in Germany. If the guilty party here, when he escapes with his life, were punished as he deserves, these accidents would soon cease. But such godless, reckless wholesale murderers almost never receive any punishment, to say nothing of the just one, namely the penitentiary, whereas a neglected boy of about fifteen years, who has been guilty of a petty theft, gets in there at once. Human life is indeed cheaper in this country than money and goods. —

How now, — so cry the champions of freedom, so the newspaper writers urge, so the popular orators incite — how now, should the people, now so exceedingly enlightened and of age, not at once shake off this oppression together with the whole princely rule, since it has endured long enough and the burden rather increases than decreases? Should it not now be time for it to rise in a mass against its princes, to abolish their government by force, and to set up out of itself, after the pattern found here, a government of the people?

Let us answer this question and what is more closely connected with it, not according to the hasty notions of carnal reason, but according to God's Word, as the infallible, unchangeable truth.

But we first put this question:

I. What is the Christian authority owing to its subjects? and then only

II. What are the Christian subjects owing to their authority?

I. Before we go to the answering of this question, let us pause a little at a twofold preliminary question; namely: whether the authority is necessary, and what is its highest cause? The divine Word answers both briefly, when it says: "There is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God." Rom. 13, 1.

From this we recognize, therefore, that God Himself has instituted the office of worldly authority and that it is consequently necessary; for God ordains nothing unnecessary. And indeed the authority is ordained of God for two reasons; the one is, that it should represent His image and honor on earth, namely, that it should be in the small what He is essentially and originally in the great and whole, that is, that under His sovereignty, as His deputy, it should administer right and justice on earth, and be, as it were, the measure and order of the moral and social life together of men, from the individual families up to great and mighty nations; the other is, that by the law and its threat of punishment in this its government, it should resist, as far as possible, especially the grosser outbreaks of sin.

But if we ask history and experience, we find that this order was present from the beginning, though in very different form.

In the single families, of which every larger community is composed, we find even among the heathen that the father is the ruling head, to whom the other members of the house stand in a subordinate relation. He orders and determines how it shall be kept in his family; his will is the law of the house and he oversees its execution, he punishes the transgressors, and praises those who keep it, and so forth.

A like relation we find then further in hordes and tribes, which for the most part descend from one forefather, and have grown in length and breadth. There is no band, however wild, in which there is not a chieftain, who for the most part surpasses the other heads of families in understanding and will, and besides other greater gifts, according to the nature and culture of the people, also has the gift of leadership, and the