# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1849 02 20_S97
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Der Lutheraner.

"God's Word and Luther's doctrine shall now and nevermore 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., 20 February 1849.  No. 13.

Terms: Der Lutheraner appears once every two weeks at the yearly subscription price of One Dollar for subscribers living out of town, who are to pay the same 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, which contain business matters, orders, cancellations, money, etc., are to be sent, under the address: Mr. F. W. Barthel, care of C. F. W. Walther, St. Louis, Mo., hither.

Sermon,
delivered by Dr. Sihler before his congregation in Fort Wayne, Ind.*)

"For there must be also heresies among you, that they which are approved may be made manifest among you." Thus, my beloved, speaks the holy Apostle Paul, 1 Cor. 11, 19., and this word comforts us rightly, when we, especially here in America, look around us on all sides and behold the many and manifold factions and sects which threaten to rend and to destroy the spiritual body of Christ, the One holy Christian Church, in its visible emergence and confession.

*) We take the liberty of communicating to our readers also what the dear author of this sermon writes to us concerning the occasion of it. It is as follows: "The outward occasion of this sermon is this, that the former Methodist preacher here, after the long-accustomed Jesuitical-Methodistical morality, sneaked behind my back into the houses of my parishioners, and indeed chiefly, after the manner of the old serpent, to this Eve and that, when Adam was not at home. Where now anyone let himself be deceived by the motley skin, that is, by the friendly greetings, the sweet and splendid speeches of Sir Tiptoe, and did not promptly turn him away sharply, as was fitting, he was straightway transformed from a sneak into a corner-preacher and, drawing his New Testament out of his pocket at the same time, after the manner of his serpent-mother in Paradise, began his saying: 'Yea, hath God said that Baptism is the new birth and imparts the Holy Ghost?' Look here at Acts 8, 14—17. and 10, 44—46., there ye shall find it quite otherwise and see that the Holy Ghost was imparted either without Baptism or at least only after Baptism, through the prayer and the laying on of hands of the Apostles, etc.

When I received word of the sneaking about of this wolf in sheep's clothing, I at once requested two elders of the congregation to go to him and to challenge him to a public dialogue on the Scripture doctrine of holy Baptism. This, however, he declined, and instead began in his church to prattle out the confused jumble of the Methodist sect concerning holy Baptism, since he knew well that no one here could answer him anything to it. After I learned this, and at the same time that several Lutherans not yet thoroughly established had heard his so-called sermon, I had him challenged to that same dialogue with a student, also in order to humble his arrogance, which, however, he rejected with great indignation. There remained nothing more for me to do, in order at least on my part not to let the necessary instruction be lacking for the upright and the lovers of truth, some of whom perhaps have been led astray by his dull-witted and presumptuous citing of unsuitable passages of Scripture, than to deliver the following sermon."

But although all these sects, let them gather themselves around this or that error, yea, lies, and hold these fast obstinately against all better instruction — although they all proceed from the devil, who, as the father of lies, sends out the false prophets and founders of sects, yet this too stands under God's permission and government, that He also in this manner sifts His Church and separates the chaff from the wheat, the false believers and ungodly from the orthodox and upright, and thereby makes both manifest. But this comes to pass in this way, that the Holy Ghost always raises up faithful witnesses against the erring and fanatical spirits, who defend and maintain the pure doctrine on the side of the attack, and unfold more exactly this and that part of it, which until then lay like the leaves in the bud, and set them in clear light out of God's Word.

Thus God raised up, for example, against the ungodly Arius, who denied the unity of essence and the equality with God of the LORD Christ with the Father, and thus also the Trinity of God, the great teacher of the Church Athanasius, through whom the doctrines that were attacked came to light much more exactly and definitely than they had been before, as the comparison of the Apostolic with the Nicene and Athanasian Creed in the second and third articles shows us clearly. Thus the LORD, somewhat later, raised up against Pelagius, the denier of original sin, the excellent teacher Augustine, who brought the doctrines of sin and grace out of the Holy Scripture to light as clearly and fully as they had not been before.

In like manner the same faithful God placed our dear Father and teacher, Dr. M. Luther, more than a thousand years after Augustine, upon the field of battle against the Papists and fanatics, in order that, against the superstitious adding of the former and against the unbelieving taking away of the latter, he might bring out chiefly the following truths from God's Word to full clearness for everyone:

1.) that the Holy Scripture alone is the source of all knowledge of salvation, but neither the oral so-called Apostolic traditions of the Papists, nor the so-called immediate enlightenments and revelations of the Holy Ghost among the fanatics;

2.) that sinful man is justified by and before God, that is, declared righteous, alone by grace, through the imputation of the merit of Christ, which, however, faith alone lays hold of, appropriates and holds fast, without any addition and co-operation of any works of the law beforehand and of any works of love afterward;

3.) that the holy Sacraments, Baptism and the Lord's Supper, are essential and true means of grace of the Holy Ghost, wherein He, through the Word of the LORD Christ, in earthly means imparts heavenly goods, and with them the grace of God and the merit of Christ, but not that these holy Sacraments are, as it were, magical means, as the Papists suppose, which confer grace and blessing even without the faith of the recipient, or merely empty signs and pictures, as the fanatics imagine, which first receive some content through the faith of the recipient.

Through these and like great teachers of the holy Church, through such chosen instruments of the Holy Ghost, it came to pass that the false doctrines of the false prophets were, by the truth of the Holy Scripture rightly applied, ever more clearly uncovered and, by these weapons of light, ever more victoriously overcome. On every side, therefore, the heavenly doctrine, which for example in the Apostolic Creed is still summed up quite briefly, was brought to light clearly and fully; and the factions served only to make the faithful teachers and their disciples manifest as the upright. And while Satan thought to undermine secretly this and that part of the fortress of Christian doctrine by his lying prophets and thereby gradually to bring about the collapse of the whole,