# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1849 03 06_S105
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Der Lutheraner.

"God's Word and Luther's doctrine pure shall to eternity endure."

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

Edited by C. F. W. Walther.

Volume 5.  St. Louis, Mo., March 6, 1849.  No. 14.

Terms: Der Lutheraner appears once every two weeks, at the yearly subscription price of One Dollar for subscribers living at a distance, who are to pay 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 sent to the Editor; all others, 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.

Paul Gerhardt, a shining example of how the strictest adherence to the confession of the pure doctrine can be joined with a holy zeal in godliness, and ought to be.

In our time, of which it is prophesied that men will then "not receive the love of the truth" (2 Thess. 2, 10), almost everyone is of the opinion that a strict holding fast to the pure doctrine cannot be reconciled with zeal for a holy life. To be strictly orthodox and loveless is now regarded almost always as one and the same thing. When it is heard of the so-called "Old Lutherans" that in this time, when everything inclines toward a certain Union, they are almost the only ones who will know nothing of any union with those of another faith and will on no account relax or give up anything of the doctrine of the Lutheran Church, the conclusion is generally drawn: the Old Lutherans must be quite loveless people, who set their Christianity in strife and quarreling over articles of faith. It is thought: if the Old Lutherans were people who had experienced a true repentance and conversion, and in whose hearts the love of God and of the brethren had been shed abroad by the Holy Ghost, they would certainly press more for living, practical Christianity than for holding fast to the confessions of their Church; they would have a wider heart, and would extend the hand of brotherhood to the children of God also in other parties.

We Old Lutherans, as we are once for all called in spite of our protesting against this name, we Old Lutherans must indeed be content to let it be, that we are scolded as "dead Orthodox"; we must leave it to the dear God to make it manifest in His own time where there dwells more true living faith, where more true and upright love, whether with those who set faith above love, or with those who set love above faith. Yet it might be well to point to examples of men from an earlier time who showed the same strictness in holding fast to the pure doctrine and who yet at the same time revealed an all-conquering love, against whom one can certainly bring nothing less than the charge of a dead orthodoxy, out of whose belly rivers of living water visibly flowed. Such men were, among others, Luther foremost, a Martin Chemnitz, a John Arndt, a John Gerhard, and a Paul Gerhardt.

The example of the last named we wish to set before our dear readers this time. May it, as it was once of unspeakable blessing to the Church, become a blessing also to the Church of our own days.

What we here lay before them is taken from the preface to a little book edited by Wackernagel with the following title: "Paulus Gerhardts geistliche Lieder getreu nach der bei seinen Lebzeiten erschienenen Ausgabe wiederabgedruckt. Stuttgart. 1843. Verlag von S. G. Liesching."

⁂

What we know of Paulus Gerhardt's outward circumstances is but little. He was born in the year 1606 at Gräfenhainichen, and was still living in the year 1651, as a man of 45 years, without public office in Berlin. A stirring time, the whole Thirty Years' War, lay behind him then; of his own life up to that point nothing is known. Yet he seems to have composed many of his hymns within this period; of some it is known with certainty, namely

Up, up, my heart, with gladness,
I lift, O Lord, to Thee,
Awake, my heart, and sing,

which already appeared in print in the year 1649, and

Enter in at my gates,
Lord, Thou who formerly hast Thy land,
How great and heavy is the burden,
God be praised, now it has resounded,

of which, indeed, for the first three no earlier year of printing than 1653, and for the last none earlier than 1656, can be established, but which obviously refer to the Thirty Years' War and the Peace of Westphalia.

In the year 1652 he became pastor at Mittenwalde in the Mark of Brandenburg, where he married Anna Maria Bertholdt, a daughter of the court-of-chancery advocate Andreas Bertholdt in Berlin, and remained until 1657. In that year he accepted the third deaconate at the St. Nicholas Church in Berlin, which he held until the year 1666, when he received his dismissal. A year before that, one of his three sons died, Andreas Christian, and it is probable that he composed the two hymns: Mein herzer Vater, weint ihr noch, and: Du bist zwar mein etc., on this occasion. After he had lived three years in Berlin without office, he became in May 1669 archdeacon at Lübben, where he labored yet seven years to the blessing of his congregation, and died on the 7th of June, 1676. Shortly before his death he drew up his last will for his fourteen-year-old son Paul Friedrich; Feustking, who probably received the document from the son himself, communicates it to us, as it appears with an omission, before his edition of the Gerhardtian hymns. The faithful, simple words of the aged man vividly recall the rules of life which Matthias Claudius left to his son Johannes; they read as follows:

"Now that I have attained the 70th year of my age, and also have the joyful hope that my dear, gracious God will in a short time deliver me out of this evil world and lead me into a better life than I have had hitherto on earth, I thank Him first of all for all His goodness and faithfulness, which He has shown me from my mother's womb until this present hour, in body and soul, and in all that He has given me. Besides, I beseech Him from the bottom of my heart that when my little hour comes He would grant me a joyful departure, take my soul into His fatherly hands, and bestow upon my body a gentle rest in the earth until the dear last day, when I, with all my own, who have gone before me, and who may remain after me, shall awake again, and my dear Lord Jesus Christ, in whom I have hitherto believed, and whom yet still