# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1849 03 06_S109
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

109

constitution not only for the prosperity of the state, but far more for the prosperity of the church.

A second error is committed by the “Lutherische Botschafter” in supposing that one gives offense to the friends of humanity when one sets oneself against revolution. But can those really be friends of humanity who take revolution under their protection, which is nothing but a wild fury that looses the rudest passions and bathes itself in the blood of the citizens? That a people, after revolutions that have gone before, again enjoys happier days, is a consequence of the revolution only in so far as it has been, in the hand of God, a salutary chastisement of the nations. The nearest and natural consequence of all revolutions is plainly nothing but confusion, want, misery, robbery, murder and bloodshed; as the experience of the last year in our unhappy fatherland has also taught. May it, after this heavy chastisement, by God’s mercy see better days again!

Those, therefore, who bear true love of mankind in their hearts cannot possibly be prejudiced against the Christian religion on the ground that it condemns insurrection and rebellion. Even the heathen have admired the Christian moral teaching because it commands us to love even the enemy, to endure even hatred, enmity and injustice with magnanimity, and not to take revenge. Now if this is not against love of mankind, but precisely the highest love of mankind: why then should it be against love of mankind if Christianity likewise, consistently, commands us to suffer violence and injustice from the government, and not to repel force with force? What, finally, is to come of it, if no one is willing any more to suffer anything from another?

Moreover, it is surely a plain denial of the truth when a Christian or a Christian periodical, in order to please the great multitude, burns incense to the idol of revolution, which God’s Word condemns absolutely. A Christian would sooner let himself be drawn and quartered than consent to such a sin. That one would gladly reconcile both, acknowledging on the one hand the divine commandment of obedience toward the government, and on the other hand not wishing to deny revolution altogether its good right, rests on a mere self-deception. For it is said, namely, that the divine commandment can no longer bind the subjects when the government abuses its office and its power for the oppression of the peoples, when it is scoundrels and perjured knaves who sit upon the throne. But one does not see that in this way one dispenses oneself from the divine commandment according to one’s own pleasure, a practice which one has perhaps learned from the supposed successor of Peter. If it were allowed to rid oneself of such crowned scoundrels (as they are wont to say), one would also have to be able to produce a testimony from the Holy Scripture that God Himself in this case dispenses from His commandment. Why may hearers and penitents drive away their godless pastor? They have command and authority for it in God’s Word: “Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and scribes”; and Matth. 7, 15: “Beware of false prophets,” etc. But does such a command stand in the Scripture, to beware of a godless government, to remove it and to renounce allegiance to it? Nowhere; but on the contrary, the commandments which require obedience toward the government are wholly unconditional against it. Therefore all objections avail nothing, however finely and artfully they may be devised. And here it is shown once more who submits unconditionally to the Word of God, even then when it conflicts with his own conceit of reason; the question of revolution is in our time a question which tries the hearts, whether they hold fast unshakably to the Word and commandments of God. It is a good testimony to the faithfulness of our Lutheran Church that it works almost alone against the stream by which almost all religious sects and their public organs have let themselves be carried away, and by which they have in fact entered into a union with the world. Here that exclamation of the “Lutherische Botschafter,” “O, the blindness!” would be better in place than that it should charge with blindness those whose sight is enlightened by God’s Word.

Would that all Christian papers might rather recognize their task, which is not to excite the minds still more in an agitated time and to strengthen them in the sin of which thousands and again thousands now make themselves guilty; but rather to encourage and to admonish them, as St. Paul does: “I exhort therefore, that, first of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks, be made for all men; for kings, and for all that are in authority; that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty; for this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Saviour.” 1 Tim. 2, 1—3. Thereby the welfare of the country here with us also would be promoted infinitely more than by the sowing of such a poisonous and harmful seed, which in its time might bring forth here also the saddest fruits of discord and rebellion.  A. Sch.

(Communicated.)

Mission News from Frankenmuth.

This year again, and indeed already in No. 1 of the Lutheraner, we have told the friends something of our little mission here in the north of Michigan. Now, the merciful God has graciously helped, so that we can once more report to you what is gratifying, for which we would thank Him above all from the bottom of our hearts. The readers perhaps still remember that there mention was made of an Indian school which we had just established in the village of the chief Pämasikeh on the river Pine. This young nursery has already, with the help of God, borne little plants of salvation. When we were up there lately to baptize a little daughter for the Rev. Missionary Baierlein, who labors there, the chief not only acknowledged with emotion that we had come from such distant lands to teach them and to instruct and bring up their children, but, in view of his great age and his infirm health, also gave over to the mission his five little children (three of them attend the school, two are still under age) and two little grandchildren, and himself desired that they be baptized. Since, moreover, there were three catechumens besides, three hopeful boys, who desired baptism, we had ten heathen children to baptize at one time. Yes, the two grown children of the chief, a married son and a daughter, wished also to be baptized without more ado, but were not yet properly instructed in the Catechism, to which necessary instruction they now promised to submit themselves more regularly. The chief, however, who already possesses a fair knowledge of the saving truth and has declared several times already, this time also, that he will have himself baptized next spring, could nevertheless not be convinced, by the most urgent representations of the danger of delay, that the devil is fooling him with such fixed times, and only wants him to let slip the acceptable time which is now. After he had once declared that he would not be baptized until next spring, he stuck to this declaration, without being able or willing to give even a single reason for it, with that sudden indifference which so often comes over the Indians and seems to border on complete stupidity, as if it were the inflexible declaration of will of a Great Mogul. May God have mercy on him in grace, deliver him from these fetters of darkness which still hold him captive, and translate him into His dear kingdom, which HE has caused by His Word and Sacrament to come also to these children of death and to take root among them. And as HE has made us fit to plant, so may HE also make us fit to water, and not withhold His gracious increase! —

The Indian school here also HE has again increased by four children, has also here, and indeed already in September of last year, added again two hopeful boys to His dear Church by holy Baptism, and has awakened in our more advanced pupils no small joy that they have now come so far in reading and spelling that they begin to read the dear Word of God in their mother tongue, which, to be sure, with the often gigantic words, is now and then no small task.

While now the wonderful God thus on the one side gives rich blessing, HE tries on the other our faith and your love, in that HE withdraws from our mission the support which has hitherto flowed so abundantly from Germany. The latest tidings state positively that for the present we have nothing more to expect from Germany