# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1849 04 17_S133
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

133

Adherence to the familiar texts goes down with all people, and everywhere, only with greater difficulty; but everyone readily and gladly accepts new thoughts when they appear as a freshly discovered fulness of old truth. Let one but make unprejudiced trial. — The Epistles were chosen from of old for the morning or afternoon services of the Sundays. Here too it is again the adherence to what is familiar and one that the preacher seeks: the Epistles agree with the Gospels, the Apostles with Christ — one faith is to be found everywhere, one order of salvation, one sanctification. — For the weekday services Luther proposes a continuous exposition of the Holy Scripture. But even for these a prudent preacher does not choose it in order that he may expound the Scripture completely and in the connection of its words, which does not succeed and is not possible. He does not desire to explain every conjunction and preposition, every noun, every verb with utmost exactness; but everywhere it is the clear passages that he takes out, and through which he can strengthen what is known to the congregation and show it in a new light. His prophesying is always in agreement with the faith, and he always gives his people that which it can understand by the light already received, by the light of its Catechism and of the Gospels. Not first of all an explanation of the obscurities, but confirmation and proving in what is clear, is what he wills and intends. — That is the way of simplicity, to which every gift is profitable, which is practicable for every gift, which does not look so learned and Bible-wise as many another way, but which proves and approves itself. It is clearly shown in the difference between the Bible interpretation of Dr. M. Luther on the one side and of Calvin on the other. With the latter, knowledge of the Bible and knowledge of the understanding of Scripture is the nearest aim; the former seeks everywhere to confirm anew the Regula fidei, the clear doctrine of Scripture. Therefore Calvin is so exact (as indeed may be profitable for theologians!), but Luther proceeds eclectically, grandly pastorally, always girded and shod on his feet, to promote the Gospel of peace and the one faith; and that is needful for wavering minds, both of the laity and of the learned.

(Löhe. Drei Bücher von der Kirche.)

The Imperial Recruiting Corporal.

"For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also." Matt. 6:21.

It was in the nineties, when the German Empire still existed, but was already greatly on the decline, and had to glean and pilfer its soldiers together out of all lords' lands; at that time there was quartered in a village belonging to the castle of Friedberg an Austrian recruiting corporal. He carried on there as many of his trade do; he went about in the houses, he sunned himself at the street corners, and looked on and stroked his moustache whenever there was a dance in the place. For in the houses there were quarrelsome husbands and unruly lads, at the street corners the idlers gathered, and at dances there was brandy and cudgelling and bloody heads, and there he could at a convenient hour accomplish much with a kind word and earnest-money. From that time there still came the so-called "Imperialists," whom one had in almost every place, and who hobbled about with great grey moustaches and often with wooden legs; the old uniforms also came from that time, white or pike-grey. Now the "Imperialists" have almost died out, and the faded pieces of uniform have probably gone off to the paper mills.

So at that time an imperial recruiting corporal was quartered in the little Friedberg village. To the corporal, at that time, it being just winter, the time grew very long; the trade did not go particularly well. So he would come now and then of an evening into the houses where the peasants were taking counsel together; for he was a talkative man and liked to tell stories; whether all of it was true, that I do not know, suffice it that he liked to tell stories, and liked also to hear something new. But as often as the corporal entered a house and lit his pipe and listened to the counsel, he heard nothing but: "Neighbour, how highly do you value my oxen?" — "Gossip, your oxen are fat enough!" — "Cousin, what did beef fetch at Friedberg in the meat-stalls?" — At this the corporal often shook his head and went into a second house; but there also they were taking counsel about oxen, only with the difference that now and then a word about ox-fodder, and ox-fat, and ox-hides crept in as well. When the corporal had listened to this for a while, he indignantly knocked out his pipe on the stove and said: "I must go home now to my quarters, for if I stay here, I shall myself turn into an ox!"

Now I will not say that the corporal's speech was a very refined one, but it was certainly a telling one, for it was understood right well by those ox-breeders and ox-lovers, and is told to this day, and whoever tells it, laughs over it.

The German Empire has ceased since then, and the imperial recruiters too have vanished, but it is almost still as it was then, as regards the counsel of neighbours among themselves. When I now and then come into the houses, I hear still the same conversation that the recruiting corporal heard, only with the difference that now there is still more about brandy-distilling, and about the wool trade, and about the railroad, and about the commutation of tithes. And then I think to myself: "How long is a winter evening and how short is life; how poor is the human heart and how rich the Christian heart!" How much a Christian knows, of which the ox-breeder knows nothing at all, and how dear and precious field and plough, and seed and harvest, and early and latter rain become, when the little saying is understood: "Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you." Matt. 6:33. (Volksblatt.)

(Sent in by P. Röbbelen.)

Another testimony that every revolution or violent uprising of subjects against their government is a sin against the Fourth Commandment and ungodly.

Because God looks upon the heart, one is also in this country in danger of committing the same sin which has now already been rebuked several times by the dear "Lutheraner" in those who have committed it in other lands and especially in our German fatherland. As little as this danger is heeded by the spirit that rules thereby in our wicked time, in that he bows the poor souls of the children of men under his lies and, in our case, falsely appropriates to a phantom begotten by him and conceived by seduced spirits of men the name which, according to John 8, belongs only to a freedom that stands before and with the Word of Him who said: "Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's"; yet this shall hinder no one from picturing it to himself as great as God's Word shows it to him, and from letting himself rather be rejected by the judgment of all the world than agree to such a one as rejects not princes and magistrates only, but Him who has appointed them. But since it falls very hard to sick human nature to set itself, even if only in one principle, against a great multitude, and the heads befogged by the sham freedom of our days allow those who are of another opinion precious little of that which they claim for themselves; so it does good also to such as do not themselves consent to the raging cry: "Down with the princes!" to strengthen one another by a common confession. The sender of this has at least read with sincere thanks the testimonies which have already repeatedly confirmed that the faithful witness of the truth in which they have been raised does not, as very often happens in our hypocritical time, bear the word upon its forehead merely in order to have a fine motto: "God's Word — — shall pass away neither now nor ever."

In order, however, to justify anew also the words "and Luther's doctrine" as an addition that stands in the motto of the "Lutheraner" only because of the exact agreement of this doctrine with God's Word, and at the same time to strengthen the faith in God's Word in all its utterances, especially in those which, like Rom. 13:1 ff., demand submission to the government, through the confession of the dear man who, as a babe newly born by God's Word, stands alone in our last times in simple acceptance of it, there follows here his exposition of the passage Isa. 26:16, from which everyone can see that he who in the