# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1849 05 29_S157
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

157

of the Preface, because the conclusion of the same likewise stands in no proper connection with the beginning of this hymn. —

The Exhortation to the Communicants, for which forms are found in all the older Agenden, has since displaced the Preface, though quite contrary to the mind of the Lutheran Church, whereas the proper place for this Exhortation had been assigned it after the Sanctus.

The Consecration, or blessing of the bread and wine in the Lord's Supper, was performed by the singing of the Lord's Prayer and of the words of the Sacrament; and the former, as a rule, and after the pattern of the whole ancient Church, was sung by the minister without the so-called conclusion, "for thine is the kingdom," etc., and the congregation answered only with the Amen. After the Consecration followed the Distribution, or administration of the holy Sacrament, during which choir and congregation sang, besides the shorter Agnus, or "Christe, du Lamm Gottes," and "Jesaia dem Propheten," in particular the two hymns translated by Dr. Luther, "JEsus Christus unser Heiland" or "Gott sei gelobet und gebenedeiet," and at the close, yet before the Collect, the longer "Agnus," or the hymn "O Lamm Gottes unschuldig," composed by Nic. Decius about the year 1525, the three stanzas of which are in content entirely alike, except that the close of the third runs thus: "grant us thy peace, O JEsu, O JEsu!"

(To be continued.)

(Communicated.)

Old-Lutheran Wax Candles.

Are "wooden crosses, crucifixes and lights upon the altars" a mark of "so-called Lutheran churches," as Pastor Weyl assures us under date of October 20, 1848, in No. 22 of the "Lutherischer Kirchenbote"? Are such things "ceremonies belonging to the papal church alone," as the same pastor likewise asserts?

Testimonies on this point "coming from the Prussian church" seem to Pastor Weyl "quite absurd." Permit us therefore to cite the old Valerius Herberger, of the former Great Poland, on similar matters. In his evangelical "Herz-Postille" on the Sunday and festival Gospels, in the edition of J. T. L. Tauscher, Sorau, 1840, p. 31, he says of a faithful preacher: "He must bear in mind that he is an angel and ambassador of God as often as he looks upon his white, paschal, evangelical surplice, and must therefore arrogate nothing to his own person in God's affairs." In the note beneath it is said: "In former times the Evangelical Lutheran preachers in Silesia and Great Poland wore over the black official dress yet a white surplice, called the Alba, which is still in use in many places even now (1840)." — On p. 216 of the same "Herz-Postille" Valerius Herberger says of himself: "When I stand in the pulpit, I am like no one in the world so much as a sower; my white surplice is my proper sowing-sheet. My little seeds are the comforting words, the glorious wonders, and the beautiful mysteries of JEsus Christ. My bushel, in which these little seeds are gathered, is the holy Bible, which lies ever at my right hand, and from it I bring forth things old and new. Matt. 13, 52."

Valerius Herberger, Evangelical Lutheran pastor at Fraustadt in the former Great Poland, was born on the 21st of April 1562, Old Style, and baptized on the 23rd of April of the same year. Among other things which he says about holy Baptism, and which contains much worthy of heed even for certain "Lutheran Christians in our free America," he declares on page 110: "The little child's breast and forehead are marked with the form of the holy cross. Herein we bear in mind that the heart of every Christian must be the little grave of the cross of JEsus Christ." — The writer of this saw, as late as the year 1836, in the Kripplein Christi at Fraustadt, where Val. Herberger was formerly preacher, a crucifix and burning wax candles upon the altar; he heard, moreover, the alternate chanting (see page 291) between the clergyman — the then Superintendent Gerlach — and the choir or the congregation; and in the same year he heard the words of institution at the holy Communion sung by one of the clergy. — But no instance is known to the writer of this that the wax candles and other ceremonies there, in use from ancient times, had ever lighted even one person to the Roman church. Also in Herberger's times no one was lighted to Rome by wax candles in the Lutheran church. For he could say (page 813): "Down to this hour not a single person has fallen away from the Gospel."

The cause why precisely in "our free America" individual members of the "American Protestant Church" bow beneath the newly-legislated yoke of the Roman church *) seems to him rather to lie in the lack of Christian training, in unacquaintance with God's Word, and in the lack of that faith which our fathers won amid so many struggles, with so many sacrifices, and sealed with their blood. No small share of the guilt for this ought furthermore, in "our free America," rather to be ascribed to the spirit of factions and sects. Surely this rent condition lashes many a soul, which stops rather at the outward appearances of the so-called "Protestant churches," and which is impressed by the seeming outward unity and power of the Roman church, into it sooner than "old-Lutheran wax candles." C. A. S......r.

*) See Die evangelische und römische Kirchenlehre, nach den Grundsätzen und Urkunden, by Dr. H. Richter. Barmen, 1844. p. 26.

"Be not deceived; God is not mocked."

Since the cholera has been raging here in our St. Louis for some time already, several congregations of our city had resolved, on the 17th of May last, the day of the Ascension of our Lord and Savior JEsus Christ, to hold a common day of repentance and prayer, and to implore the angry God for mercy and for the speedy, gracious removal of the great visitation of judgment that had come upon us. The editors of the German political newspapers of our city, as they can never refrain from mocking in their columns every utterance of humbling before the Almighty, were not ashamed to greet even the appointed church observance, as announced, publicly with the bitterest scorn. The local "deutsche Tribüne," which in particular knows no other way of making its flatness savory to the Germans here than by blasphemous witticisms, made among other things in its number of the 17th of May the scornful remark: "Tomorrow — general day of rest and repose, also fire-day, but no holiday. Burn pitch and drive away the pitch that clings to us in the form of the cholera." — Laughing, men read this in the morning; laughing at the narrow-minded people who on this day hastened to church to fall down at the feet of the LORD of all lords. But what happened? Out of the blasphemous jest God, who is not mocked, made terrible earnest. The day of Ascension, which the Christians had celebrated, was not yet at an end when the holiday was in truth changed into a fire-day; but not as the scoffers had meant. A devastating conflagration broke out, whereby in a few hours no fewer than 418 houses (not counting the rear buildings) in the busiest and richest part of our city, and 23 boats in our harbor, were turned to ashes. The loss of property thereby occasioned amounts to more than five and a half million dollars; the loss of human life is as yet not fully determined at all. Would that our German countrymen might take warning by this, not to make blasphemers ever bolder in blaspheming by applauding them, and so not to draw down upon themselves also the judgment which blasphemers bring upon themselves!

Concerning a Communication Directed against Pastor Selle.

In No. 8 of the "Christlicher Hausfreund," a paper of the Union faith formerly published in Cincinnati, Pastor Selle in Chicago was severely attacked. Pastor Selle therefore defended himself against it in No. 10 of the "Lutheraner," Jahrgang 5. Thereupon the gentlemen who had made the first attack fabricated a new, most ill-mannered sally full of vulgar abuse, without bringing forward any proofs whatever for their cause, only with the magnanimous promise that, where it should be demanded (!), the proofs would yet be furnished afterwards. The precious product was sent to us, and the ridiculous request was made of us to make the same, by admission into our "Lutheraner," a common possession of our readers. We naturally refused the ad-