# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1849 05 29_S158
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158

mission, and left it to the gentlemen authors to give their rejoinder to his defense in the same paper in which they had first attacked Pastor Selle. So the rejoinder, since in the meantime the "Christliche Hausfreund" had departed this life, has appeared in the May number of a so-called "Evangelische Kirchenzeitung," which is published by the Reformed Pastor S. Miller at Lawrenceburg in Indiana. The most remarkable thing about it is that the sender, presumably the Union pastor in Chicago, remarks in his introduction to it that the "Lutheraner," by refusing to admit that rejoinder, only wished to extricate itself from a dilemma. To this we have only to remark that in the "Kirchenzeitung" itself the most telling proof has been furnished whether it is really we, or not rather our opponents, who have fallen into a dilemma with the oft-mentioned rejoinder. For not only have the authors of it already, in the present publication, quietly omitted several vulgar abusive passages that occurred in it, but the shrewd editor of the "Kirchenzeitung" has himself, in the revised text, shrunk from printing some abusive passages which had been allowed to stand. We think that, since evidently the authors themselves are now ashamed of their own production, and even their patrons did not wish to have their paper besmirched with it, we are fully justified in not complying with the request for admission into our paper; indeed, the authors ought to feel themselves under some obligation of thanks to us, that our course of action in the matter has spared them a greater disgrace; to say nothing of the fact that it is shameless to attack a Lutheran in the organ of a Union party, and, when the latter then defends himself in an organ of the Lutheran Church, to demand admission into the Lutheran paper of the would-be refutation of this defense.

Furthermore we remark that our written answer to the senders is printed so incorrectly in the "Kirchenzeitung" that we have the honor of figuring in that paper as a man who is capable of writing sheer nonsense; we are willing, however, to charge this mishap and domestic cross of many an editor gladly to the account of the compositor. Fortunately we have taken a copy of our letter as well as of the rejoinder and laid it ad Acta, as we are accustomed to do with such important documents.

We would not have wasted so many words over this matter, did we not hope thereby to give a hint to many a one, which in similar cases might be of use and might spare many an unnecessary and vexatious letter in the future.

Of the Salvation of Dying Christian Children without Baptism,

a testimony against the Methodist slandering of the Lutheran doctrine and Church.

Since the Methodist gentlemen see that, when they attack real doctrines of our Church, they run against a rock which, far from being shaken by them, rather dashes them to pieces, they have now struck upon another way, on which they hope with better success to deal our Church a blow. For they ascribe to it certain unscriptural doctrines which the Lutheran Church has always rejected, take the field against such false doctrines, and then raise a great outcry that they have mightily smitten our Church. The Methodist paper, the "christliche Apologet," is full of such things; it is therefore impossible to refute everything that it falsely lays upon the Lutheran Church.

In the latest number of the "Apologet" that has come to us, of the 10th of May, a certain Mr. Köneke, whose acquaintance our readers have already made in similar cases, again takes up the same Jesuitical device, of winning his knightly spurs against our Church before his boundlessly ignorant Methodists. He writes, namely: "The so-called Old Lutherans assert that little children who die unbaptized are lost." Thereupon he now seeks to refute the doctrine thus ascribed to us, but so foolishly that one can only have pity on the wretched man; for he says, among other things: "Christ died indeed as well for original sin as for actual sins." Everyone sees that by this conclusion all men would have to be saved without faith and without Baptism. But what does a Methodist care whether his conclusion concludes; it is enough for him if he has only drawn a conclusion; if he proves too much, he thinks, so much the better.

We cannot refrain, on this occasion, from communicating to our dear readers the testimony of an old orthodox Lutheran, the blessed Johann Gerhard, concerning the salvation of Christian children dying without Baptism. After Gerhard, namely, in his Locis theologicis, in the article on holy Baptism, had refuted the Papists, who teach that Christian children who have died without Baptism come indeed not into hell, but also not into heaven, but to a third place where it is for them neither well nor woe; and after he had refuted the Calvinist-Reformed, who teach that all children of believers, whether they be baptized or not baptized, are holy from their mother's womb by the hereditary right of the promise and are in the covenant of God: the highly enlightened divine proceeds thus:

"We (Lutherans) take here the middle road, in that we teach that Baptism is indeed the Sacrament of entrance into the kingdom of God and the means of regeneration, which is necessary to all, even to the children of believers, for their regeneration and salvation; yet that nevertheless, in case of deprivation and impossibility, the children of Christians are saved by an extraordinary and special dispensation (remission). For the necessity of Baptism is not an absolute (unconditional) one, but one (by God) ordained. We men, on our part, are bound to the reception of Baptism; yet God's extraordinary working in the children is not to be denied, who are brought to Christ by pious parents and by the Church in general through their prayer and then die before Baptism could be granted them, since God has not so bound his grace and saving efficacy to Baptism that he should not be willing and able, in case of deprivation, to work outside the ordinary order. We therefore make a distinction between a necessity on God's part and on our part; between the case of deprivation and the ordinary way; also between the children who are born in the Church and those who are born outside the Church; of the children who are born outside the Church we say with the Apostle, 1 Cor. 5, 12. 13: ''For what have I to do to judge them also that are without?'' Wherefore we, since we have no promise for these, leave them to the judgment of God; yet we assume no middle place between hell and heaven, concerning which a deep silence reigns in the Holy Scripture. But of the children who are born in the Church we have a better hope. Indeed, pious parents ought to bring their children to Baptism, as the ordinary means of regeneration, as soon as it can be done, and through Baptism present them to Christ; but those who are found negligent herein, so that through carelessness or damnable contempt of the Sacrament they deprive their children of Baptism, these will one day be called by God to the strictest account, since they ''reject the counsel of God,'' Luke 7, 30. Meanwhile we can and may not rashly condemn those children who die either in the mother's womb or through a sudden accident before receiving Baptism; nay, we rather hold that the prayer of pious parents, or, if the parents have been negligent herein, the prayer of the Church to God for these children is graciously heard, and that they are received by God to grace and to life; concerning which one may read further the letters of consolation and writings of Luther." (Loc. cit. § 237.)

(Communicated.)

Laying of a Cornerstone.

To the dear friends of the "Erste deutsche Evangelisch-Lutherische St. Paulus-Gemeinde in Chicago, Ill.," who have so practically shown us their Christian love, be it hereby made known that on Wednesday after Quasimodogeniti, the 18th of April last, the cornerstone for the