# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1849 06 26_S175
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

175

God's Omniscience.

Consider how wonderful it is that God from eternity foreknows all things, whose number is so great, whose manifoldness is so immeasurable. He is acquainted with their nature, their order, their place; He beholds them with undivided gaze. And not merely what lies before the eyes, but even the most hidden He sees. No secret thought, no inclination, no resolve of the will, no feeling of the heart can escape Him. — Wonderful is His knowledge in the realm of the good, but yet far more wonderful in the realm of evil, for it is certain that sin and all unrighteousness can come to pass only with His permission, not with His cooperation. Consider now how astonishing it is that He could also foreknow all that which He has left to a strange will, and indeed to a will which was not yet created and in this manner was never to be created by Him.

Richard, de arca mystica II, 21.

Vain Restlessness.

There is nothing more fleeting than the heart of the natural man. It is vain, unstable, inconstant; it cannot stand still within itself, but swifter than all swiftness it divides itself into the infinite and runs out asunder on all sides. In labor it remains oppressed, after rest it is empty; it is at variance within itself, flees from itself, changes its plans, alters its resolves, builds up, tears down, builds anew what was torn down, exchanges the one ever again for the other, because it wills and also wills not, and therefore never remains in the same condition. From one thought it passes quickly to another, perhaps to be satisfied by the multitude of objects, with whose nature it cannot be satisfied. So wretched is a heart which has not found God.

Meditationes c. 9.

Self-Will.

Self-will is like a poisonous and deadly herb, the eating of which the most experienced physician forbade to the first men already in Paradise, yet they would not obey his prescription. And when they had eaten, they became leprous and begat leprous children. Although these now know that their parents became sick and died through that herb, yet they love it above all and season all their dishes with it.

Anselm, Edameri M. de similitudinibus S. Anselmi c. 38.

Isa. 7, 9.: If ye will not believe, surely ye shall not be established.

That is, if ye will not believe, ye shall not abide. Everything of our Lord God is incomprehensible, but there, in that life, He has said that He will show us everything, and will give us account why He has made it so. We Christians have, God be thanked, a great advantage, that our faith is so mightily grounded in the Holy Scripture, and agrees with itself at all times. That the Turk or Jews do not have. Luther.

An Exhortation to Singing.

(From Valerius Herberger's evangelische Herzpostille for the Sunday Cantate.)

Cantate Domino canticum novum, that is, Sing unto the LORD a new song. Here the ring of today's sermon closes together. Therefore there stand finely together in the Easter song: 1. that we shall be joyful, 2. praise God and be thankful to Him, and sing Hallelujah. The dear Christendom shall be called Virgin Gottlobia. She shall be God's chapel, choir and cantorate; all pious hearts shall be sprightly Symphoniachi and Adjuvants. Your houses shall be nothing but singing schools. You parents and masters shall be Freisänger, as the German singing masters are called, whom Emperor Otto, from noble lineage, from among the learned and handicraftsmen, has highly honored, privileged and favored. Strike up one beautiful psalm after another, sing one beautiful history after another out of the Old and New Testament. Do as Moses, Miriam and Israel, when God had delivered them, Exod. 15, 1. ff., as Hannah, 1 Sam. 2, 1. ff., as Barak and Deborah, Judges 5, 1. ff., as Isaiah, chapter 12, 1. ff., as Hezekiah, Isa. 38, 3. ff., as David, Ps. 103., as Zacharias, when he sings his Benedictus, as Mary, who sounds her Magnificat, Luke 1, 46. ff., as the holy angels, Isa. 6, 3. Luke 2, 14., as Augustine and Ambrose, when they sang their Te Deum Laudamus, Lord God, we praise Thee, one verse after the other. God has shown us in our times*) a special grace, that through the dear man Dr. Martin Luther He has let the chief articles of Christian doctrine be comprised in beautiful German rhymes and songs. That same little hymnal was first published in print in the year 1525, and afterward enlarged with the devout songs of praise of many pious men. Let this be commended to you as a noble jewel, that ye may strike up from it a daily house music to the praise and honor of God. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom; teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, and sing to the LORD in your hearts, according to St. Paul's teaching, Col. 3, 16. Now strike up: Allein Gott in der Höh' sei Ehr and so forth. Soon let it resound: Ehr sei Gott in dem höchsten Thron, dem Vater aller Güte und JEsu Christ, seinem liebsten Sohn, der uns allzeit behüte, und Gott dem Heiligen Geiste, der uns seine Hülfe allezeit leiste, and so forth. Or else: Nun lob, mein Seel, den Herren, and so forth. Nun freut euch, liebe Christen gemein, and so forth. Freue dich, du werthe Christenheit, and so forth. When I pass by such a house, where one sings so sweetly, it pleases me a thousand times better than the most beautiful siskin cage (and canary-bird song); methinks as if I were not far from heaven and heard the angels sing. Be assured, ye dear fathers of households, the holy angels are not far from you, when ye let your voices ring with a pure heart, thus to the honor of God. God is not an enemy of music, like the monster Solimannus, the Turkish emperor, who, when Francis I, king in France, had presented him with the artful music as a high gift, first heard it with wonder, but at last, from apprehension that his Turks at Constantinople would thereby become somewhat more civilized, sent it back to its master with broken instruments. Behold, what a beautiful music God has prepared for Himself in the field and in the wild woods through so many sweet-singing little birds. These are all mute singers of praise of the divine glory; as soon as the dawn breaks, the lark lets herself be heard. But the sound of man and the song of angels is dearest to Him of all. A Polish king, Alexander, who reigned only five years, shortly before Sigismund I, was vexed that he should give his chapelmaster, by name Finke, several hundred florins as salary, and said: When I put a finch in the cage, he sings to me the whole year through and costs me scarcely a ducat; it does me as much good. But our dear God in heaven is better pleased with the singing of men and angels than with the screeching of all finches and nightingales. Is it not His special masterpiece in man, that He has so created him that he can not only speak, but also sing, and that in singing he can at the same time also speak along and pronounce intelligible words. The learned say that the throat of man is like an inverted shawm. Now it is a masterpiece above all masterpieces that man through this his inverted shawm can take the song from all keys, and can strike up and rightly execute it even in the subtlest semitone.

*) Herberger was born in 1561 and died in blessedness in 1627 as pastor at Fraustadt in Poland.

As each instrument is tuned, so it remains; but man can in a moment direct his shawm, quickly, with a swift thought, into all the instruments on earth, which no pipe-work or stringed instrument can otherwise do. Is it not a wonder that man at once feels in his ears when anything sounds ill in the singing! How then should it not heartily please the Master-workman, when everything is rendered to His honor? Therefore sing: Let everything that hath breath praise the LORD, Hallelujah! as the last Psalm says. "No great lord lets one sing to him for nothing; God will show His bountiful hand to you also, if ye shall daily serve Him aright in the court with devotion."