# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1849 07 10_S178
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

178

nies to enter, that is directly contrary to the Word of God, and thereby also to Christian feeling and conscience, and will also, I hope to God, yet become too heavy for your conscience, if only you will once calmly and earnestly consider the matter before your LORD. But you spoke of the grand and glorious aim which these societies have; what, then, is it, or is that also secret?

C. I think you will know it, since we have declared it plainly enough and also actually carry it out.

P. I have read something of it in the newspapers, but I should like to hear it from your own mouth.

C. At least I need not be ashamed of that. Our aim is to practice in actual deed that which Christianity lays upon us as the most sacred duty, yea, declares to be the true reasonable service of God. James 1, 27. Namely, to practice love toward poor brethren in need of help, especially toward the sick, widows, and orphans. And should some small irregularities occur, to the scrupulous conscience of professional saints, yet the aim must be recognized by all the world as a praiseworthy and genuinely Christian one.

P. I thank God that I have such a scrupulous conscience that I cannot call what is plainly forbidden in God's Word "small irregularities" and swallow it down, and I gladly leave such heroism to other strong spirits, who nevertheless in the end will probably have to learn that God's Word will be too strong for them. But, to return to the main point: so that is your aim, to help poor people in need, especially the sick, widows, and orphans?

C. Yes! and can you conceive of a holier and more Christian aim? Truly, in this cold and loveless world, where Christians still prate of love, but nobody practices love, everyone seeks his own, but concerns himself not about his neighbor, where the sick workman, because his daily earnings cease, must languish upon his sickbed without any assistance, and besides his bodily pains must bear upon his heart the misery of a hungering family, or where the weeping widow with her whimpering little ones stares over the corpse of her husband into a cheerless future, and meets with nothing in her sight but the repelling coldness of hard-hearted men, want, hunger, and sorrow, there the brother steps up like an angel from above to the mourner, and comforts the sick, the widows and orphans with his hearty sympathy, takes the sorrow from their hearts, dries their tears, and, what is most glorious, brings back into the benumbed human heart faith in mankind! Yes —

P. I beg you, if you have still a spark of love in you, spare me this most disgusting prattle about love. It does not come out of your otherwise so simple and truthful heart at all, but has merely stuck to your tongue from some fulsomely flattering newspaper article. Precisely because you make so broad a show with your "love and benevolence," and strut about so mightily with it, I have from the beginning been very distrustful of it, and am quite glad to be able once to inform myself thoroughly about your "love and benevolence."

C. And I am glad finally to have an opportunity to put your prejudices and your severe judging of the brethren thoroughly to shame.

P. Let us see whether you succeed. Only do not forget that you have not yet refuted my arguments from Scripture, and I fear that here also you will not be firm in the saddle.

C. Here I am not afraid! Here I stand fast in God's Word!

P. In which God's Word?

C. How can you still ask! Is not love the sum of the commandment? Are the Christian people, according to the will of JESUS Christ, anything other than One brotherhood, One united holy communion of children of God, born of God, who is love, and for that very reason also showing themselves active in love toward one another and toward all the world as the children of the heavenly Father?

P. It strikes me as strange that into "this holy brotherhood" — born of God — Jews and Turks also, the unbaptized and blasphemers of Christ, can be received, who, according to 1 John 2, 22. and 23. and 4, 2. 3. and 15., are surely not born of God, and therefore surely can neither have nor exercise the true divine love. But granted, though not conceded, that it were so with the love, yet I still cannot comprehend that one must first go to a secret society, become a "peculiar brother," or even a "red man" as well, and ape his strange language and customs in the assemblies, in order to practice "Christian love." It seems to me that this might also very well be practiced as a plain Christian! Perhaps the names of the men, or of the Indian tribes, under which the various lodges are set up, have such magic power to fill with love those who formerly had none? Or is it the aprons, ribbons, banners, music, and the din which, especially on Sundays at burials, moves through the streets, that give the soul the proper impulse to practice "Christian love"?

C. In union lies the power! What individuals cannot do by themselves becomes easy for them when they throw their strength together; and that a society united for the same purpose has innocent ceremonies and signs by which it makes itself known as a community, inwardly and outwardly, you will naturally find proper and in order.

P. That may be, my dear Carl, although you must truly confess that Christian love is not depicted in Holy Scripture with kettledrums and trumpets and banners (Matt. 6, 2.), but rather as chaste and modest, and working in great secrecy. But perhaps the enlightenment of the nineteenth century brings this with it, and the deeper theological insight into the words of Scripture, "that the left hand is not to know in giving alms what the right hand doeth."

C. Well, one ought also to let one's light shine!

P. That must be a strange light, if one must first push people's noses against it so that they see it! — But let us leave that. You say rightly that in union lies the power. But have you not already been introduced by holy Baptism into such a holy community, mighty through God and before God, to which under God you owe everything that makes you fit for the spiritual life, and therefore also for true Christian works of love? Are you not a member of the Christian Church? Have you not through holy Baptism, as the washing of regeneration, received from God the grace to be able to love, and at the same time made the vow to be a follower of God as His dear child, and to walk in love, and to practice love, even as God is love?

C. Yes, certainly! And I rejoice that I am now put in a position, in fellowship with like-minded brethren, to practice love and benevolence in a grand manner, and so to be able to fulfil my baptismal vow better than hitherto!

P. How? if you were sinning even in this most shamefully against your baptismal vow?

C. God forbid! How will you prove that?

P. I think, quite simply! Do you still remember our old acquaintance, William H..?

C. Quite well; what about him?

P. You know, do you not, that the merchant H... took him into his house as a foundling, when he was about to perish in filth and dirt; he reared him well, as you know, kept him as his own child, gave him his own family name, and furnished him with so ample means and credit that he could begin a large business of his own. Now I have just received letters from home that the old merchant H... has sunk into the bitterest poverty, and that chiefly through the commercial house of Br...

C. How is that possible? The old house stood, according to public opinion, so firm that its fall seemed impossible, and the house of Br... did in our time such petty business that it was hardly worth mentioning.

P. Yes, so it was; but through faithless servants and fraudulent debtors the