# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1849 07 24_S185
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Der Lutheraner.

"God's Word and Luther's doctrine pure shall to eternity endure."

Published by the German Evangelical Lutheran Synod of Missouri, Ohio, and Other States.

Edited by C. F. W. Walther.

Volume 5.  St. Louis, Mo., July 24, 1849.  No. 24.

Terms: Der Lutheraner appears once every two weeks at the yearly subscription price of One Dollar for out-of-town subscribers, who are to pay in advance and bear the postage. — In St. Louis each single number is sold for 5 cents.

Only the letters which contain communications for the paper are to be addressed to the editor; all others, however, which contain business matters, orders, cancellations, money, etc., are to be sent hither under the address: Mr. F. W. Barthel, care of C. F. W. Walther, St. Louis, Mo.

(Contributed.)

A True Story.

Not many years ago there lived, in a small town of northern Germany, a physician who, on account of his skill and his kindness toward the poor and the suffering, was known and highly honored not only in the place where he lived, but for several miles around. But one thing the dear old man had still not attained: the peace of God in the Crucified One. His youthful years had fallen in the time when unbelief on the universities and in the educated circles came to power, and so he too was swept along by the stream of the Enlightenment. What he had heard in his childhood from the mouth of his pious father, a faithful preacher, concerning God's Word and truth, he had cast unconditionally overboard, and now lived for some fifty years without prayer, without Bible, without the Lord's Supper, — and, as he himself confessed at the end, without God in the world. His position throughout that whole time was such that the Gospel by no means came near to him, and he regarded public worship, the preaching office, and the means of grace only as moral and politic means of discipline and intimidation for the stupid, coarse mass of the people. His one principle was: "Do right and fear no man!" whereby he left out the "Fear God," and let the prevailing mood of his conscience prescribe to him what was right.

So he had come to the age of 76 years, and had sought to regulate his principle, "Do right," etc., by another, and to bring it into harmony with another, which ran: "Live and let live!" The pleasures of the table, of social intercourse, of play and dancing had to afford him diversion even toward his last illness, and to drive away more serious thoughts from him. As long as he could leave the house, he had to make his game of whist (a card game) almost every evening, and for as long as that lasted he also had a large evening company at his house every evening.

But when increasing weakness forced him to stay at home, and his former friends neither could nor cared any more to provide the old pastimes for him, a coughing, peevish old man, he began to feel very unhappy and to vent his ill humor upon the members of his household. He had never married; only a coachman and a housekeeper were about him, and they could scarcely bear any longer his moodiness and violence. The nights, in which sleep now fled from him, he was accustomed to use especially to torment them with ringing, with reproaches that they were not keeping awake, and with all sorts of threats. One mightier than he had come upon him with the words: "Set thine house in order; for thou shalt die." Yet he did not surrender so soon. By day he always knew how to talk himself out of it again that the end was near. Often a few friends still had to sit down at table with him and tell him that he looked fresher than the day before. There sat the old man in the great armchair, with cushions at his sides and at his back; he always took his plate very full, so that his guests should marvel at his appetite, but put only little into his mouth. The table companions could do him no greater favor than when they told him many things and, on leaving, brought the conversation round to his fiftieth anniversary of office, which was to be observed in a few months. He would then say: "I shall not live to see it!" and, as if by agreement, his friends replied: "What, Herr Physikus? You surely do not mean to think of dying already? As vigorous as you still are! No! with such zest for life and such an appetite a man does not die." Such wretched consolations usually sustained and cheered him for some of the following lonely hours, but with the night restlessness, unrest, and violence returned.

About this time there came into the town for a few days an old preacher, a friend of the old doctor's youth and his fellow student, a faithful disciple of the wisdom of reason. He was scarcely alone with the doctor when the latter asked him, with great earnestness, whether one really had ground to believe that man's spirit is immortal. The result of this conversation was that "the proofs of reason for immortality are not sufficient, one can therefore not arrive at certainty about it, yet, if one can hold the soul to be immortal, one stands very well with this belief."

That this conversation had put the doctor into great unrest he complained to a man who attended the drawing up of his will and had proved himself a true friend. He declared to him that if only his immortality could be proved to him, he would surely die in peace. He was advised to turn once to the new preacher, who had just then entered upon his office. The old man shook his head unbelievingly, and said with a smile: "Do you suppose that what my experienced old friend could not tell me, a young man should know, who has lived and studied fifty years less?"

However, the physician's assistant and the young pastor had to dine with the old man several times a week. Before the assistant, a schoolfellow, the pastor need have had no timidity in speaking earnestly with the old man of death and judgment. But — in the very house of an old and highly placed man, moreover one most adroit in conversation, and besides without any pastoral experience, to take possession of the word and to hold the old man fast, seemed to the preacher impossible. This troubled the preacher well enough, and he hoped from one time to another for a fitting opportunity, especially as the doctor dismissed him almost every time with the words: "Well, Herr Pastor, you will come again then and then, will you not? then we will surely talk earnestly with one another; I have much to ask." The pastor thought this way and that, and came at last to the conviction that, with the many labors and duties which his office laid upon him, he must husband every hour carefully. When the doctor therefore once again put him off to a convenient time, he replied, "Dear Herr Physikus, I am grateful to you that you, a stranger, so kindly