# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1849 08 07_S197
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

197

sold nearly all his wares. But he had to throw each piece into the fire first; otherwise the Indians would not take it. When day came, the Indians vanished. The trader, wishing to sort his bartered furs in the daytime, now finds nothing but a great heap of — bark. For the departed Indians are visible only by night, and their goods are goods only by night. — Now I understood also the old man's first narrative. He has so grown together with his superstition that he supposes it a matter of course that the Indians after death journey to the West, there to hunt and to hold feasts as they do here, and no reasonable man can doubt it. For why else would shoes for the long journey, and provisions, and a kettle, and fire-making tools, etc., be put with them into the grave? Therefore he also thought it unnecessary to tell me anything else than a few facts as to how matters actually go on there. I now asked him how he knew that it stood with them after death thus and not otherwise. He said: Yes, there were once two very good friends, who were also related. They loved each other so much that the one promised the other he would let himself be buried with him, in case he should outlive him. And so it came to pass; the one died, and nothing could move the other to break his promise. So the grave was made wide enough for both, the living man laid himself in with the dead, poles were put in place so that the earth could not crush the living man, and so they buried them both. Soon afterwards the living man fell asleep. When he awoke, it seemed to him that he was with his friend in a wigwam (hut); there they lived both for a long time. They went hunting, but only the dead man could shoot anything. They also often had visitors, but only the dead man saw the visitors. They also often held feasts. At last the dead man once said to the living man: Listen, tomorrow we shall have many visitors. Our people will come down the river and take me with them. But you cannot follow me this time, therefore I advise you to return to your living brothers. Some will also come tomorrow and scrape open the grave. And so it came to pass. The living man soon afterwards heard a noise above him, which came ever nearer, until the poles were lifted off and several men became visible. The men said to one another: Look, this one has his eyes open; perhaps he is actually alive! Why, of course I am alive, answered the buried man, stood up, crept out of the grave, and told what he had experienced. — I asked who had told him the story. The old man said: Oh, my forefathers, and their forefathers, up to him who was buried, and to those who knew him. I said: So it is, then, a very old story, told many times and distorted, and moreover vouched for by nothing. Let us leave that now. I will now tell you what God says about the condition of all men after death. For here in this world we ourselves order our circumstances, and everyone has the freedom to build his hut here or there and to live where it pleases him. But in that world God will order our affairs, He will assign to us our dwelling-places, which we must take and keep. Therefore God can also best tell how it stands there, how He is accustomed to do, and will do with us. — Thereupon I set before them the biblical doctrine concerning death and resurrection and judgment, concerning eternal blessedness and eternal damnation. And then I read to them the pertinent passage from Matth. 25, 31. ff. out of the Indian Testament. The impression of these words seems to have been powerful, for the old man was struck motionless, together with his companions, for some minutes, like Lot's wife on the way to Zoar. At last he recovered himself and said: Yes, that is just so. Formerly many Indians also learned to pray and let themselves be baptized. But for the most part such a praying Indian (so they call all Christian Indians) was as it were dead. His spirit was absent, but in the throat a little life still showed itself, so that he was not buried. When he came to himself again, he said: I have just now been dead and came to the heaven of the whites. But there they turned me away and said: Red people do not belong here. Therefore I have come back. Now it happened after some time that the same man fell for the second time into just the same condition. When he came to himself again, he said: I have now just been dead again, and then went to the heaven of the Indians. But there too they turned me away and said: You do not belong here; you are a praying Indian; here there is no praying. Therefore I have come back once more. And since they will receive me nowhere, I consider it best to give up praying, so I hope to get into the Indian heaven after all. This he then also did, died for the third time, and came back no more. Ever since, the Indians shun praying. I said: Did you not tell me that the man was not dead the first and second time? The old man: Yes indeed, for a little life still stirred in the throat, therefore they also did not bury him. I: Very well, then he dreamed. And of your dreams I have shown in the sermon that they are the devil's work, who seeks by all manner of false pretences to keep you from God and His Word, in order that he may keep you eternally in his slavery, and in the end make you partakers of his eternal damnation. — The old man now, probably in order to evade, held up to me the senseless doings of the Methodists, in order to have an objection against Christianity in general. To this I replied that I had already shown in the sermon how many ways lead to damnation, but only one to blessedness; that for being damned it is a matter of indifference whether one thinks this or that about life, death, God, eternity, etc., whether one intoxicates himself with or without brandy, whether one takes this road or that: but in order to be saved one must take the way which God Himself has shown us, and believe that which God Himself has revealed to us. The Methodists now have taken one of the many by-ways which the devil has invented in order to keep men from the one right way. But that there are such men does not at all astonish a Christian, since God long ago described them in His Word and warned against them. Thereupon I read to them 1 Tim. 4, 1. 2. and 2 Tim. 3, 1. 2. 5. and 6. After some further things had been said about the shamelessness and falsehood of the Methodists, the conversation was broken off.

Now you know, dear reader, by what miserable stories the devil seeks to hold the poor blind heathen in his bonds, and how he knows to blind and to fetter them, so that they will not part from them at all, even when God's holy, clear Word is set before them. Indeed this Word has not denied its divine power even upon this gray-haired sinner, whose hands are stained with human blood, as became evident especially at the passages concerning the last judgment; but Satan has bound him and the like of him so fast with the chains of darkness that it is hardly to be foreseen by human eyes whether they will ever get loose. To this it is added that the sneaks mentioned before give them, alas, cause enough for righteous indignation, for contempt and mockery of their doings and ways. And since, with a show of godliness, but in hypocritical lying speech, they assert that they are the only true Christians, their hatred and contempt extend over all Christianity. And with the hatred which the Indians, in consequence of the unceasing deception on the part of the whites, have against these, it is very hard to convince them that Christianity is nevertheless the only right way to blessedness, revealed by God Himself, even though many who call themselves Christians distort Christianity to a caricature, and under the show of godliness practise the greatest ungodliness. But "with God nothing is impossible," not even this, to redeem this poor, trodden-down people out of the bonds of darkness. Therefore, my dear reader, who rejoicest in the glorious liberty of the Gospel, in the blessedness in Christ, never forget the words of thy Lord, and practise them also daily with fervent spirit and humble faith, namely the words:

"Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that He will send forth laborers into His harvest."

Man knows not himself until he comes to know himself in temptation.

Augustinus.