# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1849 09 04_S5
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

5

offered, until the agreement upon the Constitution, to take over the central authority provisionally), nor take any part in negotiations for the purpose of an agreement concerning the constitutional work which she herself has declared completed. If, therefore, the Archduke John, notwithstanding the wish expressed on the part of Austria that he retain the Imperial Regency, should nevertheless feel moved to lay it down, Austria must enter a decided protest against its being taken over and exercised by any one of the German governments alone; the further Imperial Regency would have to be so organized*) that all the governments would be assured of their representation therein. (The old Bundestag!) For all these reasons Austria would then also be unable to negotiate in Frankfurt, upon the basis set up by Prussia, with the plenipotentiaries of the same, as with those other German princes, and was accordingly not in a position to comply with the invitation extended, and to send a plenipotentiary to the intended negotiations.

*) established. Ed.

Every mind must indeed have been filled with indignation, or at least painfully touched, by such declarations of Austria, in which one plainly sensed a complete lack of good will toward a freer and more consoling solution of the German troubles. But if men on all sides also fell angrily upon the King of Prussia for his refusal to accept the imperial crown unconditionally (and, under the given circumstances, with the fatal Constitution), and — because they perceived that the refusal had its ground chiefly in scruples of conscience — could not mock the "King by the grace of God" enough: then the rotten foundation of the whole movement and of our condition generally was thereby laid bare again, clear to him who had eyes; and the hope that a tolerable end would be reached could only still cling to the thought that God's mercy has often before let something good come forth from what men have made evil — after He has first given each one to eat the fruit of his works.

But even viewed only from the political and worldly standpoint, one could not blame the King of Prussia for his refusal, especially when one learned how the majority of votes for his election had come about. The Hereditary-Imperialists and even several of the Right had entered into a regular bargain with the Left, and the latter had promised its consent to the Emperor if on the other side the suspensive veto and the unrestricted and secret ballot were allowed to stand. They struck hands on it, and Vogt frankly declared that this Constitution was only the bridge to the Republic, and that this was why they had consented to the bargain. Indeed, the two Simons published a declaration concerning the concluded agreement, in order to justify their step to the people of their party, in which they said among other things: "We assume — and the German press supports this view — that the people, what it did not will at the moment of the Revolution, in its great majority does not will now either (namely the Republic); that an Emperor therefore has the same right as 34 other princes, and that an Emperor by the grace of the people is more democratic than any of the 34 princes by the grace of God." Further: "We had above all well-founded concern lest we unconditionally join ourselves to a great party to whose political tendency we were not merely opposed, but of which we also had to fear that the first common step would lead us to alterations of the Constitution to the disadvantage of the people's liberty, in case the acceptance of the imperial crown should be bound up with such conditions, alterations which we could then not be in a position to prevent with our small number of votes; and we therefore demanded from a number of members of that party sufficient to secure the majority the declaration that they would not, after the definitive*) establishment of the Constitution, lend themselves to any essential alterations of the same." Such a declaration they assure us they received from eighty deputies, among whom, they said, were important members of the Right and of the Center, namely the Prime Minister H. v. Gagern and the Minister of Justice Robert Mohl. "Besides (they say) 114 members of the same party gave us the written declaration that they would vote for the suspensive veto and the electoral law, as it was adopted in first reading by the National Assembly." Finally they say further: "Should the decision of the National Assembly be repugnant to the German people, it now has the means of shaping also the head of its Constitution according to its will by a constitutional way; it has, through the freest electoral law, the power to express its true will, and no absolute veto hinders the earnest, enduring will from coming to prevail." — Thus a considerable number of the Right and of the Center had pledged themselves to the Left, and so it came about that the minority could henceforth take the majority in tow, which it also did faithfully. It was resolved that the election of the head of the Empire was inseparable from the acceptance of the Constitution, that the Constitution should henceforth be brought into force throughout all Germany, and that the "recalcitrant" (resisting) governments should be called upon by the imperial authority to make it known in their States at once and to put it into effect.

(To be concluded.)

*) Not to be undone. Ed.

(Submitted.)

A Remarkable Experience of the Power of Holy Baptism.

Last Monday morning at 6 o'clock there died in my house a boy of seven years, of the cholera. His parents had, until a few days before their falling sick and dying, led a life of complete estrangement from God, without God's Word and Sacrament, in all manner of abominable vices. The poor children, six in number, of whom three were not yet baptized, saw and heard daily nothing but works of darkness. The gracious God so ordered it that in this solemn time the father especially came to a thorough knowledge of his misery and to a longing for the grace of God in Christ, and in Word and Sacrament could appropriate the comfort of forgiveness. On the following Wednesday morning he was seized by the cholera, and fell asleep the same day, gently and, as I confidently hope, blessedly in the LORD. In accordance with his own wishes, the mother and I arranged on the day of his burial that the children concerned should be baptized the next Sunday in the church. But already on the next (Friday) morning I was called, very early, to administer emergency baptism to the middle one of the children, who likewise had been seized by the dreadful plague. When I had been scarcely half an hour in the house, she also fell sick, and had to die, in spite of all the help given her, in the evening of the same day. To quiet her mind I had to give her my hand upon it that I would take her children to myself, baptize the two unbaptized, and provide for the Christian training of all to the best of my power. After she also had been buried on Saturday, and I had had the child, who was still very sick, taken to the hospital, I took the other five poor orphans provisionally into my house. On Sunday, after the close of divine service, the two boys, William, seven years old, and David, two and a quarter years old, together with another child from the congregation, were baptized, amid the most hearty sympathy and the most fervent prayers of godly sponsors and of a considerable number of believers of my congregation. Only once before the holy act was I able, so far as I remember, to find time and opportunity to tell the child how he, now a poor orphan child, without father and mother on earth, would through holy Baptism receive a Father in heaven, who would wash him from all sins through the blood of Christ. Immediately after the baptismal act I kissed the dear child and said: "Now thou hast a gracious God, who has forgiven thee all thy sins through the blood of Christ." To my own great shame I must confess that in the unbelief of my corrupt heart I thought thereby that I might just as well have kept silent, since the child, only seven years old, surely did not have the understanding to comprehend what was said to him, especially as in his parents' house he had hardly ever heard of sin, to say nothing of his own sin, or of forgive-