# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1849 09 04_S7
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

7

bears no other fruit than this, that such persons have received the testimony and will therefore not be able, on the Day of Judgment, to excuse themselves with the sloth of the Lutherans of the nineteenth century, who have let it sleep in their delusion.

Faith of the Little Children.

Let us see the cause, then, why they do not hold the children to be believing. They say, because they have not yet come to reason, they cannot hear God's Word. But where God's Word is not heard, there can be no faith, Rom. 10.: Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God, etc., etc. — Tell me, is that also spoken in a Christian manner, thus to judge of God's works according to our own notion? The children have not come to reason, therefore they could not believe? What? If thou, through such reason, wert already fallen away from faith, and the children through their unreason were come to faith?

Prithee, what good does reason do toward faith and God's Word? Is it not she that resists faith and God's Word in the highest degree, so that no one can come to faith for her, nor will she suffer God's Word, unless she be blinded and put to shame, so that man must die to her and become equally a fool, and just as unreasonable and unintelligent as a young child, if he is to become a believer and receive God's grace. As Christ says, Matth. 18.: Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. How often does Christ set before us that we must become children and fools, and condemns reason. Tell me besides, where does the reason of the Christian believer remain when he sleeps, though his faith and God's grace never leave him? Can faith here remain without the aid of reason, so that she is not aware of it, why should it not also begin in the children, before reason knows anything of it? Likewise I might also say of all stations in which a Christian lives and works at something, or otherwise has to do, that he is not aware of faith and reason, and yet faith does not on that account cease. God's works are hidden and wonderful, where and when He will; again also manifest enough, where and when He will: so that to judge concerning them is too high and too deep for us.

Yet we would not by this have the preaching office weakened or laid aside. For indeed God also does not let preaching go on for the sake of rational hearing, since no fruit comes of that; but for the sake of spiritual hearing, which the children also have, as well and better than the old. So they hear the Word too. For what is Baptism else than the Gospel, to which they are brought? Although they hear it only once, they hear it all the more mightily, because Christ takes them up, who has bidden them be brought. For the old have here an advantage, that they hear often and can think of it again. Yet it goes also with the old thus in spiritual hearing, that it does not enter through much preaching; but it may strike once in a sermon, and he has enough of it eternally. What he hears afterwards, there he hears either to better that first thing, or to spoil it again.

If they (the children) have not heard the Word, whereby faith comes, as the old hear it, yet they hear it as the young little children. The old take it in with ears and reason, often without faith. They, however, hear it with ears, without reason and with faith. And faith is so much the nearer, the less reason there is, and the stronger is He who brings them thereto, than is the will of the old, which comes from themselves.—(Luther's Kirchenpostille, Dom. III. p. Epiph.)

(Submitted.)

Political Matters.

The "Lutheraner" has for a long time brought its readers no news from the field of politics, and seems almost to have forgotten its promise. We would like to have reminded it of this on occasion and kindly ask it to continue its reports; for even if we can learn the events from political papers, what concerns us most is precisely how they are to be regarded and judged by a Lutheran Christian. The Lutheraner has, in judging the latest European events, maintained a far worthier, sounder and more Scriptural position than most of the other papers of the religious press here. I cannot now, on this occasion, refrain from pointing in a few words to the latest events in Rome. This city, enslaved for more than a thousand years by spiritual despotism, with the throne of Antichrist in its midst, which covered its long since vanished greatness and renown only sparingly with the glittering delusion of papal hierarchy, this city suddenly awoke like a lion from sleep, shook off the long accustomed fetters, drove out the Pope, and declared him forfeit of his temporal power. Indeed, the Popes had often in former times been driven from their residence, but for quite other reasons than now. This time the real cause of his expulsion was the certainly Protestant principle that spiritual and temporal power may not be joined with one another, that it belongs to the Pope, as Bishop of Rome, to govern his Church, but not the State. This testifies to a prodigious revolution in the ideas of the Roman people, whether it was wrought by the influence of genuine Protestantism, or by the destructive tendencies of a sort of German-Catholicism.

In short, all Protestants were no doubt deeply interested in these events in Rome, as to how they are to be brought into agreement with the prophecies of Holy Scripture concerning the Papacy. The old Lutheran doctrine of the Church is quite simple: the Pope must remain to the end, until the return of Christ to judgment, although he has received a deadly blow through the Reformation of Luther, and now, so to speak, lies continually in the throes of death; but remain he must, what he is, a spiritual and temporal power, until the return of Christ. Our old theologians grounded this view upon 2 Thess. 2, 8.: "And then shall that Wicked be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming." If now the Pope had really lost his temporal power for ever, he would have ceased to be the true Antichrist, because the union of spiritual and temporal power is the characteristic mark of the same. This would be plainly contrary to the prophecy of Scripture. I presume that it will already be known to the readers that Rome, after a desperate resistance, has finally had to surrender to the French, and has been compelled by them to accept the Pope not merely as her spiritual, but also as her temporal lord. The old-Lutheran doctrine of the Church is therefore confirmed anew by this turn of events in Rome. It is known to how many fanatical ideas and conclusions concerning the development of the events prophesied in the Revelation of John the temporary expulsion and humiliation of the Pope had led. The Lutheran doctrine will also in its eschatology, (doctrine of the last things) be the silver that endures a sevenfold trial by fire and comes forth each time the more proved.

Most remarkable of all is this, how wonderfully the hand of God has intervened in this event. No one had believed that the Pope would have his temporal power restored to him by a people which itself had shortly before shaken off the yoke and declared itself a free people. One might sooner have thought that the Tiber must change its course and flow back to Rome, than that the Pope should be led back to Rome by the French. This is something so unheard-of, so utterly contrary to all human expectation, that one must plainly see therein the government of the most high LORD in heaven. The Scripture was to be fulfilled, and that God might the more show His power, it had to be fulfilled precisely by those of whom one had before held it to be impossible. In general one sees also from the outcome of the Revolution in Germany quite plainly that to change the shape of things, to overthrow old institutions and build up new, and to give another turn to the destinies of the nations, is not the affair of the clay, but of the potter, not of the powerless human will, but of the absolute sovereignty of God. The poor Titans