# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1849 10 16_S26
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

26

widows and orphans supported in the best manner? Can not a brother everywhere, in the remotest regions, where only brothers are, reckon upon the friendliest reception and the readiest assistance?

P. Yes, after he has let it cost him his good hard cash. Tell me, Carl, if you lay down a fip to that baker there, and he gives you a loaf of bread for it, would you station yourself in the street, and call all the world together, and cry out: Just look now, what a man the baker is; no, such people have never yet been met with. The parsons have been prating so long about love, but here is the man who practises love! Only think, and be astonished! I give the man a fip, and he — No, one cannot utter such love at all — he gives me a fip's-worth of bread for it!

C. Do not take it amiss of me, the question is absurd and silly!

P. Certainly! and so are your societies with their trumpet of love, and a good deal worse still!

C. But how can you compare our societies with the baker?

P. There you are right again, I ought not to have done it, for I do the baker wrong thereby. For no baker will have such a hard heart, if a poor hungry man should come and ask him for bread, but say that he had no more than three cents, as not to give him the fip's-worth of bread for it, and probably he would make him a present of the three cents besides. But such love among you would be sheer folly; there you know how to go about it more cleverly; you give out no bread unless the money is first in your pocket; let the man starve if he cannot help it, what does that concern your Christian love?

C. There you do us crying injustice.

P. Injustice? To whom then do you show your love and benevolence? To him, and to no other, who pays you for it with his bright money, and from whom you can hope that you will first make a handsome profit on him before your love and assistance is called upon. Otherwise your love is not at home. Do you ever take in a sickly person; or one who has passed a certain age, unless he pay extra for it? Must not the contribution be paid to the very letter, and is not the man shut out of all love and benevolence according to your statutes who has stayed away with his contributions beyond a certain time? That is an excellent love, which shuts out the sick and the old and the poor, and takes in only such people as one foresees one can draw contributions from for a long time! Your love has the principle: "Charity seeketh her own," and you ought to have that embroidered on your banners. Your love stops where Christian love begins; yes, it would be laughable if it were not enough to drive one mad. Your love does not depend on your will at all, but if it should perhaps once occur to you not to love a "brother," he would go to court and sue you, and then you would have to "love and be benevolent," or the constable would teach you. On the other hand, your love shows itself again so cautious, and (confoundedly) scrupulous, that when a "brother" falls sick, you send your watchers every other minute to feel his pulse, or to spy out whether he perhaps goes out or works, and so cheats you of your contribution, meant to say love and benevolence. How comforting such an anxious and sympathizing love must be for the sick man!

C. How can that be so striking to you? How should the societies exist, and attain their holy purposes of love, if they took in sickly and infirm people, and brought money into the house of every lazybones or rogue who merely pretended to be sick, in order to have himself fed in bed?

P. And I ask in return: How can you call that love and benevolence, where those are shut out from it who need it most, and only those are deemed worthy of love of whom one foresees that they will not need love until they have already paid a considerable sum. How can one call that love and benevolence for which I have neither to ask nor to give thanks, but which I pay for with my good money, and, if it comes to the point, can sue for in court as my good right? I truly do not know whether I should wonder more at your impudence, with which you would make the world believe that your doings are love, or at the stupidity of the people who let themselves be made to believe it, and be led about by the nose. For with your societies it is just so, to express myself quite plainly: Hans does not think much of the living God, but all the more of a well-invested capital, for that he can see, and with that one can already begin something respectable in this country. He thinks now thus: I am just a workman and earn so and so much a week, on that I and my wife and child can live; but it is a strange country here, if I cannot work, then I have no money either, then I cannot pay the house rent, buy no bread, etc. Now it might happen that I should fall sick, then it would go ill with me, where should the food come from? Absorbed in such thoughts he meets Kunz, and it makes sense to him also. Then they sit down, and think it over, whether it would not be better if they each week laid by a fixed sum from their wages, that they might have something in time of need. But because they are not sure that in healthy days they will not touch it, they hit upon the natural thought of bringing together still more good friends, and of setting up a common fund, which none can get at by himself, for otherwise one would come too soon to the bottom of it. Then they bind themselves that they will put so and so much into the fund monthly, and put the capital out at interest, and if any one of them falls sick, he shall have so and so much support money, and his widow also, if he should die, a fixed sum. Now Hans is of good cheer, come what may, he is provided for, and for his wife and child he now need lay by nothing further, for if he falls sick, he gets money, if he dies, the family has something too.

C. And is that then such an abominable thing, that if God blesses me with more than I need for the moment, I gather up the fragments, that I may also have something in time of need?

P. By no means, the LORD also gathered the fragments, and the Father in heaven, with all His bounty wherewith He has adorned nature, and provided for the creature, is nevertheless very thrifty and lets nothing perish in His household.

C. Why then do you blame us?

P. Certainly not because you lay by the fragments for the time of need. You may for all I care put into savings banks; nor should I know whether anything were to be objected against a benefit society, if only one did not place one's trust upon it, and out of avarice withdraw from the relief of poverty; but this is the abominable thing, that you, after you have cared only for your own advantage, put the trumpet to your mouth, march through the streets, and shout into all the world that your societies are the paragon of Christian love, of which nothing similar has existed to date! And because the world is not so stupid as not to see that it is a good thing to draw one's profit, and withal to get into the bargain the renown of a special love and benevolence, and besides there come the costly display, mystery-mongering, standing and good custom among the brethren, and the power of holding together, no one is such a fool as to stay behind, and there is all at once the world one great army of love, and the golden age of love has broken in. Meanwhile a weak, sickly man hears of the new, tremendously great love, and thinks, such holy people can and will help me. He comes and complains of his woe, begs for God's sake to be taken in, that he may have something also in time of need, and his widow and orphans also, if he should die; but then holy love falls to the ground, and the holy brotherhood speaks: You silly fool, how can you take us for so stupid that we should take you in? You might fall sick in the very first weeks, and then we should have to maintain you for your mockery of a contribution perhaps a whole year, and if you then died, give your widow also several hundred dollars, that would be a fine profit, we should soon have to cease fulfilling "the holy purposes of love and benevolence" which the holy brotherhood has set before it, — and with that you let the poor man go in his gnawing grief, perhaps stick a few dollars into his hand, which amount to a few cents on each member, that you may not come altogether into discredit, and march again through the streets and cry: