# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1849 10 30_S34
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

34

tried from the beginning all his arts, in coarser or finer fashion, to tear this One God out of men's hearts. And how has he done this? The One true God has revealed Himself everywhere from the beginning as a living, personal God, through continuous teaching and deeds. His being, His attributes, His will, His relation to man, the manner and way in which one is to worship and serve Him, all this He has revealed, so that His people know Him according to His being, His attributes, etc., and also stand in a living intercourse with Him, in which He lives in them, and they in Him. The devil has now sought, through their lusts, to turn away the hearts of men from this One God, from the saving knowledge of Him and blessed intercourse with Him, and to direct them toward the outward world, and in this he has succeeded, and succeeds daily. But since the consciousness of God rests too deep in their nature for believing in a God or not to lie at all in the will of a man, he helps especially those who hold themselves to be particularly wise to devise for themselves a Godhead according to their own notions and vain imaginations — a lying image of sinful conceit, which, however, according to their infallible pride of understanding, they hold for the true God. Such wise men, who in ancient times appeared only singly and yet always gave out their doctrine for a higher revelation, but in our day are to be met with by the dozen in every filthy drinking den, now easily find an audience among worldly men fallen away from God, to whom, of course, the One right God in His holy majesty is not agreeable, and bring them to the acceptance of their idol, which is then presented to men for veneration, now as an image of stone, or wood, or of thoughts. The people, then, who worship this lying image do not worship the true God, although they naturally think they are worshipping Him; for their god is indeed an entirely different being, has different attributes, etc., etc., from the true God who has revealed Himself. Yes, their god does not exist at all in reality; they pray into the air, to a "nothing," for the idol is precisely "nothing." But whoever prays to the idol, serves it and sacrifices to it, serves and sacrifices precisely to the devil, who has framed such a figment of the brain for the wise of this world and their adherents, 1 Cor. 8:4 ff., chap. 10:19 ff. But whither am I coming? You worship the great spirit in your societies, do you not?

C. That is: we call God so; I think it does not depend on the name.

P. I only wonder why God in His revelation has always Himself given the names by which He will be called. — We Christians, according to your view, might as well call Him the Lord Jupiter or Mercury?

C. Certainly not, those were precisely particular idols of the ancient heathen!

P. And the "great spirit" is precisely the particular idol of the Indians; what difference is there then? Or are the Indians perhaps no heathen? So you in your vaunted progress have happily arrived again at heathenism, and now hold again for uncommon heavenly wisdom what our fathers a thousand years ago forsook and cursed as the grossest darkness, yea as the work of the devil. Of course you must also have the glory of the ancient heathen: "Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools," Rom. 1:22. The virtues there vaunted, which this wisdom brought forth as natural fruits, shine indeed most brilliantly in this enlightened century, and so the high goal that you seek will doubtless be attained, namely the blessedness of heathenism! O great spirit! You indeed could not protect your red men from being hunted with bloodhounds and exterminated with brandy, powder and lead, but you are nevertheless mighty, for those who have driven out your people are subdued by you again! In their wigwams your name is honored; in your honor the smoke whirls up from the peace-pipe; from you the blessing upon the hunts is implored; to your care the "white red men" still commend the souls of their departed chieftains and common warriors, sure that you will lead them to good hunting grounds, where the maize grows of itself and the buffaloes run about roasted. O happy America! where not only the different peoples have found their refuge, but serve their different idols in peaceful union with the Supreme Idol, the great spirit, in blessed harmony of love! O blessed future, when the gloomy cross shall have sunk into the dust, and Druids, Sachems and priests shall celebrate the Fitzli Putzli of their cheerful divine services with invocation of the "Great Spirit." I wish you joy, my friend, that you belong to the blessed persons who are destined to introduce this blessed barbarism into the land!

C. Oh, I beg you, be serious. The matter is not so clear to me as it seems to be to you; if in our societies God is called "the great spirit," I have naturally understood by it no other God than the true God whom Christians worship.

P. Would that have excused the apostles or the first Christians, if they had attended the idolatrous worship of the heathen and had said at the same time: I know for certain that I am worshipping the right God, who has revealed Himself and in whom I believe? It does not depend at all on which God you mean and worship, but on which God the society as a society worships, of which you are a member, and to whose faith and divine service you have bound yourself by an oath.

C. But you have not yet proved to me that the society as a society worships another God than the Christians' God, especially since we also as a society acknowledge the Bible as truth?

P. That only increases the abomination, that you so desecrate the holy book, the eternal Word of God, that you have it in your meetings and carry it about in your processions, as if the eternal Word of God taught nothing else than your nature-idolatry.

C. On the contrary, we prove precisely thereby that we worship the God of the Bible, that is, the true God!

P. Your own conscience must give you the lie. If the society worshipped the God of the Christians, why then do they not give Him the same name which the whole Christian Church gives Him? Why do they call upon Him by the name of an idol? What do you know then of the great spirit? Who is he? Indian idol — that is all that we know of him, and him you call upon. Further, you know very well that the greatest part of the members of your societies confess quite openly and freely that they believe nothing of what Christians believe, therefore also do not believe in the Christians' God, yet the great spirit they call upon along with the rest.

C. That does not yet prove that the society as a society does not acknowledge and worship the Christians' God, even if individual members reject Christianity, as there are everywhere such members who join a society and yet do not share its principles.

P. These people enter your societies only because they know that your God is not the Christians' God, as also not the New Testament, but only a part of the Old Testament is used in your meetings, yea, even your reckoning of time is not the Christian but the Jewish, or God knows what kind it is, whereby the society sufficiently shows that it wants nothing positively Christian, and so its God also is not the Christians' God. But if you would perhaps convince yourself still more, you need only make the proposal, "since the society is a Christian one, one should henceforth call the triune God by His right name, since it is wrong to call upon the true God under the name of an idol"; then you will see what a storm breaks loose. Yet I will try to make the matter still clearer to you.

C. You would do me a favor thereby.

P. God grant it! You believe, do you not, that the One true God is the triune: God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost?

C. Without doubt!

P. Can a man also, who does not worship Christ as the true God, boast that he worships the true God?

C. Certainly not!

P. Can not Jews and Turks be received into your society without having to renounce their faith, or openly fallen-away Christians who will know nothing of the Godhead of Christ, but only of the All-father, or great nature-spirit, or whatever they call the thing, in short a god who is only One person, and of whom they know nothing but that he perhaps created the world, and also