# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1849 11 27_S49
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Der Lutheraner.

"God's Word and Luther's doctrine shall never pass away."

Published by the German Evangelical Lutheran Synod of Missouri, Ohio, and Other States.

Edited by C. F. W. Walther.

Volume 6.  St. Louis, Mo., November 27, 1849.  No. 7.

Terms: Der Lutheraner appears once every two weeks at the yearly subscription price of One Dollar for subscribers living at a distance, who must pay it in advance and bear the postage. — In St. Louis each single number is sold for 5 Cents.

Only those letters which contain communications for the paper are to be addressed to the Editor; all others, which contain business matters, orders, cancellations, money, etc., are to be sent hither under the address: Mr. F. W. Barthel, care of C. F. W. Walther, St. Louis, Mo.

(East Indian Correspondence.)

Tranquebar, July 1849.

To our Lutheran brethren in North America.

Beloved brethren in the Lord!

The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God the Father, and the communion of the Holy Ghost be with you and with us all. Amen.

"I believe one holy Christian Church, the communion of saints." So we confess in our Apostles' Creed. This His one true Church the Lord has caused, through the preaching of His Word and the administration of His holy Sacraments, to spread her wings over His whole earth; and although in these last troubled times the devil has, by the Lord's permission, brought in a great many factions, sects, and divisions, yet there is now no quarter of the world, not even Africa, to which the Lord does not cause His pure Word to be preached, and to which He does not cause His holy Sacraments to be offered in right use from the hand of orthodox messengers, as a testimony in this last time. And however manifold and various the members of His one Church dwelling scattered over the earth may be in language, custom, and manner, they are all one in the one Lord, one in the one faith and the one confession of His one truth, one in the one water of life, which has regenerated us all, in the one holy body broken for us, in the one holy blood shed for us, which feeds and gives us all to drink unto eternal life, one in unanimous believing intercession for one another.

So the Lord has also founded for Himself His Church in the wide spaces of northern America, as well as under the hot rays of southern India, and in the former place has set you, beloved brethren in the Lord, in order that you there, in doctrine and life, among the remnants of Indian heathenism, and especially over against the great power and onslaught of the Roman and Reformed church-communions and sects, should present the image of one united, living, and sound body of Jesus Christ, to His honor and as a testimony to them. In the latter place, on the other hand, where on the one side Hindu heathenism with its still so great power stands decidedly hostile over against us, and on the other side the English spirit seeks to intrude into all the relations of life and to fashion everything after itself, it has pleased the Lord to commit to us the direction and care of His Church and mission.

However great now the distance between you and us, however different the circumstances in which you live from those in which we live, we are one in all the eternal heavenly goods and gifts in which the whole Church on earth is one.

But in order to keep this unity and concord of His Church on earth ever truly living and personal, the Lord has from the beginning of His Church made use of a particular means, namely, the means of letters and greetings from one to another. Consider the earlier centuries, and especially the apostolic age, how then letters and greetings of peace went and came from congregation to congregation, and how lively and personal the communion of saints among one another was at that time.

That now also in this last troubled time the unity of the Church of the Lord and the communion of His saints among one another, which indeed truly exists upon the foundation of those eternal heavenly goods and in them, may show and manifest itself ever more livingly and personally to the honor of the Lord and to the growth of His body, the old, holy, blessed means of letters and greetings of peace is that upon which the Lord has also in these times laid His blessing again, lays it, and will lay it, to be used again ever more zealously. And it is in this sense, beloved brethren in the Lord, that we send you in these lines a letter and our greeting of peace; in this sense, namely, that we too, for our small part, might contribute a mite toward this, that in these days, when the Lord in great manifest signs proclaims the approach of His Day, His Church scattered up and down on earth might in all her members yet draw together more and more, and unite in living, personal communion into a living, jointed unity that is also outwardly visible.

So take it, then, this letter from our hand, and be greeted in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ with the greeting of His peace.

Very often and much do we hear and read of you and think of you, thou dear Church of North America. Behold, thy little, still so feeble Tamil sister rises up in us and sends thee, the greater and mightier sister, her greeting. She greets and speaks to thee these following words:

"Beloved sister in the Lord! Behold here the hand and the greeting of a sister who, though far from thee, yet is one with thee, a sister who has heard of thy childhood, of thy growth, of thy enemies and thy conflicts within and without, of thy sufferings, temptations, misery, and of thy faith, and who, because she is one with thee in all things, would also become one with thee in all things. Have we not one Lord and Bridegroom Jesus Christ, have we not one holy confession of His truth, won by the fathers and handed down to us children, have we not become members of His body through one Baptism and the Lord's Supper? And further: do we not both dwell in the heathen land, thou there and I here, and have to contend against the power and craft of the devil? Are we not both surrounded and beset by English ways, Reformed swarms of sects, and the restless activity and artifices of the Romans? Behold, so we are one, and I now reach thee my hand and call to thee: Hold fast that which thou hast, that no man take thy crown! and in the conflict against the power and craft of the devil and against all