# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1849 12 11_S62
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

62

5. Luther's larger and smaller Catechisms. 6. Chrysostom considered with reference to training for the pulpit. 7. Remarks on the study of prophecy. 8. Schmid's Dogmatik of the Luth. Church. 9. Corporal punishment as a means of discipline in schools. 10. Hymns from the German of Luther. 11. Notices of new publications. The second number contains: 1. The Swedish Churches on the Delaware. 2. The principle of Protestantism, translated from German of Dr. Thomasius. 3. Catechization. 4. The relation of our Confessions to the Reformation. 5. Earnestness in the Preacher. 6. Proceedings of the Gen. Syn. 7. Exegetical Elucidation of Mark. 9, 49. 50 translated from the German of Dr. Baehr at Carlsruhe. 8. Winer's Bible Dictionary. 9. Rudelbach and Guericke's Journal. 10. Hymns from the German of Luther. 11. Paul Gerhard: a Ballad. 12. Litterary Intelligence: a. Guericke's Church History, b. Harless' Sermons, c. Rudelbach's Christian Biography (No. 1. "Cyprian"), d. German Booksellers' Semi-annual Catalogue. 13. Notices of new publications. The first two numbers already comprise 320 pages. The whole volume of 4 numbers is issued for three dollars payable in advance, two copies for five dollars, obtainable at the address: Wm. M. Reynolds, Gettysburg, Pa.

(Submitted.)

Frankenmuth, the 8th of November 1849.

The Missions- and the Weyl Church Messenger.

Recently the last number of this year's "Missionsbote" came into our sight, and in it an article entitled: "A Letter from Brother Schmid in Ann Arbor," in the reading of which our hearts, we may well say, grew quite heavy. Painfully were we thereby reminded of the words of Paul Gerhard, which as a man of seventy years he impressed upon his son in his testament: "and beware of Syncretists, for they seek the temporal and are faithful neither to God nor to men." — To be sure, the letter is ostensibly worded so benevolently, does not polemicize so directly, but only, as it were, gives vent to a full heart now and again by a little side-blow. Should one then straightway swing the sword against it, and not rather keep silent and bear? But the letter contains not misunderstandings but untruths, and scatters them abroad into the world. The letter is wholly made to present a bad cause as good, and to roll reproach upon the good cause of the Lutheran Church — here in this land called the Old Lutheran. There we can, there we dare not keep silent, for the sake of the truth. Now it is commonly known that the father of lies, in this last sorrowful time, has hatched against the good old Lutheran Church — for the new one, which is not Lutheran, he leaves unmolested — the great lie: that its essence consisted in the Old Lutheran forms and in the setting up of division over opinions of an unessential kind, especially concerning worship. Not so commonly known, but nevertheless a fact, is it that Pastor Schmid in Ann Arbor especially has repeatedly been instructed that this is precisely a gross lie, and that the Lutheran Church, and those who sincerely hold to her, though they be reviled with the name "Old Lutherans" and be branded thereby as sectarians, are concerned above all things with the confession of the truth, of the full and entire revealed divine truth, and with doctrine and practice conformable thereto; wherein she indeed, despite all reproach, loves her good old tried and excellent forms, which so faithfully express the Lutheran character, but contends for them only when she is condemned as Romish out of blind ignorance or devilish malice, or when it concerns ceremonies by the use of which the truth would be denied, to please the enemies. Nevertheless he helps in his letter to spread that lie and to cover the New Lutheran medley with the good appearance, as though it were thoroughly honest Lutheran and had to let itself be called heretical by us uncouth people on account of worship, etc. He does this through the following notable untruths. First, he begins softly thus: for about half a year we have noticed in the letters of our missionaries Auch and Maier a tendency and mood expressed as though they could, according to their consciences and inner conviction, no longer remain in our Missionary Society if we did not all join ourselves, in doctrine, confession and practice, to the Old Lutheran Church or the Synod of Missouri. — Then further below it says: we testify here once more that, by God's grace and the power of the Holy Ghost, we have always held purely to the Word of Holy Scripture as the Lutheran Church teaches, and have also never been ashamed of the confession of our Church; but that we should unconditionally join the said Synod, as our missionaries and several brethren of the Missouri Synod wish, and thus also adopt the practice and ceremonies of the Old Lutheran Church, which are unknown to most of us and must after all be regarded as things indifferent, we can never and nevermore do, and thus nothing remained to us but to leave our brethren Auch and Maier with the mission station Sibiwaing to the Missouri Synod. — Finally, in the concluding remark appended, which condescends to instruct, it says among other things, literally thus: therefore we think that it is foolish to force upon a Christian congregation gathered from heathendom any predetermined form; for the Spirit creates for itself its own form, etc.

Now I ask, must not, according to this presentation, every uninformed reader, who simply does not know and understand the matter better, come to the belief: the Lutheran Church and that which is here reviled as Old Lutheran are two different things, of which the latter bears the mark that it makes its ceremonies pretty much the main thing, and indeed to such a degree that it forces them even upon newly gathered Christian congregations from among the heathen? — But that is, altogether and each part of it, a lie, and that it is one is very well known to Pastor Schmid. Or shall we testify to him again and again that we want nothing but to belong sincerely and with our whole heart to the Lutheran Church, and that we are concerned above all with the true and full confession of the precious truth of the Bible, as the Lutheran Church has ever and always confessed it? To be sure, doctrine and practice must agree with such confession, that is evident. I cannot teach that one should not invoke the saints, and yet kneel before their images; I cannot say in the sermon: through the Word and Sacrament the Spirit is given, and yet want to pull Him down from heaven with my shouting prayers — otherwise I make myself a liar. So also I cannot indeed preach: stand fast in liberty; be not the servants of men, and yet, in order not to offend the false brethren, the Reformed, distribute the Lord's Supper without necessity precisely in their manner. —

Further, must not every uninformed reader believe, after that letter, that the missionaries Auch and Maier are such crotchety heads that they could no longer endure it in a purely Lutheran fellowship, unless it joined itself to another, foreign body, the Old Lutheran Church or the Synod of Missouri? whereby now, in the second place, a third, the said Synod, is added, unless it is an apposition and this Synod is to be precisely the Old Lutheran Church. — Is it not further so represented, as if their complaint had been that they had pressed in vain for unconditional union with the said Synod and thus for the adoption of the Old Lutheran practice and of the Old Lutheran ceremonies? And are they not finally pilloried with the folly that they wished to force the Old Lutheran form of worship upon young heathen Christians? — in which forcing, to be sure, alone the folly would lie. — Now then, let Pastor Schmid bethink himself and give God the glory and confess himself that these are sheer lies. To us at least the missionaries Auch and Maier have always only complained that in Ann Arbor they wish indeed to be called Lutheran but not to be unreservedly Lutheran, but practise the practice of the Unionists, etc., and are deaf to entreaties and representations. The same complaint we have read with our own eyes in one of their letters, which they laid before us for examination, in order that no fault might be committed by them through undue zeal and unseemly expression. Thus also during our presence in Ann Arbor we heard, indeed, nothing of all the above, but rather from Auch's