# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1849 12 27_S67
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

67

year kingdom, of the Sabbath, etc.) to deny and to reject. It is spoken out of the soul of every upright Lutheran, what the excellent Rudelbach writes in the preface to his "historisch-kritische Einleitung in die Augsburgische Confession von 1841," wherein he begins as follows: "The fundamental confession of our evangelical Church is, thank God, not merely a weather-beaten cathedral, like those of the Middle Ages, whose heroic thoughts we marvel at, but whose restoration will hardly succeed with those born after (for God gave us another element, aspiring heavenward, to build on, in spiritual song and in the history of His Church), but a living temple, whose walls still mock all the pygmies who shook at them, and whose dome shall be completed with the cross, when the Church herself, in her perfection, goes to meet her Bridegroom and eternal High Priest. Men cry out, and are not weary of crying out: The Augsburg Confession, though once the Magna Charta of the religious freedom and joyfulness of faith of our fathers, has now lost its significance; like other documents from the medieval life of the peoples and the first dawn of the awakening human spirit, it must give place to a new era of the nations and to the far-fluttering banner of freedom of spirit. Well then, here it is not a matter of exchange of words and sword-strokes in the air, but of deed and undisguised conflict. The Augsburg Confession must, by itself, living-historically, rise above all school-quarrels, and legitimate itself as the true 'Symbolum nostri temporis' (symbol of our time), as the Formula of Concord expresses it, and let us add, as the 'symbolum extremae mundi aetatis' (symbol of the last age of the world), as the great Pharos (lighthouse) of orthodoxy, by which all the ships of the Church must seek light and a safe harbor, if they would not be wrecked." . . . "And now, dear brethren, where ye may linger in thought over the injuries of the Church, and loudly confess your joyful hope for her restoration, let us one and all deal with the Confession as the wise virgins did with the oil before the coming of the bridegroom at the midnight hour! For surely, it is better than the vessel, with which many confound it, and the flame of love also cannot burst forth without this oil of life, the truth. Let us well mark the great saying, that when once the crowing of the cock has taken place, it is too late for buying, for the individual as for the nations to whom Christ the LORD has been preached! Yea, therefore let us drive away all drowsiness, all spiritual sloth, all negligence, and become fervent in the spirit of the Confession toward Him who has won our hearts — and how should He not then have our mouth also! For behold: it is time to awake out of sleep; the night is far spent, the day is at hand!"

Cry of Distress of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Prussia to the Kindred-in-Faith Germany.*)

*) We publish this cry of distress, not only to awaken sympathy with the sufferings of our brethren in the old fatherland, but also to show why we here may expect ever less support from that quarter, since the distress there is evidently in many respects more crying than here.

The General Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Prussia sends to all Lutherans of foreign lands, and to every one to whose ears this cry of distress may come, especially the grace of our LORD Jesus Christ, the love of God the Father, and the communion of the Holy Ghost, now and evermore. Amen.

Marvel not, dear brethren, that we venture to address this open letter to you, to complain to you of our manifold want, and to entreat your brotherly intercession and help for God's sake. The great distress into which the LORD has let us fall for our sins and the sins of our fathers, — the confidence that your hearts will not remain stony and unfeeling at the cry of distress of your brethren, who are members with you of One Body, — above all the faith that the old God still lives, who can turn the hearts of men like water-brooks and guide their feet into the way of the merciful Samaritan, move us thereto. May the same God, however, who still lives and is still today as rich as He has been from everlasting, acknowledge this letter and bring its contents to your ears and into your hearts, that ye may show mercy to us.

Once before we have, and indeed by a publication issued by our Supreme Church Council,**) attempted to bring our distress to your knowledge. The LORD has not left even this attempt unblessed; it has brought us fruit, namely gifts of love from you, and surely still more intercessory lips and hearts. While we now heartily thank all givers and intercessors for this, and wish them rich reward from God, we must nevertheless testify that these gifts received (127 Thaler in all) stand in no such proportion to the distress that exists, that a repetition of our public petition could deserve the reproach of insatiableness or even of impudence. And since good friends have assured us that in general our fortunes and present distresses are still very little known abroad, and that a closer enumeration and description of these distresses is especially needed, if we would come to the hearts of our brethren of the faith in foreign lands: therefore we confidently and with all assurance let our lamentations once more resound publicly.

**) "Der gegenwärtige Stand der evangelisch-lutherischen Kirche. Ein Aufruf zur Hülfe, an das glaubensverwandte Ausland gerichtet vom Ober-Kirchen-Collegium u. s. w. Leipzig. 1847."

Our fathers' sins and our own sins the LORD visited upon us through the permission of the well-known attempt at Union, which would and was to deprive us of everything that was indispensable to the continued existence of a Lutheran Church in Prussia. The Lutheran Confession was, by virtue of the union of the Lutherans and Reformed into One Church, henceforth to cease to be the one public and common doctrine of our congregations. Our old Agenda, standing solely on the ground of the Lutheran Confession, were to be taken from us, and a new Agenda forced upon us in their place, which denies the Lutheran doctrine over against the Reformed and conceals and blurs the existing difference of doctrine by ambiguous forms. Even the name which our Church bore from the fathers was reached by these attempts to destroy it. Lutherans, a Lutheran Church in Prussia, there was henceforth to be none, even by name, — only Evangelicals and an Evangelical Church. It was fulfilled upon us what is written Ps. 83, 5. 6.: "Come, say they, let us cut them off from being a nation; that the name of Israel may be no more in remembrance. For they have consulted together with one consent; they are confederate against thee." Now our Church, however, was so wounded unto death by the preceding unbelief, the head so sick, the heart so faint, and the reawakening life of faith still so young and full of childish projects, that thousands of our congregation, without any resistance, yea, the most of them without knowledge and will, exchanged the new Union church for the Church of their fathers. Scarcely One congregation as a congregation, almost only individuals resisted, and would not consent to the denial of their Confession demanded of them, to the annihilation of their Church. But because only few resisted, might went before right. Our complaints, petitions and appeals to the old rights and privileges of our Church died away unheard; — our resistance was regarded as culpable disobedience against the authorities, the few pastors faithful to the Confession were deposed, the small flocks faithful to the Confession scattered, and only the choice left to us, either to deny our Confession and the Church founded upon it and let ourselves be incorporated into the Union church, or to sacrifice the church property and houses of God inherited from the fathers, but in so doing to save the Church whose foundation and heritage, in the highest sense of the word, consists not in stones, silver and gold, but in the Word of God, which endureth forever. Now the LORD, the God of all the afflicted, strengthened the weak and poor, that they chose rightly and divinely, that they sought first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and let their heavenly Father care for the rest, who well knows,