# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1849 12 27_S69
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

69

God, and also the congregation, for forgiveness of the offense they have given, and to ask for readmission. — If they stubbornly and wilfully reject his admonition, he would then have nothing more to do with them.

If, on the other hand, the candidate should be willing to receive those people before he has satisfied himself, in the manner proposed, whether they are in the right or not, then the pastor should also give notice of this to the president of the same and call upon him not to give his consent to such a frivolous course of action on the part of the candidate.

4. How are we to deal with such sick persons as have not lived in open sins, but rather have shown themselves outwardly churchly and devout, and in whom, nevertheless, no manifest fruit of the Spirit is to be found?

Answer: With the present prevalence of hypocritical Christianity in congregations that are no longer rude and wild, it would indeed be rather rash in the present case to be ready at once with comfort. On the contrary, it is fitting that, in examining the sick person's knowledge of sin and his repentance, one should not keep so entirely to generalities, nor be content with the "Yes," usually delivered very readily, when it follows the question whether the sick person also acknowledges himself a sinner.

For if the kind and nature of the illness or the patient's present condition permits, it is advisable to put some particular questions about this and that single commandment, in order to find out whether the sick person has a spiritual understanding of it, and whether he penitently acknowledges and confesses his transgression and omission of every one of them, and therein at the same time of the whole commandment of love, and pleads wholly guilty at every single point, or whether he is under the delusion that in his natural, unregenerate state he can nevertheless keep the law in part according to God's mind and will.

Other questions must also be put besides, in order to test, so far as human eye can reach, the sincerity of the repentance. For example, whether it suffices if one merely recognizes with the understanding the vanity of all earthly things, and what must also be given up of them. Further: what ought by right to plague and burden a penitent sick person more than the pains and pressure of the illness. Whether there is a growing hatred and abhorrence of the sins formerly loved and habitual. What ought to pain and trouble a penitent sinner more than the evil consequences of this or that sinful deed. For what the sick person ought to long more strongly than for the recovery of the body; and the like. Only when the conviction has been gained that a sound knowledge of God's holy law and of the indwelling sinful corruption is present in the sick person, with contrition and sorrow, is it time to comfort, and to heal the heart wounded by the law with the balm of the Gospel, with the blood of Christ.

In the opposite case, however, the law must first be sharpened to the sick person and he must be earnestly admonished (especially if the illness runs a slow course and is not accompanied by too severe pains) to take up daily a commandment with its explanation, to call earnestly upon the Holy Ghost for enlightenment, and to examine heart and life thoroughly by each commandment; for only thus can he attain to a contrite, wholesome knowledge of his sins, to true godly sorrow, and to that broken publican's heart which cries out: "God, be merciful to me a sinner!" And only then can the crucified and risen Lord Christ prove Himself living in his soul as his curse-bearer and debt-payer, as his justifier and Savior.

5. Can a pastor comfort with the Gospel a person who holds to the fanatical restoration of all things, and especially to the final blessedness of all the ungodly, when this person at times falls, as he thinks, into severe spiritual temptation?

Answer: No! namely if he has already been informed more than once, and more precisely, in what a dangerous error he is involved; if it has in particular been shown him how very foolishly he deals with the Holy Scriptures; for instead of explaining dark, prophetic passages that seem somehow to hint at that restoration by the clear passages of doctrine that decidedly oppose it, and holding fast the certainty that the former cannot be against the latter, he does just the reverse, and instead of making the darkness bright by the light, he makes the light dim by the darkness. From these clear passages, however, it is evident with unquestionable certainty: 1. that the Gospel of Christ, as the only possibility of attaining forgiveness of sins and salvation, is proclaimed only on this earth; 2. that if he believes until his death, he comes into eternal life, and if he does not believe to his end, into eternal damnation; 3. that accordingly there are only two states beyond, namely that of the blessed and that of the damned, but no middle place and no purgatory of any kind.

It is also practical to press upon the conscience of the fanatic the question whether he thinks that, if he himself had resisted the Holy Ghost in the Gospel until now and should resist Him to the last breath, he would still have room for repentance after death. If he denies this, as he can hardly do otherwise if there is still some sincerity in him, then he has naturally denied it for all others as well; for as well as he, all might believe who hear the Gospel and have the Holy Scriptures, or at least could have them.

First and last, however, he is also to be called upon to a serious self-examination, whether he is not perhaps involved in a secret, conscious service of sin; but if this is not actually and particularly the case, the wholesome truth is not to be withheld from him that that error of the head comes from a want of thorough repentance and conversion of the heart, which, blinded by the devil, seeks to preserve in that delusion a back door and refuge from the shining, rebuking, threatening and cursing of the law.

That anxiety and unrest, therefore, which he takes for spiritual temptation, is nothing else than a rebuke of the Holy Ghost, in order first to move him to thorough repentance and change of mind, and at the same time then to consume that fanaticism with it. —

(To be continued.)

(Communicated.)

A Reply Forced from Me.

A light-shunning peasant, living in my congregation, has lately felt moved, in the Volksblatt of Cincinnati, No. 20, to cool his little temper upon me and to slander me in the worst way he could. Mr. Suhr, a preacher from Cincinnati, to whose sight this newspaper article also came, as he himself said, could scarcely believe the complaints against me contained in it, since they seemed to him too glaring. And wherein did these accusations consist? First, the sender of the article mentioned above storms mightily over the fact that I will not let myself be treated by him and his like as a wholly obedient servant and be hired every year like a cattle-herdsman, but have in all seriousness declared to the congregation that if they will not acknowledge the regular call to the holy ministry grounded in God's Word, I could not possibly continue to administer the holy office among them with a good conscience, but must leave them. These are the "queer tricks," as the complainant puts it, which I have played with the congregation.

A second accusation is that I care not for the sheep but only for the wool. Would that the sender were so good as to prove this to me; if not, he is a slanderer.

The third accusation, finally, consists in this, "that I will not admit into the school the children of those who will not sign my will (it ought to read, who will not submit to a Christian order and sign a purely Lutheran church order)." As to this accusation, we shall come to speak of it further below. These are the charges which moved Mr. Suhr to go to the bottom of the matter more closely, and, after he was well informed, to have an article with the heading "Brownstown Gemeinde" inserted in the so-called Protestant periodicals, wherein he not only rails mightily against the regular call to the holy ministry grounded in God's Word, but also writes the grossest untruths out into the world and slanders me. I am therefore compelled, as well for the sake of the good cause as also