# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1850 02 19_S101
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

101

The Pastors Themselves Are Not Agreed.

(Continuation and Conclusion.)

O thou poor man! Thou art glad to know nothing certain about eternity, like the beasts, so that, like the beasts, thou mayest unwind thy temporal life little by little according to thine instinct and thy impulses, without being disturbed by a single thought of eternity! Thou shouldst dig to the very center of the earth in order to learn something certain about eternity,—thou shouldst not be able to lay thy head down to sleep in peace until thou knewest whether thou hast an eternal life to expect, or whether thou art to be reckoned among the beasts, with whom it is all over when they die! Thou art greatly to be pitied that thou so gladly sittest in darkness and lovest so dearly ignorance about the things eternal and about the way to salvation!—But now, since thou holdest it for thy greatest wisdom on earth to remain in uncertainty about the world beyond, I leave thee thy wisdom with lamentation,—I want none of it! Only take heed how far thou wilt get with it!

3.

Thou answerest: “Well, is it not true? Do not the pastors contradict one another all the time? What can I do about it if I know nothing? It is for the pastors to settle what is true: I have no time for it, my farming gives me so much work and care that I have no time, no desire, no wit left over for the quarrel of the pastors! When they are all agreed for once, then I will believe them; as long as they quarrel, I believe nothing at all!”—Dost thou know what I say to thee to that? I say, if thou hadst kept silent, thou wouldst have been wiser than now, after thou hast spoken. Thou art not a hair's breadth further along than Pilate! He also saw that there were different preachings in the world about the truth, was unwilling, just like thee, to take any trouble to search out the truth, and dismissed the great King of truth with the flippant remark: “What is truth?” It is true: thou dost indeed not know what truth is, but neither wilt thou take any trouble to come to know the truth,—and therefore thine ignorance is a guilty and punishable one, for which thou wilt certainly not be able to answer when it comes home to thee at last that there is a truth and an eternity!—If the pastors quarreled and only they had understanding to read God's Word, then thou wouldst be innocent! But thou hast thine eyes in thy head and behind them thy understanding, and if thy heart is willing, thou canst open thy Bible every hour and read and reflect, and sigh to God, until thou knowest who is right of the two parties among the pastors, or whether perhaps neither is right.—To this thou perhaps repliest: “What? If the pastors cannot make sense of the Bible, am I to make sense of it? I do not know Hebrew and Greek, that I could read the Bible!” But see, that is saying nothing. Thou knowest that Dr. Martin Luther translated the Bible into German, and all the pastors, the one sort as well as the other, say that Luther did his work most excellently, so that now every one can read the Bible, even without Hebrew and Greek. And then I must just tell thee what is to blame for the quarrel of the pastors! Dost thou suppose that the Bible is not plain enough, and that is why the pastors quarrel? There thou art greatly mistaken! I tell thee, the Bible is in all those matters which concern eternity, salvation, and the way to salvation so plain and clear that every one can understand it, if he only will. But as thou dost not will to understand it, so the pastors sometimes will not either,—and when they will not understand what is written, they quibble at and twist the clear Word of God so long until it is quibbled away and twisted, until it agrees with their lusts and with their worldly walk. In sum, when a man simply will not be converted, be he pastor or farmer, when he will not enter upon the way of salvation, the way to blessedness, which stands in the Bible, then he twists the Bible and contradicts the people and pastors who understand it aright,—these then hold fast to the truth and also contradict again, and so it comes about that there are two contending parties among the pastors!——There thou hast the whole truth! Say, wilt thou be converted? If thou wilt, then sit down with sighing to God over thy New Testament and afterwards over the Old, and read faithfully and daily and compare what the one pastor says and the other: what wilt thou wager, thou wilt soon find out where the truth is—and that it is nowhere else than with the pastors who teach according to the Catechismus Lutheri and according to the Augsburg Confession and according to the old hymns, which are now here and there coming up again and being printed!——It is therefore certain and true what the LORD JESUS Christ says to the Jews: “Search the Scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me. And ye will not come to me, that ye might have life” (therefore ye do not read and do not search, the LORD means), John 5, 39.40.

4.

Thereupon thou sayest: “'Tis true, I must read more in the Bible in future, and I will see for once whether I can manage it; only until now I have always thought, the old pastors, who did not take sins and the blood of Christ so very strictly, were also men, and old men besides, but the others, who go on and on about repentance and faith, are mostly young men, and so they bring just a young new doctrine. But I am no friend at all of innovations.”

Well spoken, friend! One must be somewhat slow with innovations, for they are not always improvements,—and just so one must also keep a sharp eye upon the young pastors, for their flesh and blood might indeed intrude here and there. But take good heed also that thou makest a distinction and dost not throw out the child with the bath water. It is possible that a young man brings up an old doctrine and an old man a new one: who will vouch for thee that the young men whom thou hast in mind do not have the old, and the old men not the new. A man is old when he has lived 60, 70, 80 years; but what sort of age is that for a doctrine, for a religion? It may be that the doctrine which the young men now gladly preach was already there before those who cry it down as new, yea, perhaps even before our great-grandfathers and many hundred years further back. And it may also be that the doctrine which the pastors preach who are now gray-headed is not older and grayer than they themselves, and that would then be rather young for a doctrine on which one is to live and die. An old man will sometimes dwell in a new house, which he or his father only built,—while many a young man dwells in a house where Dr. Luther or one of his friends had already taken up lodging. Now see, so it may be with doctrine also, and I could wager that thou wilt find it so thyself when thou comparest the Bible with the old and with the young pastors. Only compare the Bible,—and say nothing more to me before thou hast done that. For the Bible is, in short, the oldest book in the world and has been completely finished for over 1700 years, after the holy prophets had labored on it for over fifteen hundred years. Its doctrine therefore began to be written some three thousand five hundred years ago,—yea, it is older than it is known, for it is God's Word, and God is eternal. If, therefore, a pastor agrees with the Bible, he has not only the best, but, if thou settest any special store by it, also the oldest doctrine. Such a pastor, even though he be young, is nevertheless older than all his teachers who have taught their little man-made inventions, and, though his head be still black and brown, is already more experienced than all the old pastors who preach a young doctrine. To experience God's Word is the best experience—and because in these days more young men than old have experienced it, it is now a strange time in which the saying: “With the ancient is wisdom” does not hold generally, true as it may be said of pious aged men.

5.

Thus the doctrine of many an old man (for there is indeed still here and there an aged man whom God has anointed with His Gospel) is young, and thou canst, dear reader, ask where then the young doctrine came from?

To this I answer thee: An enemy hath done this! While men slept, he sowed tares. In the last century, in the second half, especially toward the end, the servants of the Word gave themselves more and more over to a deep slumber, into which the harlot's song of a falsely renowned wisdom completely sang them, and then in the same slumber