# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1850 04 02_S125
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

125

in lofty words nonsense and untruths. This happens, unfortunately, very often in the "Jugendfreund." B. 3, No. 3, it says:

What a heaven is thy spirit,
O man, who praisest God with words.

To be sure, man has the advantage over all the other creatures of the earth that he can praise God, and thereby he already has heaven upon earth; but to call the spirit of man itself a heaven is simply nonsense. In the same hymn the most vulgar rationalism also betrays itself, for it says:

Raptures of the heart, courage of virtue,
Offer to the highest Good.

We, dear Christian, according to God's Word, have always been of the opinion that we have nothing else to offer to the dear God than a heart that mourns over its sins and is broken. With God's help we mean to remain so, and must therefore leave the "raptures of the heart" and the "courage of virtue" to Mr. "Jugendfreund," along with his wholesome Allentown fruit and the other splendors. What do you think, if a Christmas hymn should run somewhat like this:

Make it snug within the parlor,
That one see a feast is here;
Reach me cake, my little fellow,
Lassie, you are near the coffee, etc.

Tastes differ; Mr. Brobst probably finds this beautiful, but to me it seems as though the poetry of the stomach, with its "raptures of the heart," rings through a little too strongly here. B. 3, No. 1, the "Jugendfreund" says in a hymn about Washington:

No greater one is honored more
Upon this earth's broad pathways.

To this even Christian children will object that the dear God is yet greater than Washington, and is, at least among Christians on earth, also more honored; and they will rightly hold the dear apostles and prophets to be greater than Washington. When he goes on to speak of the morning of the resurrection:

Where west and east and south and north
Greet him as the stronghold of freedom,

this plainly means practicing idolatry with Washington. In the same hymn the "Jugendfreund" even becomes a pantheist, for he says in plain words:

The All-Spirit's breath enlivens the world,
The wisdom that renews it.

The pantheists, as is well known, teach that God and the world coincide in one. They deny a personal God standing apart from the world, and assert that the world is God, and therefore eternal, and that matter or substance is animated by a world-soul or All-Spirit, which they misuse the name of God to call, but which of course is a wholly different being from the God of Christians. They believe, furthermore, that this All-Spirit attains consciousness in men and that these are parts of the Godhead. This blasphemous nonsense lies at the foundation of many heathen religions, as of the Hindu. According to it the poor blinded Hindus believe that all the sins which they commit are done not by them, but by God through them. A story may make this clear. Once a Hindu who had stolen was brought before the judge. The judge sentenced him for his crime to a number of strokes of the rod. But the thief justified himself before the judge: "You must not have me beaten, for it was not I who stole, but the God (the All-Spirit) in me." The judge replied calmly: "Friend, you also shall receive no blows, but only the God in you." — To put it most mildly, it is very imprudent in a man who believes in the triune God to communicate such All-Spirit hymns to Christian youth. In God we live, and move, and have our being, Acts 17, 28. God worketh all in all, 1 Cor. 12, 6. God upholdeth all things by the word of his power, Heb. 1, 3.; we cannot, according to the Word of God, picture to ourselves vividly enough the providence of the omnipresent God, which extends also to the least of creatures, Matth. 10, 29., and to the smallest circumstances of our life, nor believe it fervently enough; but the spook of a ghostly All-Spiritism let us hate like the devil himself.

This you have surely noticed yourself, my dearest Christian, that Mr. Brobst is no true Lutheran, but a Unionist. This appears especially clearly from an article in Vol. 3, No. 10, where it says as follows: "When at our Conference in Howertown the resolution which especially recommends the use of the Lutheran Catechism in Sunday-schools was adopted, the preachers present declared that in common schools the Reformed Catechism should be used along with the Lutheran. This can easily be done. The children of Lutheran parents learn the Lutheran, and those of Reformed parents the Reformed Catechism by heart." A true Lutheran Christian, who through God's Word and the Holy Ghost has come to the knowledge that the Lutheran doctrine agrees with the Holy Scripture, and is therefore the only right one, must of course resolutely reject the opposing Reformed errors, will therefore in no way spread and promote them, but rather will seek, with God's Word, in hearty love, to move the Reformed to recognize their errors and to let them go. But, someone might object, if an Evangelical Lutheran teacher merely has his respective pupils learn the Reformed Catechism by heart, he surely does not thereby by any means help to spread the Reformed errors. I answer: precisely thereby he promotes them in the most effective way. If he were merely to preach the Reformed errors to the children, the children would not understand many things; but if he has them learn the Reformed Catechism by heart, they keep it their whole life long. Catechisms have arisen for this very reason, to spread a doctrine by them in the simplest, quickest and most lasting way. Furthermore a teacher confesses himself by having the Reformed Catechism learned by heart, actually to the Reformed religion; he confesses thereby that he holds it to be truth, and recommends it as such to his school children. Let us take matters as they are. Imagine a child who in a Sunday-school kept by an Evangelical Lutheran teacher learns the Reformed Catechism by heart. Will this child not believe in its simplicity: "My teacher, who teaches me to pray, surely lets me learn only such a catechism as he himself at least holds to be truth." And in such confidence the child would be so calm and sure that it would laugh at the one who wished to tell it that its dear teacher himself holds that catechism to be false which it has learned from him. How then? when the child at last comes to knowledge? when it must confess to itself: "It is true, my teacher taught me a catechism which he himself does not hold to be true": will not such a deceived person with good right take his teacher for a hypocrite, as one who knowingly taught him what is false? and will he not at last be brought to the point that he believes nothing at all any more? Surely: if he is a shameful cheat who gives his neighbor for genuine a banknote known to him as counterfeit, then that Evangelical Lutheran teacher is an arch-hypocrite who is convinced of the falsehood of the Reformed doctrine, and yet has the poor children learn the Reformed Catechism by heart. Such a spiritual comedian is no Christian, no Lutheran any more; such an unconscionable person would also without scruple have a Methodist, yea even a papistical catechism learned by heart by his pupils. You see, dear Christian, how the present-day religious mixture, which falsely adorns itself with the beautiful name of Union, and which the "Jugendfreund" also recommends, is a source of sheer dishonesty, which in the end begets only greater hatred and sharper divisions; you see also how the proposal of Mr. Brobst, which at first sight seems so honest, can be carried out only with complete unconscionableness.

But however great all these faults and defects of the "Jugendfreund" are, I would still gladly excuse them by lack of knowledge, if only he earnestly impressed upon the children the sixth commandment. But what must outrage every Christian reader is that in the "Jugendfreund," in spite of all its sanctimonious piety, a hidden, poisonous spirit of harlotry rules. I will cite only the following as proof. B. 3, No. 6. "Both at Home. 'I shall be at home next Sunday,' said a girl to her sweetheart as he took leave. But because he was somewhat inconstant in his love, he replied: 'Yes, then I too shall stay at home.'" — A man who does not fall in love until he has reached the age of thirty stands in dan-