# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1850 05 14_S145
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Der Lutheraner.

"God's Word and Luther's doctrine shall pass away nevermore."

Published by the German Evangelical Lutheran Synod of Missouri, Ohio and other States.

Edited by C. F. W. Walther.

Volume 6.  St. Louis, Mo., 14 May 1850.  No. 19.

Terms: Der Lutheraner appears once every two weeks at the yearly subscription price of One Dollar for out-of-town subscribers, who are to pay the same in advance and bear the postage. — In St. Louis each single number is sold for 5 Cents. Only those letters which contain communications for the paper are to be sent to the editor; all others, however, which contain business matters, orders, cancellations, money, etc., are to be sent hither under the address: Mr. F. W. Barthel, care of C. F. W. Walther, St. Louis, Mo.

(Sent in by P. Gruber.)

Memorial of Honor

of the blessed

Gotthold Heinrich Löber,

faithfully deserving pastor of the Evang. Luth. congregation at Altenburg, Perry Co., Mo.,

departed this life on the 19th of August 1849.

Nine months already the bones of this faithful servant of Christ have rested on the quiet, lonely, forest-wreathed height of the churchyard at Altenburg, in the dark bosom of mother earth, beside the bones of his sister who went before him, and in the midst of the graves of the members of his congregation who fell asleep before and after him; but his memory lives on among his own, here and in the old fatherland; it lives on in his congregations there and here; it lives on in the whole Lutheran Church there and here. This memorial of honor is therefore not erected to him in order that his name may be rescued from oblivion, but because God's Word commands us to remember the teachers who have fallen asleep in the true faith; because love must speak of that of which the heart is full, as loudly and as far as it is able; so that other brethren also, who did not know the blessed man so long and so well as we, may lament with us over his early departure; so that the younger brethren in the ministry also may have one more encouraging example of faithful pastoral labor; and finally, so that the generation of the Church yet to come may know who and what manner of laborer the blessed Löber was, who by God's wonderful way has helped to nurture and build up the Lutheran Church in these last times here in the distant West. We shall therefore first survey the divine guidance of his course of life from his birth to his blessed end, and then set before ourselves the picture of his walk, as it appeared to us in his last years.

Our dear Löber was born at Cahla, a small town of the Duchy of Altenburg, on the 5th of January 1797. His father, whom he lost early, was superintendent there; his mother (who likewise fell asleep on the 19th of August, in 1823) was a née Stopffel of the same place. Of three sons he was the middle one. Two of his ancestors had been general superintendents of the Duchy of Altenburg, the latter of them, Friedemann Löber, also the last orthodox overseer of the Altenburg territorial church. The remembrance of these honorable ancestors often encouraged the blessed man in the discharge of his office. But who must not marvel at the ways of God, who has transplanted a branch of this old stock of preachers from Upper Saxony into this distant West, and now lets it grow and flourish here anew in his children of the flesh and of the spirit? Here indeed we see the promise fulfilled before our eyes: the generation of the upright shall be blessed, Ps. 112. — After his father's early death the blessed man attended for a time the boys' school at Cahla, then the Gymnasium at Altenburg, where, supported by benevolent relatives, he remained five years. He often recalled the quiet Sunday observance in his parents' house, often also the still tolerably unadulterated catechism instruction in the boys' school at Cahla, often also the faith, the prayer, and the tears of his mother, who lived in pitiable widowhood. At the Gymnasium, indeed, the tender plant of faith was not nurtured by the religious instruction of that time, with Niemeyer's textbook, yet the enemy could not trample it down entirely either. A smoldering spark of faith remained, shone in the diligence and modest conduct which won him the affection of all teachers and fellow-pupils, and blazed up brighter again when he entered the University of Jena at Easter 1816. There he soon turned away in his heart from the unholy rationalistic exegesis and dogmatics of the old Gabler, then still highly celebrated, and attached himself more closely to Professors Schott and Köthe, who at that time taught at Jena as the first bearers of the evangelical light then dawning anew, though very sparsely. In this first university year it also came to pass that by God's gracious hand a friend was brought to the writer of this in the blessed Löber, who for 33 years, to his end, proved himself a true friend by faithful assistance in all manner of bodily need, as well as by spiritual aid in admonition and encouragement, comfort and warning. — In a prize exercise set in the homiletical seminary he won the first prize by a well-executed sermon. After a well-passed examination in 1819, in which he did not deny Christ, he became a Candidate of the holy ministry. After a short stay in his mother's house he was called by the two brothers, Barons von Ziegesar, of Hummelshain and Drakendorf, as private tutor to their children. These five years spent as a private tutor were years of much labor. The supervision of the children entrusted to him, the many lessons requiring much preparation, and besides the strong impulse of his heart and conscience to prepare himself further for the ministry at the same time, forced him almost to work by night. Thereby, however, the foundation was also laid for all his later sickliness and weakness of digestion, which several times brought him to the brink of the grave. — Even in these distinguished families he was not ashamed of the confession of the whole Word of God, and he had a hard time of it many a time, especially on account of his confession of the doctrine of Satan and his whole kingdom, but was nevertheless respected and honored for his unshakable steadfastness. In the year 1824 he followed the call of his elder brother, to whom, after the mother's death, the manor of Eichenberg near Cahla had fallen, into the ministry there, to which the congregation of Bibra was assigned as a filial church; he confessed Christ once more in the examination before the Consistory, and on the third Sunday in Advent entered upon his office with many holy resolutions and with much prayer and supplication. A year after, he married the eldest daughter of Pastor Zahn at Wasserthalleben near Sondershausen, and found in her what he had sought, a