# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1850 06 25_S172
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

172

reason captive under the faith in God's Word, as it is written, must also have the honor of bearing the greatest reproach before the world.

And should I add something more, it would be that which stands in the text-verse: "Behold, I come quickly." For the time draws near when the reproach will be taken away from the Church of God, and from the countenance of her children.

For what a joy that will be, when, after long waiting at midnight, the believing confessors go forth to meet Him who cometh at midnight, to crown them with honor and joy! Behold there, our goal ... and thereafter the new heaven and the new earth; — the first is passed away, and behold, all things are become new. Amen!

A Word to All Those Christians Who Are Not Ashamed of Their Christian Name, but Glory in It.

(Romans 10, 12 — 15.)

By the Director of the Evangelical Lutheran Missionary Institute, at present in Leipzig, K. Graul.

I know not, dear reader, whether thou perchance belongest to those unhappy ones who have suffered shipwreck of their faith in the dreadful free-thinking which toward the end of the last century flooded our dear German fatherland from France as with a deluge, or whether thou art one of the fortunate who in the general whirlpool of unbelief have still in good time clung fast to the rock of the divine Word: to be brief, I know not what thou thinkest of the Christianity in which thou wast born and brought up, whether thou art ashamed of thy Christian name or gloriest in it. If thou art ashamed of thy Christian name, which God forbid! then we have nothing to do with each other, then I speak for thee into the wind, then lay this sheet rather aside at once, lest thou in the end angrily tear it up and harm still more thy soul, which has already suffered harm. But if thou gloriest in thy Christian name, which God grant! well, then we agree already, and thou doest well to hear patiently to the end the few words which I have to speak with thee. So hear, then, and prove!

Thou knowest, when our LORD and Saviour took leave of His disciples, He said: "Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you. (Matth. 28, 19. 20.) In these words He therefore gave command to His disciples standing about Him not to confine themselves with their preaching merely to the Jewish land, but to go into all the world (Mark 16, 15.) and to carry the Gospel to all nations unto the end of the earth (Acts 1, 8.). This command the Apostles also, after the LORD was taken from them, sought faithfully to fulfil, as thou hast learned from childhood out of the Acts of the Apostles. But mark well with what Christ concludes His commission to go and to teach and baptize all nations. He concludes it, namely, with the promise: Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. Now thou seest clearly that this promise cannot go merely to the first Apostles, for of these the LORD knew as well as we that as mortal men they would not live all the days unto the end of the world. If, then, the promise extends beyond the Apostles, so must also the commission, for the sake of which the same was given, and since the promise evidently goes to the disciples of all days unto the end of the world, so must also the commission go to the disciples of all days unto the end of the world. Is it not so? to see this is child's play, and it surely takes much lack of understanding not to be able to see it, and much evil will not to be willing to see it. This the Christians also who lived after the death of the holy Apostles understood right well, that the LORD with that command addressed to the Apostles, to carry the Gospel to all nations, meant them also, and those of them who felt in themselves desire, strength and calling thereto continued the work of missions (for the spreading of the Gospel among the heathen is called mission, as the preachers sent out thereto are called missionaries) where the Apostles, overtaken by death, had left it lying. Thou, however, wilt blame them for their obedience to the express command of the LORD so much the less, as thou thyself, as well as I, wouldst still be sitting in dark heathenism, if those men of God had thought that the command to missions referred only to the Apostles. For I do not believe that thou, who gloriest in thy Christian name, wilt take it ill of the dear missionary Boniface that more than a thousand years ago he came over from England to thy heathen fathers, the ancient Germans, and converted them from the darkness of heathenism to the marvellous light of the Gospel. And who, too, would long to go back to the manner of life of our heathen forefathers, who, when things went on most orderly among them, did nothing but wage war and hunt, and then on the bear-skin feast upon, carouse away and gamble away the spoil they had won, while they left the care for house and field to the women, old men and weaklings, and did not hesitate to slaughter human sacrifices even to their gods: as the Romans, who at that time made war with them, have reported to us all this. I am also convinced that thou wouldst not be much edified if thou, with the heathen inhabitants of Hesse at the time when the dear missionary Boniface came to them with the preaching of the Gospel, if thou, instead of going to the dear church and worshipping God in spirit and in truth, shouldst go out into the forest with them and venerate an old oak tree as the dwelling-place of thy God.

Now behold, as about a thousand years ago thy fathers, so there still sit now, Jews and Mohammedans not counted at all, as many as 500 millions of men in the shadow of death and the darkness of heathenism, know nothing of the almighty Creator of heaven and earth, nothing of a merciful Mediator between the holy God and poor sinful men, have nothing wherewith to quiet their conscience before God, no strength in life, no comfort in dying. Yea, and if only it stood so well with them as with our heathen forefathers. But the most of them are by far more unhappy. Only hear how it goes, for example, among the heathen peoples on the west coast of Africa:

"At least once a month," so a traveler reports to us, "a horrible sacrificial rite takes place. Prisoners of war also are slaughtered, to appease the spirits of the warriors fallen in battle. Each of them is led under the fetish tree (sacred tree) and receives a bottle of rum to drink; while he drinks, a man armed with a club steals up and deals him so mighty a blow on the back of the head that commonly the brain spurts out. The stunned man is then dragged into the fetish hut (sacred hut), where with an axe his head is severed from the trunk and the blood streaming forth is caught in a calabash. While this is going on, others are busy with knives to tear the heart out of the lacerated breast. Still warm and quivering in the blood, it is presented first to the king, then to his wives and to the generals. After they have bitten into it in turn and drunk of the steaming blood in the calabash, the heart is given up to the bystanders. Last of all it is spitted on a lance and carried, together with the calabash full of blood and the beheaded body, in solemn procession through the city, accompanied by countless spearmen and dense crowds of people. Everyone who has any desire may bite into the heart and drink of the blood, while the people dance and sing thereto. What finally remains of the heart is thrown to the dogs and the corpse is hung in pieces on the fetish tree, where it remains until all is consumed by birds of prey. Once a year they celebrate, under their sacred fetish tree, which stands a few miles from the city in a forest, a chief sacrifice. The bodies of all who have been slaughtered, whom they then offer to the evil spirit, are quartered and hung on the mighty boughs of the tree; the skulls remain lying at the foot of the trunk and bleach in the sun. Once by chance I had opportunity to see this much-spoken-of tree one or two days after the yearly sacrifice. Covered, in the literal sense, were its giant boughs with the