# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1845 07 26_S95
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

from them wherever he possibly could. Once his mother dreamed that a hand showed her that passage in the open preface of Luther to his Small Catechism. The pious parents at once perceived what they had to do, and although they were not wealthy, they nevertheless let their son study. The mother brought him herself to Leipzig, but knelt down with him in a grove outside the city and asked God's grace and blessing upon their undertaking. And God most graciously heard the prayer; the son studied diligently and, after a number of years, became a candidate for the preaching office. Therefore, when his mother came again to fetch him home from Leipzig, she knelt down with him once more at that same spot in the grove and offered God her prayer of thanks. —
G. H. Löber,
Pastor at Altenburg in Perry Co., Mo.

Reply to the Latest Defense of the Union.
(Continued.)

Had Mr. Nollau truly understood what has been said in Der Lutheraner about the Church, and in particular about the Lutheran Church, he would have to be an exceedingly malicious man who resorts to the crudest lies to extricate himself from his embarrassment. The reader has, however, already seen in the second-to-last number what a strange confusion reigns in Mr. N.'s head concerning his own conceptions of the Church; we can therefore assume, to Mr. N.'s credit, that not malice of heart but weakness of understanding was the real reason why he presents our doctrine of the Church in such a thoroughly false and distorted manner. That we are not mistaken in this charitable presumption we conclude, among other things, from the fact that Mr. N. first of all describes the "impression" that our attacks upon him have made (p. 5). Mr. N. has accordingly evidently paid more attention to the impression he received while reading than to our actual expressions, and has thus let himself be guided in his presentation of our doctrine by the impressions he happened to receive. It is indeed well known from psychology how wondrously the play of our imagination works in a state of agitation. Many a lonely traveler at night has first occupied himself vividly in his thoughts with robbers and murderers who might attack him, and behold! — scarcely has he gone a little further when he really does see, at some distance, a tall man who is evidently lying in wait by the road for the traveler with a threatening look. The traveler's blood runs cold in his veins; he dares neither go forward nor turn back; with terror he already perceives the highwayman striding toward him — but then the moon breaks through a dark cloud, and before him stands a harmless signpost. Something like this, we think, must have happened to Mr. Nollau with the

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picture we had drawn of the Lutheran Church. Hence the poor man, in his great alarm, actually expresses, on p. 38, the anxious fear that we would slaughter all the Evangelicals if secular power were ever given into our hands. We are indeed sorry that Mr. N. fell into such painful apprehensions while reading through Der Lutheraner. But that is what happens when one follows the first "impression."

But to the matter itself. What doctrine of the Church does Mr. N. actually make us confess in his tract? He begins with the assertion: "With Mr. Walther the opinion has become a fixed one, running through everything, that the Lutheran Church is the only true, visible and invisible, saving Church." (p. 5). The author repeats the same thing on pp. 6 and 7, saying: "From the outset he ('the Lutheraner') consistently and wrongly fuses the outward, visible, Christian Church with the actual, true, and invisible Church of Christ; both together are supposed to be the Lutheran Church." Mr. N. nevertheless further says that we "still leave millions of souls outside the Lutheran Church a share in Christ and eternal salvation" (p. 22). Mr. N. further imputes to us the belief that a Lutheran Church has existed where people "lay in spiritual death" (p. 27). Mr. N. says further that we "have people swear an oath of belief in the Church and in the Symbolical Books" (p. 51). Finally, Mr. N. says of us: "They do indeed seek an escape here by saying that the true Christians in other churches are Lutherans at heart and actually belong (without knowing it) to the Lutheran Church; but such a clause is nothing other than a clever device for extricating themselves from the contradictions in which they become entangled by the claim to be the one true Church" (p. 68). Important here, too, is the description of the Lutheran Church which Mr. N. gives through the supposed Lutheran, Mr. Saxer, and whose approval he thus imputes to us; it reads as follows: "The foundation of the Lutheran Church is pure Word and pure Sacrament — but note well: pure Word and pure Sacrament as the law of the Church. She has never claimed, nor may she claim, that all her members are livingly permeated by her confession; she does not even demand this, and at times, to put it mildly, sets more store by the legal recognition of her constitutions than by the actual condition of her congregations. However strangely things may go in these at times: so long as her confession is recognized by the state, and is subscribed to by her ministers on certain solemn occasions — even if with all sorts of reservationes mentales (deceptive mental reservations) — the Church suffers not the least harm thereby in her essence and in her truth" (p. 13).

That is the description of the Lutheran Church which Mr. N. sells to his good-natured readers as ours. He accordingly attributes to us the absurd opinion that the visible totality of people who for three hundred years have called themselves Lutheran, have adopted the Symbolical Books of the Lutheran Church and a Lutheran church order as their constitution, and have stood forth as a distinct ecclesiastical party, is, enclosed within itself, the true visible and invisible Church of Jesus Christ on earth, which is supposed to save us, in which we are supposed to believe, and whose essence consists in this: that its symbols are merely outwardly recognized by the state and sworn to by the preachers, even if deceptively, and that its particular outward regulations are preserved for the maintenance of its distinctive form. At the same time, Mr. N. imputes to us the glaring inconsistency of nevertheless also acknowledging children of God outside our supposed one true Church of Christ.

We can well believe that Mr. N. has dreamed the sweet dream that we are so inconsistent and could not possibly hold any other view of our Lutheran Church; but we appeal to all reasonable readers of Der Lutheraner and ask: Where have we ever paraded such nonsense in our paper as Mr. N. loads upon us? Where have we ever said that the Lutheran Church is a visible institution restricted to the so-called Lutherans? Have we not, on the contrary (compare especially No. 6 of Der Lutheraner), always described the Church as an invisible edifice built over the whole world? Have we not, among other things, made the following confession: "We are by no means so fanatical and so limited in our understanding of the invisible kingdom of Christ as to think that it consists only of those who call themselves Lutherans. Oh no! It is precisely for this reason that our Church is so great and glorious to us, precisely for this that we cling to it with the full assent of our hearts; for this reason we also wish, for our own small part, to bear public witness to it, to pray, to fight, and, despite all the reproach that lies upon it, to remain with it to our last breath, because we know that this Church is not confined within the boundaries of a human name, of a country, or of an age, but embraces the whole inheritance of Jesus Christ!" Do we not further say: "To everyone who submits himself, without deceit, to the whole written Word of God, and carries the true faith in our dear Lord Jesus Christ in his heart and confesses it before the world, we extend our hand, and count him as our fellow believer, as a member of our Church, as a Lutheran, under whatever sect he may lie hidden and held captive"? See "Lutheraner," No. 2, p. 1. Has Mr. Nollau not read this?