# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1845 09 06_S1
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Der Lutheraner.

"God's Word and Luther's teaching shall pass away neither now nor ever."

Edited by C. F. W. Walther.

Volume 2.

St. Louis, Mo., September 6, 1845.

No. 1.

Terms: The Lutheraner appears once every two weeks, at a subscription price of one dollar for out-of-town subscribers, who must pay half of this in advance and must also bear the postage. — In St. Louis each single issue is sold for 5 cents.

Preface of the Editor to the Second Volume of the "Lutheraner."

When we took over the publication of the present paper a year ago, we by no means did so in the consciousness of our own fitness for such an undertaking. Rather, just as when a fire breaks out and, for want of anyone stronger, even the weakest feels called to run and help as much as he can, so too it was only the distress in which we saw our dear Evangelical Lutheran Church here as well that made us bold enough to come forward publicly with our modest testimony on her behalf. In this we relied on the gracious help of him who looks upon the lowly, and we not only felt firmly assured of the vigorous cooperation promised us by some fellow believers, but also indulged the quiet hope that, once we had for a time waged the fight for the most important, holiest cause—namely, for the pure divine truth—with an unpracticed hand, some more gifted and more practiced man would surely soon be reminded of his calling to take our place at the head of the work, and would show that what we had defended so feebly was, and remains, the unconquerable truth.

As for the first two grounds of our confidence at the beginning of our little undertaking, we have not been deceived in our hope. God has graciously stood by us, so that we have not come to utter disgrace with our weak testimony. For this may his holy name be praised and blessed now and forever. Our dear fellow workers, too, have kept their promise, so that the paper owes its regular appearance chiefly to their contributions. Nor can we leave this unmentioned—indeed, we must proclaim it to the glory of God—that the members of the local Evangelical Lutheran congregation have joyfully brought offerings, so that the paper, as a confession of their common faith, could continue despite its still very small circle of readers. Yet however gladly we would now have handed our "Lutheraner" over into the hands of another, more skillful editor, and however certain we would have been in that case to promise the paper a wider circulation and a richer blessing, our efforts to that end have nevertheless been in vain; on the contrary, dear friends have encouraged us to let the paper continue to appear under our name. We will not, then, refuse to go on presiding over the little work, so long as it pleases the Lord and he grants us grace to do so. To him, to whose honor alone it has been undertaken, be it further commended.

Before closing this preface, we consider it necessary to state our views on the tendency and character of the "Lutheraner"—that is, on the actual purpose and the principles that guide us in editing it. For not a few, as we hear, take offense at the fact that the "Lutheraner" contains fewer purely devotional pieces, and chiefly polemical matter (controversial writings). Some have accordingly not hesitated to publicly accuse us of quarrelsomeness, and to treat us outright as an enemy of active Christianity. We therefore declare the following once and for all.

Although we do not presume to pass judgment on editors of Christian periodicals who pursue chiefly the purpose of edification with them, and although we heartily rejoice over all the good that is thereby accomplished, we are nevertheless, for our own part, convinced that we ought not to accustom Christians to spend, in preference, on reading a (often lengthy) newspaper sheet the time that they could devote to the daily edification of their souls. Even setting aside altogether the unedifying character of many submissions that are supposed to be edifying, the sheer number of such varied, mostly small pieces—even genuinely edifying ones, where they are to be found in the religious papers—can, in our conviction, only scatter the reader's mind and produce in him a certain spiritual dabbling, but can by no means serve to set before a soul the whole counsel of God for our salvation in its coherence, step by step, and so lead it further and further onward. Should it not rather be the duty of Christian newspaper writers to guide their readers to read the Bible diligently and daily above all else, and thus to draw from the source itself? Moreover, the Christian Church possesses such a great store of old, solid, thorough, complete, spirit-filled devotional books, written out of deep experience, that nowadays—when one seeks in vain for such fathers in Christ as the writers of those works once were—one might well call out to everyone with the Preacher Solomon (12:12): "Beware, my son, of anything beyond these; for of making many books there is no end." For our part, we hold that, as far as furthering edification through books is concerned, we could do nothing better than, above all, to reprint the excellent works of a Luther,* Brentius, Hieronymus Weller, Martin Chemnitz, Johann Gerhard, J. Arndt, Heinrich Müller, Scriver, and others, and to urgently recommend them to all Christians. We at least believe that, given the existence of these precious guides to true, living Christianity, written for all time, our own writings are not needed for the furtherance of general edification—indeed, that we must take every care with all our might to see to it [continued on Seite 2]

* Unfortunately it is precisely Luther's writings that are least of all found in the hands of the people, since after their first printing they have for the most part come out only as a complete collected set, and very rarely as separate volumes. The entire body of Luther's works has therefore been bought only by scholars, and now for the most part moulders away in their libraries. Of America we will say nothing at all. Here there prevails, as is plain to see, such an unfamiliarity even among Lutherans with Luther's writings that it cannot be lamented enough. Indeed, in this country it is nothing remarkable any longer when even a "Lutheran" writer, in his ignorance of what Luther actually wrote, turns him now into a rationalist, now into a sacramentarian enthusiast, now into a benighted semi-papist. If, therefore, Luther's writings are not put back into the hands of the people, it is to be feared with good reason that the poor people here will in the end have to accept in good faith, as Lutheran, whatever is sold to them under that name—even if it should be something that Luther himself once fought with godly zeal as a soul-destroying false doctrine. We cannot, therefore, fail to draw the reader's attention, on this occasion as well, to the renewed subscription notice below for a reprint of Luther's House Postil, and especially to remind our esteemed brothers in the ministry, who care about spreading Lutheran doctrine, what a great treasure they would bring into their congregations if they induced their members to acquire that precious book. — Two years ago the Church- and House-Postil was to appear in Buffalo, but unfortunately this fine undertaking foundered on the indifference of the Lutherans and their pastors. God grant that the new attempt in New York may not again prove futile, to our shame.