# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1846 05 16_S76
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

is exalted above the temporal contrast of old and new, letting its eternal light now shine just as clearly and brightly as in apostolic times — then as now, like the earthly sun: just so has the one holy Christian Church, in its obedience to the divine Word, likewise always had but one faith, doctrine, and confession, which, in the same way, according to its essence and content, never changed or altered, and which, as the fixed and abiding thing in the midst of the storms and currents of the spirit of the age and the ways of the world, always remained exalted above the temporal contrast of old and new. Indeed, just as the supreme subject of Holy Scripture and of the Church's faith — the triune God revealed in it — is, in his being and working as the Eternal One, not subject to any change of time, and just as, in particular, there is no old and new Christ, but he is the same yesterday, today, and forever — just so little has the orthodox Church ever changed or altered its testimony and confession concerning this revealed triune God, or had an old and a new faith; and just as Peter once confessed, in the name of his fellow disciples: "We have believed and come to know that you are the Christ, the Son of the living God" (John 6:69; Matthew 16:16), so too does the holy Church confess still today, and will so confess until he comes.
(Conclusion follows.)

Comfort and Christian Conduct in Cases of Grievous Death.

On a Swiss lake there stands, upon a high mountain, a beautiful noble castle. Here there once lived an elderly Christian nobleman with his wife, quite content in God. God had always led the two of them in bonds of love; in particular they took great joy in two well-grown sons whom God had granted them. But God had determined to try the parents severely. One day, in great heat of the sun, the two sons — the elder a young man of twenty, the younger of eighteen — went down to the lake after the midday meal to bathe and cool themselves there. Since both could swim and had already often enjoyed this pleasure in the lake, the father watched them from the height above without any anxiety at all. But what happened? The younger son, while swimming, got into a dangerous spot, where a whirlpool seized him, so that he went under several times and came up again. The elder brother saw this and swam hastily over to rescue the younger one; but the latter seized hold of him so tightly and convulsively that he pulled him down with him into the depths. The father, who was an eyewitness to all this, waited with mounting terror to see his sons come up again, but in vain; the water had swallowed them; they did not come up again, and only later were their bodies washed ashore. What grief now seized the old father can be felt better than it can be told. He shut himself away at once, in order above all, unseen, to weep out his grief properly; but after an hour had passed in this way, the father's greatest concern now was how he might most skillfully bring the terrible news to the mother, and prevent her from being utterly struck down by it. What did he do? Having washed his face and composed himself somewhat, he went down to a lower room where his wife happened to be occupied with a household task, and said to her: Dear wife, as I was just sitting alone upstairs in the room and fell into all sorts of thoughts, I came, among other things, to wondering how you would comfort and console a person who had unexpectedly fallen into some great heartbreak and suffered such a loss as could be averted by no human help and made good by no money or goods. To this the Christian lady replied warmly: My dear husband, however did you come upon such thoughts? Yet, if such a thing should indeed happen, I know no better comfort than this: such a person must consider that he is a Christian and a child of God; that without God's will not a single hair can be pulled from his head; indeed, that without the holy and wise counsel of God, his heavenly Father, the very least thing cannot befall him; and that he must therefore submit himself to God's will, hold still before his God, and bear his cross as a Christian. At these words the old lord could no longer contain himself; he broke out into a loud cry of lamentation and called out to his Christian wife: Ah, may God grant that we both take to heart this very comfort you have just given, and hold fast steadfastly to it, for the time has come when we need it. I must tell you plainly: alas, our own dear sons lie down there in the lake; with my own eyes I was forced to watch how they drowned, without being able to help them! — Although these words, now spoken to the mother, went through her maternal heart like a sword, she nevertheless caught herself upon the very comfort she herself had just spoken, held fast to it now as well, and spent the rest of her remaining time together with her husband — lonely indeed, and amid many tears, but without murmuring against God, and with all the more heartfelt longing for the abiding home to which their godly sons, as they firmly hoped, had gone on before them.

Disagreement among Believers.

Augustine writes (City of God, Book 15, ch. 5): "Good Christians, if they were perfect, could not strive with one another. But those who are striving after improvement, and are not yet perfect, can do so, in that every good Christian fights, in the part of himself in which he also fights against himself, against the corresponding part in another. For in one and the same person the flesh strives against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh. The spiritual desire, therefore, can strive against the fleshly desire of another, or the fleshly desire against the spiritual desire of another." In this passage, says Johann Gerhard, Augustine explains the cause of discords within the Church. The truly godly are not yet perfectly renewed; remnants of the flesh remain in them; they therefore do not attain to a perfect knowledge of the mysteries of the faith, but still stumble and waver on some points. The flesh still strives in the regenerate against the spirit, so that it can easily happen that, when they give way to fleshly thoughts, they stir up disputes within the Church; nevertheless, so long as no obstinacy is added to this, and so long as the foundation of the faith is not thereby overthrown, they are not for that reason at once cut off from the body of the Church. The examples prove this. Thus the brethren quarreled with Peter because he had dared to preach the Gospel to the Gentiles (Acts 11:1 ff.). Paul withstood Peter, because he was not walking uprightly according to the truth of the Gospel (Galatians 2:11–14). Barnabas and Paul, too, had a sharp falling-out (Acts 15:39). In the Corinthian church divisions had been stirred up, profanation of the Lord's Supper had crept in, bitter disputes had arisen over matters of indifference (adiaphora), and some among them even called the article of the resurrection into doubt, etc. — and yet Paul does not on that account deny the whole congregation the name of a church; rather, writing to them, he still calls it a congregation, or church, of God (1 Corinthians 1:2). In the Galatian congregation the article of justification had been perverted by the corruptions of the false apostles; nevertheless, because they still accepted conversion and some still held fast to the true faith, Paul still calls the Galatian congregations churches, or congregations (Galatians 1:2). (See J. Gerhard's Loci Theologici, Art. 25, § 231.)

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