# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1846 09 29_S15
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

and 5: "Come out of Babylon, my people, so that you do not become partakers of her sins, so that you do not receive any of her plagues; for her sins reach up to heaven, and God remembers her wickedness."

An Example of God's Severity and Goodness Toward a Disobedient Son.
As a warning and awakening to negligent parents (1 Samuel 2:12ff.; 3:12–14; 4:11–18) and to disobedient Absalom-like children, and at the same time as an example of proper pastoral care, communicated by an old Lutheran pastor.

In the year 1731 it happened that a member of my congregation died — a well-to-do farmer, who had been a diligent churchgoer and otherwise a man of good reputation. He left behind a wife with several children, among whom the eldest son, a boy of fifteen, was of a very stubborn disposition. As long as the father lived, he kept him fairly well in check; but after his death the mother proved too weak to hold him to the discipline he so badly needed. In addition, she unfortunately lacked both the will and the strength for it.

Under these circumstances it soon came to the point that the son wanted to run the household himself. The mother found it necessary to take a second husband, but did not consider herself obliged to ask her son's permission first, though he was of the opinion that he too ought to have a say in the matter. He carried his stubbornness so far that the mother at last grew angry and wanted to strike the boy. But he snatched the stick from her hand and struck her with it instead. But what happened? The arm with which he had struck his mother suddenly became full of holes, and at the same time his whole body grew sick and wasted.

The mother kept what had happened hidden from me and from her neighbors as long as she could, because she hoped her son would recover, and did not want to disgrace him. But chiefly she did it out of fear that I might learn of it and then deal none too gently with this Absalom-like boy.

Meanwhile she secretly employed a skilled surgeon, who applied all his diligence to healing the holes in the arm. But in vain! Since these wounds had been kindled by the fire of the Almighty, all skill and care proved useless against them, and within a short time gangrene set in as well.

Even this could not overcome the mother's sinful tenderness; still she would not send for me. Her betrothed, however, came to me secretly and revealed the whole affair to me. I went into the house, dismayed; but the mother, at my arrival, grew almost even more alarmed than before, since she would presumably rather have let her son die in a false peace.

Before I went into the patient's room, I first held an examination with the mother in the presence of her betrothed. I said that I had heard her son was ill, and asked what ailed him and how the illness had come about. She would not come out with it; but her betrothed began to speak all the more plainly, and added that the sick boy was still, even now, so stubborn that he would not give his mother a kind word, but showed himself altogether hostile toward her.

Under such circumstances it was necessary that I begin my office of rebuke first with the mother, and I had to impress upon her most earnestly that she must by no means interrupt me in my office toward her son, nor hinder, through untimely comfort, the necessary workings of the Law in him. But because I could not trust her tender-heartedness, I appointed her betrothed — a cautious, Christian man, deeply concerned for the sick boy's salvation — as a watchman, with instructions that if the mother tried to make her sick son feel secure again, he should notify me at once.

Having thus secured my back, I went to the sick boy. He lay in bed; I asked him what ailed him. He answered that his arm hurt him so badly that he could not get up. Before I said anything further, I had his mother unwind the cloths from his arm, so that I could see it bare. From the shoulder down past the hand it was so full of holes, and altogether so black, that I was horrified. I asked the sick boy where all the holes had come from. He said he did not know. I asked further whether he had not struck his mother with this very arm. He answered, yes. And when I asked the reason why he had struck her, he answered me with a defiant face and in a sullen, harsh voice, from which one could clearly perceive his deep-rooted hostility toward his mother: "Well, why won't she ever obey me?" I asked whether he was bound to obey his mother, or she him. He said: My mother should obey me. I asked whether he thought he had done right or wrong in striking his mother. He insisted that she should have obeyed him. Finally I asked him whether he was sorry that he had struck her — to which he gave no answer.

I considered this examination necessary in order to learn how deeply rooted the wickedness in him was. I showed no harshness in it at all, so that he would not be frightened away from speaking quite freely. And indeed I achieved this purpose of mine, but in a way that grieved me to the very core. Now good counsel was precious, as to how I should proceed, if at all possible to still save this poor soul. What gave me the greatest cause for concern was the gangrene, which already seemed to have gained so much ground that I had to fear the sick boy might die that very day. I sighed to God in my heart for wisdom for myself, and for the grace of conversion for the patient.

I then began to give him a clear and vivid description of his great sin, and pressed it upon him so forcefully that I thought it might move even a stone; but he remained unmoved, and looked now at me, now at his mother, with a hostile expression. The mother, however, grew anxious that I might be frightening the wayward wretch too much; she interrupted me several times, remarking that her son had not really been so very bad after all. But I rebuked her very sternly, showing her the magnitude of the sin her son had committed, evident in the sudden and manifest judgment of God that had overtaken him and would soon take him from this world, and I laid upon her a complete silence.

But because I noticed that the sick boy would be very hard to bring to a living recognition and repentance of his sins, I chose a swift remedy which I had found effective several times before in such desperate sicknesses of the soul. I set before him: first, that he would most certainly die of this illness, and should give up all thought of recovery; second, that death would come very soon — so soon and so suddenly — that he would have no time left afterward for conversion; and third, that he would then just as surely land in hell as if he were lying in it already. It could happen, I told him, that he might be in hell that very day, etc. I then set before him the torment of hell, drawn from the sayings of Holy Scripture, as vividly as I possibly could, adding again and again that he must very soon, very soon, go there, unless he were converted.

When I had spoken this way for a while, he began to sweat, looked at me earnestly, and said: "Pastor, I am becoming afraid!" "You wicked boy," I answered, "this fear is nothing compared to the fear that awaits you in hell. Think how afraid you will be when, in a few hours, you go down into hell!" — Meanwhile I secretly rejoiced that the heart of stone was beginning to break, and so I continued in this manner a while longer, until I perceived that he was truly pierced through with fear.

Now I considered what to do further. I did not yet want to comfort him so suddenly, but neither did I want to continue further with the demands of the Law; rather, I wanted to leave him a little to his own thoughts, or rather to the gracious workings of the Holy Spirit. And because I feared that, if he had me before his eyes, he might, for my sake, hold back from doing what the state of his heart required, I resolved to go out. The mother, however, had to come out with me, so that she could cause no harm, and her betrothed as well, so that he would not, out of inexperience, wrongly rebuke or comfort the boy. I admonished him to now think earnestly upon his sins; I said I would come back in half an hour. When we had all gone out, I locked the door and took the key with me, so that no one could get to him. Meanwhile I spoke once more to the mother's conscience, and had someone stand in front of the