# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1846 11 24_S37
# 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 3.

St. Louis, Mo., December 1, 1846.

No. 7.

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.

Friedrich Myconius.

An instructive and edifying life story, newly retold from old writings.

(Conclusion.)

Chapter Four.

On Myconius's Illness and His Blessed Departure from This Life.

It was time for Myconius to return home. His zealous activity in Leipzig seemed to have consumed his last strength. He came back to Gotha already in greatly weakened health, and he soon developed full-blown consumption, so that his strength wasted away entirely, and he gave up all hope of life.

It was then that Luther wrote to his sick friend that well-known letter, so bold in faith, which we would gladly reproduce here in full, if space allowed. Let us at least hear its main substance. After saying at the outset that it pleased him greatly to see how composed and undaunted Myconius was in the face of death, he continues:

"Yet I beg and implore the Lord Jesus, who is our life, salvation, and health, that he not let this misfortune befall me — that I should live to see you, or some of our own, go before me, break through and tear through the veil to rest, and leave me behind you here in this wicked, false world, in the midst of devils, so that after your departure I should have to endure still longer more torment and torture — I who for more than twenty-some years now have endured and suffered more than enough, and who would well deserve (indeed, would have earned it well, even at the cost of the world) to go before you all and fall asleep in the Lord. Therefore I desire and ask that dear God would, in your place, let me fall sick and bid me lay aside this tabernacle of mine, which has now been worked to the full and has done its service, has been consumed and rendered powerless, and is therefore unfit — for I see indeed that I am of use to no one any longer. Therefore I beg and earnestly admonish you, that you, together with us, would ask dear God that he would preserve you longer in life, for the service and betterment of his churches, and to the Devil's mockery and vexation."

And at the close he says again:

"Fare you well, my dear Master Friedrich; may the Lord not let me hear, so long as I live, that you have died, but rather grant that you outlive me. This I ask in earnest; I wish it granted and would have it so, and my will shall be done in this matter. Amen. For this will of mine seeks the honor of the divine Name, not my own honor or pleasure; that is certainly true. Fare you well again in the Lord; we pray for you from the heart, and your illness troubles and grieves us not a little. Given on the Sunday after Epiphany, in the year 1541."

And it happened indeed as Luther had prayed. Myconius recovered at least to the extent that he was still able to labor for the congregation entrusted to him and for the church of Christ in general. Thus, for example, he accompanied the Elector to the Diet at Speyer in the year 1542, and rendered especially valuable service in preserving and properly applying the church's properties. His hoarseness troubled him most of all.

"I still have much trouble" — he wrote to Luther in February 1544 — "with my illness; but even though I cannot cry out, I do not cease to grumble against Satan and to spur on the soldiers of the Lord, who have a clear voice and are valiant for the fight. I have also resolved, before I die, to visit you in Wittenberg, God willing, and to take leave of you in person, before we see and embrace one another in another light." Luther answered: "I would certainly wish that you were feeling better; but since you see that your voice will not cooperate, I ask you to consider your health and not bring upon yourself some still greater affliction. It is better that you live, even if half mute, than that you die with a clear voice. Even as a half-dead man you can still help the churches with your counsel and standing. You see indeed how necessary the old, seasoned soldiers of Christ are, so that through them the growing and still tender youth, who are one day to take our place, may be strengthened. Even though the Holy Spirit can do all things without us, he did not wish to have called us into office for nothing, but rather that we should be his instruments."

Before Myconius departed this life, he still had to live through, with his people of Gotha, a time of great distress, when on October 31, 1545, a large part of the city burned down. Melanchthon wrote Myconius a beautiful letter of comfort and sent, in the name of the University of Wittenberg, 100 gulden. But soon afterward our Myconius was seized once more by his illness. As he himself said, through the command, prayer, and letters of the venerable father Luther, he had in the year 1541 been, as it were, raised from the dead, and had now lived six years in weakness — indeed, as if already in death — and yet had performed the business of a living man and, as far as he was able, had carried out all his official duties up to the Fourth Sunday in Advent of the year 1545. On that day, sensing that his illness was returning, he exhorted the congregation with great fervor, with the voice of a preacher in the wilderness, that they should prepare the way of the Lord and make his paths straight, and put away all hindrances from their hearts, so that they might be ready to receive the salvation of God and our Judge, who would pronounce and soon execute the final sentence for us and against the ungodly and Satan, the prince of this world. Immediately afterward he fell ill.

But even on his sickbed and in the midst of his pains, the church of God lay on his heart, as the following will show us. In the year 1546 a Diet was to be held at Regensburg, and beforehand a religious colloquy between the Catholics and the Evangelicals. According to the Elector's wish, our Myconius was to take part in this as well. But before the summons to this end reached him, he had a remarkable dream, which — little as we otherwise put stock in dreams — we must not withhold from our readers; for this dream, like the one Myconius had upon his entrance into the monastery, is, if nothing else, certainly a testimony to a spiritually minded heart whose highest thought and concern was the blessedness of his own and other souls, and the honor of God and the advancement of his kingdom. This dream too Myconius may tell us in his own words:

"I dreamed that I was summoned to the court of the Elector of Saxony, and when I had arrived there, it was a place which I..."