# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1847 01 05_S56
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

— six children, horses, and servants. Indeed, however I tried to arrange it, I could and should have nothing more of my own. My son, who knew all this, said to me: "Dearest Mother, I beg you from my heart, do not let that trouble you, even though you have so little money! You will see, God will not forsake us. Perhaps dear God is testing you, to see whether you truly trust him when you have nothing. If you let this good opportunity pass by, God will punish you by making you wish to go and yet be unable to! You see indeed how wonderfully God himself orders everything — let us only follow him. If you hold back, then I will go on alone. God will not forsake me, that I know, come what may."
(Conclusion to follow.)

On the Divine Word as the Light that Leads to Peace.*)
By W. Löhe.

*) We are sharing the greater part of this piece — already in its third edition in Germany — instructed by experience that most preachers here, who still intend to preach the Gospel and so-called living Christianity and believe that they do preach it, nevertheless employ precisely the false method which the esteemed author here identifies and censures as unscriptural and unevangelical. May God give teachers and hearers open eyes and hearts for the instruction and warning contained in it, so that the former, even with the best of intentions to point their hearers toward heaven, do not lead them astray, and that the latter, in the best hope of being guided to heaven, do not let themselves be led astray. — Ed.

Whence does it come that, among so many powerful preachers whom God has given to his people in recent years, so few people are found who press through to the peace of justification? — St. John, in his first epistle, 3:2, speaks with great confidence of himself and his own: "Beloved, we are now the children of God" — verse 14: "We know that we have passed out of death into life" — and in 4:4 he addresses them: "Little children, you are of God!" There is, then, a certainty of being a child of God, and there are people who can say of themselves that they have passed through from death into life. Why then are there so few such people today? Why do most people take fright when the question is put to them inescapably, to be answered yes or no: "Are you born again? Are you a child of God? Are you in the life that is from God?" Why does one so seldom hear, in answer to such questions, a quiet, humble, firm: "Yes, you say it!"? Why, instead, most often a blushing "No!," an embarrassed "I do not know!," a stormy, passionate "Yes!" of which one can tell at once — being born of the moment — that it is worse than "No!" or "I do not know!"? Why do so many hearts, especially young ones, awaken under the preaching of evangelical teachers, listen with longing and diligence, wrestle and struggle, so that one would think one could vouch for their sincerity — and yet, after a few years, when circumstances change, when they marry, or in general set up their own household, this young Christianity vanishes together with its rosy cheeks; and those very hopeful awakened souls, the joy and crown of their teachers, turn out to be like the flower of the grass which, springing not from above but out of the earth, had its season, as does everything else in the world? What does it mean that many a maturing man, many a woman grown sober, look back with a pained smile upon the awakening of their youth, and maintain that this awakening was but their youthful joy — as indeed everyone has his youthful joy — but that it was, like other youthful joys, though certainly purer and holier, still only enthusiasm? Whence comes it that so many look down with a kind of contempt upon young souls glowing in their first awakening, and say: "So I too once was — but it came to nothing"?

Various causes might perhaps be shown for these sad phenomena of our day. I would like to submit the following in particular to your judgment. Consider, brothers, whether what I say is true.

When a soul is awakened, and now asks earnestly: "What must I do to be saved?" it is quite right to say: "Seek Jesus and his light! Nothing else will help you!" But as to where one ought to seek Christ, poor instruction is generally given. Most often the questioner is directed to seek the Lord upon his knees, to cry out to him with longing and yearning of spirit; then he will not fail to appear — in his own time, at the appointed hour. The poor souls then try everything; they cry out; they will not let the Ever-Present One go until he blesses them; and the Ever-Present One, who hears the crying of the young ravens, blesses them too with a joyful awareness of his nearness. Full of bliss the awakened one rises from his knees, and believes — believes that he has now found his Savior; his trembling heart would gladly die, like Simeon's, for it has experienced God's salvation. — But ah, this is only fleeting; to the child, to the youth in Christ, such hours are often given; the older one grows in the Christian faith, the more rarely one receives such stirrings of joy; and if one has measured one's Christianity by them, then it collapses; one falls into a gloomy longing for what lies behind, and becomes a sorrowful pillar of salt, like Lot's wife, who looked back, and thereby failed to reach Zoar — the quiet place of refuge — that lay before her.

Dear brothers! This path does not lead to peace, nor to that God-surrendered confidence that nothing can any longer separate us from the love of God. This path is evidently nothing other than a path of feeling and of works. If someone is awakened, our first task ought therefore to be to tell him that the stirring of his emotions and whatever joy may happen to be present (for not every awakening comes by way of strong feelings, whether sweet or bitter) is not the lasting and essential thing in the matter; that he should rejoice as though he did not rejoice, and place no such great weight upon this feeling that, should it be lacking, he would waver and tremble in the very foundations of his being; rather he should — and this is the chief point we would advise — from the beginning to the end of his spiritual life look not to what is changeable in himself, but to the unchangeable promises of the Word of God, which, thank God, stand outside us, untouched by our feelings, and are a divine pledge and certainty, letters of security and freedom, as it were, for redeemed souls. Indeed, we ought to hold up these promises of God to newly awakened Christians as still greater and more important than their faith. For faith, in the work of our redemption, is that which is entrusted to man and to men, but for that very reason it is also not always the same as itself — now weak, now strong — while God's Word has already stood firm and unshaken for thousands of years. As much higher as God is than man, so much higher is God's Word and promise than our faith. Faith is now small, now great; God's Word is the same at one time as at another. God's Word is God's revealed faithfulness and mercy; God's Word is the presence of God's grace, or of his wrath, according to how one receives it — where God's Word and promise are, there too are God's powers of grace and of life.

If, then, a soul is awakened, one should indeed give it the counsel: "Seek Jesus and his light! Nothing else will help you!" But one should point it to God's Word, and say: "This is what testifies of him!" One should not bid it first beg for a revelation of God upon its knees, but rather receive, upon its knees, full of thanks and joy, the revelation and manifestation of God already present in Scripture. One should show, from God's Word, with simple and forceful sayings, who Jesus is, what his office and calling are, how great his faithfulness is; and then one should speak with the authority and confidence of a redeemed child of God, and of an angel: "Now you know him; he is present everywhere, especially where his Word, the remembrance of his name, is; he loves those who do not seek him — why not, then, those who do seek him? What right have you to contradict his promises for the sake of your defiant and despondent heart? Do you think his heart is like yours? No, no! His is mercy and faithfulness; you are the one who is merciless and unfaithful to him. He knows it, he knows you. Trust his Word; only do not let yourself be led astray from that; let everything else go to ruin, come what may of it all — his promise will not fail you. In the world you have fear — what does that matter? With him, in his promises, you have peace!" — Once souls have thus been driven into a corner (Boos's autobiography contains good examples of this), so that at last they must surrender and consent to be saved on the strength of the Word alone: then let one henceforth trust not in institutions, not