# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1847 01 26_S60
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

then my eyes became veritable streams of tears; then I whimpered pitifully; all strength was gone; but the Lord sustained me and helped me to wrestle; and in the might of His strength I fought, and prevailed! When I was weak, I was strong. Ah, praised be our God! — But the children were strong in God.

On the 1st of July my dear husband came out to see Mayor Günther, where I had asked him to come. When I heard this, joy and fear were so great in me that, without any deliberation, I hurried there from my lodging, threw myself at his feet, and begged him for mercy and steadfast love. This I also obtained. Yet he set before me, with much lamenting, the misery into which he and all of us would now be placed. He, of course, viewed everything only with fleshly eyes, and urgently demanded the sons, or, in place of the elder son, the little daughter. Then all the children fell at his feet and said: "Dearest Father, you would not wish us to be damned! For we dare not hope to be saved except through the evangelical religion!" [1] Quite dismayed, he heard this, but again set before me, movingly, my faithlessness. I now had to appeal to the Bible, and thus had opportunity to lay before him Holy Scripture, and to show from it that I had had to go, by the clear command of my God, on pain of losing my salvation — all of which I had underlined in my Bible. By this he was greatly moved, so that I clearly perceived in him the drawing of the precious Holy Spirit. He then asked for a book containing devotions on the Holy Passion, saying: "That I too may seek my Jesus, find him, and comfort myself in him." At this I was comforted, and gave him such a book, which he also read through entirely. "Ah, how faithful God is," I said to him, "only do not resist, and you, my heart, will experience what salvation the Lord will work in us." I spoke to him, as much as God granted me, of all this, which he — quite against his custom — listened to willingly, with many sighs.

[1] Would that all those readers might here examine themselves who now pay homage to the ever more prevalent principle, that there are many ways to heaven (Matt. 7, 13. 14. John 14, 6.), that all religions are equally good (Acts 4, 12.), and that one ought not reject any faith or leave one's religion, even if it be full of errors (Eph. 6, 5.) — and who therefore say: believe what you will, only be a good person, and you will be saved! — Would that also the present-day so-called "Evangelicals," that is, the Unionists, might let themselves be put to shame by the example of these children, who, when they were awakened by the Spirit of God to earnest concern for their salvation, were at the same time driven by that same Spirit to now take the truth strictly and exactly. Such people — who nowadays indeed still make some distinction between the Christian, heathen, and Turkish religions, but regard all parties within Christendom who still say to Christ, "Lord! Lord!" as equally good, and who therefore wish to unite with every sect and say: only believe in the Lord Jesus, and it makes no difference whether you are Catholic, or Lutheran, or Reformed, or neo-Evangelical, or Methodist, or Anabaptist, etc. — such people would certainly not, for religion's sake, have given up everything along with the children of Frau von Reibnitz, and gone into exile.

On the 6th he traveled away again, returned on the 15th, and told me how the government office intended to obtain from His Majesty the King of Poland a ruling that his wife and child must be surrendered to him, the father. He wanted to know my thoughts on this. So I begged him earnestly not to do this; he would thereby drive me all the way to Brandenburg, for I had already made arrangements for such a case; and he would then be breaking the marriage vow of fidelity, if he drove me so far from him, since here nearby we could see one another; he should learn to recognize Satan, who wished to move him to this through his instruments.

On the 1st of August he traveled away from me deeply moved, and returned on the 5th quite ill; I asked him to make use of the doctor here. This he willingly did, and remained here until the 10th of September. Then he traveled away again, but with a heavy heart. He fell ill again as well, so that he feared he might not be able to come out here anymore: he wrote to me diligently every week; his illness increased. Then our sorrow was again very great; but we cried earnestly to God that He would save his soul and bring him safely out here, so that I too might render him my due duty. As I was so heartily grieved, God comforted me through my little daughter, who said: I should rejoice, God would bring dear Father out here, he must come and become Evangelical. This encouraged me greatly, and I firmly believed that God would do it, and would hear our heartfelt sighing.

On the 22nd of October God did indeed bring him out to us, and although he was very ill, our joy was nevertheless very great among us all; we praised the great God, and sighed in believing trust for his soul. He took to his bed the very next day; I spared no costly medicines, but it soon seemed that even the strongest remedies had lost their power on him, and — what was very hard for me — there seemed to be danger to his life. So now my greatest concern was for his soul; I therefore sighed earnestly, together with the children, to God, that, since He had redeemed this soul so dearly, He would also save it. God heard me; He so governed Mr. M. Edelmann that he visited him and applied all diligence to draw him away from the many superstitions and erroneous opinions (of the Catholic Church), and showed him the one fountain of life, the bloody, all-sufficient merit of my Jesus — which the dear husband, by the special grace of God, also laid hold of in faith. He indeed made no public confession of his conversion, but as a true Evangelical-Lutheran Christian, resting solely and alone upon the precious merit of his Savior, he fell asleep gently and blessedly on the 26th of October. Ah, praised be God in eternity, who sent me here also to save my dear husband's soul! Ah, how the Lord loves mankind! Let everything that has breath praise the Lord! [1]

[1] Thus does our wonderful, wise, and almighty God know how to turn even the greatest distress to the best, as indeed it often happens, as we sing: "Thou art the wise God, and canst turn all to the best, over which we often grieve the most." Thus our God Himself often uses even the fury and persecution of enemies for our good. Had the wretched papists not wished to seize the daughters of Frau von Reibnitz by force, they would probably have kept her husband and the sons within the bosom of their erring church; but since their spirit of persecution goes so far as to reach also for the daughters, they thereby lose the sons as well, together with the father, and drive them themselves into our evangelical (Lutheran) Church. Thus must the enemy harm himself; therefore Luther says somewhere: "If Satan were as clever as he is mad and raging, he would leave the children of God unpersecuted." He drives us, through his temptations, into the Word and prayer, and these are the weapons with which he is overcome, and by which we are gloriously helped.

On the 27th of February 1704, God blessed me with a healthy little son. This pledge of love, too, I had thus carried with me out of Silesia, indeed in the very last week, so that this child had already been an exile before it had even seen the light of the world.

Ah, how great is the goodness of the Lord toward me. The dear God is gracious to me, and, through pious Christians near and far, casts our manna toward me and my poor little orphans ever more and more, as a father would; He also strengthens us to suffer want for His name's sake. Whereas, when we left Silesia, we thought we would have to earn our bread by unaccustomed labor, the faithful, fatherly heart overwhelms us instead with rich blessing. How faithfully God fulfills His promise to those who trust in Him! Ah, may God strengthen our faith, love, and hope, so that nothing can be lacking to us. To Him be honor forever.

Does Old Lutheranism Lead to Rome?
(Continued.)

In order to make plain to our readers that the ceremonies which the old Lutheran Church has retained do not attest any leaning of that Church toward the Roman Church, we have proceeded — as the kind reader will recall — from the, we hope, uncontested presupposition that old Lutheranism could lead to Rome only: 1. if our Church had, along with the church ceremonies, also adopted the Roman Church's false doctrine concerning them; and 2. if it had also retained those practices of the Roman Church which conflict with God's Word, or at least precisely those which contain something peculiar to the Roman Church, belong to the very essence of the Papacy, and were introduced for its favor and support.

We have now shown, first, that the old Lutheran Church holds an entirely different doctrine concerning ceremonies than does the Roman Church; we have shown that, whereas the Roman Church teaches that its human customs bind the conscience as though they were divine ordinances and are part of divine worship, the old Lutheran Church, by contrast, teaches that all human ceremonies in the Church which are neither forbidden nor commanded by God are matters of Christian liberty, which may be accepted or rejected, retained or abolished, according to circumstances. We have further shown that the old Lutheran Church, contrary to the doctrine of liberty it has itself set forth...

As for the body, too, [the Lord] provides for us also...