# The Lutheran Pioneer_St. Louis_1879_S12
# Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

12 The Lutheran Pioneer.

thankful. In my knapsack you will find a New
Testament. Will you please open it; in the
fourteenth chapter of the gospel according to

St. John, near the end of the chapter you will
find a sentence beginning with the word,
‘Peace’. Will you please read it?’’

The officer opened the New Testament, and '
read those words: ‘‘Peace I leave with you, :
my peace I give unto you; not as the world
giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart
be troubled, neither let it be afraid.’”’—“Thank
you, sir,” said the dying soldier, ‘‘I have this
peace; I am going to this Saviour; God is with
me; I need nothing more.’’ These were his last
words. The noise of the battle was heard in
the far distance, but the soul of the soldier had
gone to the Saviour whom he loved; had gone
to that home above, where no battle-cry is
heard, where eternal peace reigns forever.

The Bread of Life.

to change his purpose, butin vain. ‘‘To day,”
he said, ‘“‘you see me; after this you will sce
me no more.’’ In the same night, the 17th of
July, 1505, he left his room and his books, and
hastened to the monastery of the Augustinians.
His friends, with other students, on the next
morning hurried to the cloister, hoping to get
Luther out again; but in vain. The doors
were closed and bolted, and during a whole
month no one was allowed to see him.

Luther’s father was also deeply grieved at
the step taken by hisson. He knew the monks
to be a bad set of lazy men, and he feared that
his son would also become a good for nothing
fellow. When Luther told him that he was
called to enter the cloister by a terrible sign
from heaven, the honest old father said: “God
grant that it may not be a deception or an
illusion of the devil. Why, have you not heard
that parents should be obeyed, and that nothing
should be done without their knowledge and
counsel ?”’

But God let Luther enter the cloister that
he might Jearn to know the infernal corruption
of the Roman church. After many years,
when Luther had become the great Reformer,
he himself said: ‘‘God, whose mercies cannot
be numbered and whose wisdom his no end,
brought forth good out of error and sin. It
seems to me that Satan foresaw in my youth
what he now suffers. Therefore he so raged
and raved against me and sought, by manifold
inventions, to hinder and destroy me, that I
often marvelled and wondered whether I was
the only one among mankind that suffered his
attacks. But it was God’s will, as I now see,
that I should learn by my own experience the
philosophy of the schools and the holiness of
the cloisters, that is, become acquainted with
them by many sins and ungodly works, so that
the ungodly people might not be able to boast
against me, their future opponent, that I con-
demn what I do not understand.’

And did Luther find peace asa monk? Did
his troubled heart find rest?—Oh, no!—Our
next number will tell you all about Luther's
life in the cloister.
—> ~~ 2

The dying Soldier.

During the battle at Sedan between the
Germans and the French, a wounded German
soldier was carried away from the battle-field
by his comrades. ‘‘Lay me down,’ said the
wounded soldier, ‘‘do not trouble yourselves
with carrying me any further; I am dying.”’
They laid him down and returned to the battle.

feared he would die. During this sickness an
old priest came to his bed-side, and spoke those
remarkable words: ‘‘Be of good comfort, you
will not die of this illness; God will yet make
@ great man of you, who shall comfort many
people.’’ Some time after his recovery, a mis-
fortune befell him which might have proved
fatal. On his way home to visit his parents,
he, by some accident, ran his sword into his
foot. The blood gushed out ina stream. He
was taken back to Erfurt, but there was great
difficulty in closing the wound. In the middle
of the night the wound opened again, so that
he fainted from the loss of blood. ‘‘At that
time,’’ he said in after years. “I should have
died relying upon Mary.’’ He had not yet
learned to know the Saviour.—By the mercy
of God Luther fully recovered, and could go
on in his studies with his usual diligence. He
began every day of study with an earnest
prayer; for his motto was: He who prays
diligently, has finished half his studies. He
was far ahead of all his fellow-students, and
was regarded by the professors as a very gifted
young man of great learning, from whose great
abilities the University would gain fame
throughout the world. He also received several
degrees of honor and began to give lectures on
philosophy. But all these honors, and all the
learning, and all the ceremonies of the Roman
church, could not bring peace to his troubled
heart. There were terrible conflicts in his soul,
and at many a social gathering his friends saw
the deep sad look in his dark eyes. How can I
find peace? How can I become holy? How
can I render satisfaction that God may be
gracious unto me? Those questions came again
and again to his mind, and the poor young
man found no reliable answer. Whenever he
thought of death and the judgment, he was
terror-stricken; and he knew of no Saviour
who could set his troubled conscience at rest.
Certain events, which happened at that time,
made a deep impression upon him. Alexis, a
dear friend of his, was killed by an assassin;
and the news of this sudden death reminded
Luther of his own death, and of the judgment
to come.—Soon after this, on his return from
a visit to his parents, a violent thunder-storm
suddenly burst over his head, a short distance
from Erfurt. The thunders rolled with a ter-
rific violence; the lightning flashed through
the sky, and danced wildly around him, and
tore up the ground at his feet. Luther fell on
his knees, in fear that his Jast hour had come.
In his terror he made the forced vow: Help,
Saint Anna, and I will become a monk.—He

Little Rulie got a piece of bread and butter
from his mother, and went out to play. One
of the boys said to him jokingly, That Bread is
not good. But Rulie took a much larger bite,
and ate away lustily, and said, It tastes so
good; come and try it; take a bite.

The Word of God is our Bread of Life, the P
food of our souls. Now, when Bob, or Tom, or
Dick, or Harry come and tell us that that
Bread, given by our Father in heaven, is not
good; when they come sneeringly with their
old, worn-out objections, the best thing for us
to do is to eat away lustily, that is, to read the
Bible so much more eagerly. . We shall then
find out that that Bread is really good, the
best Bread we can get for our hungry souls.
Now, come, taste and see that the Lord is
good, and that His Word is sweet and strength-
ening.

——>~+o- or

“Our sins are debts that none can pay but
Christ. It is not our tears, but His blood; it
is not our sighs, but His sufferings, that can
satisfy for our sins; Christ must pay all, or we
are prisoners forever.’’

Gop has set a firm ground for us to tread on,
and thereby to ascend into heaven, even Jesus
Christ. He only is the way and door by which
we come to the father.—nither.

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hoped to find peace in the cloister, and to satisfy | A few minutes later, an officer saw the poor 1 Copy S$ .25
God by reading masses, and to merit salvation bleeding soldier, and said to him: ‘Can. I do A sielise apo
by the holy life ofa monk. He held firm to| anything for you?” “No, sir, I thank you,” 25 INININIIID ‘loo

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said the soldier. ‘‘Shall I get some water for
you?’’ asked the kind officer. ‘‘No, sir, I
thank you; I am dying.’’? Again the officer
asked: ‘‘Can I do nothing for you? Shall I
write to your friends?”’ ‘I have no friends to
whom you could write,’” said the soldier, ‘but
there is something for which I would be very

his purpose, although his friends tried to make

him change his mind. He invited them to

supper for the last time. There was excellent

_ Music and singing; for Luther was a great

friend of music. When the evening had passed,

he bid his friends farewell, and told them that

= he would enter the cloister. They begged him