# The Lutheran Pioneer_St. Louis_1899_S5 # Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration) Che Lutheran Pioneer. A MISSIONARY MONTHLY. PUBLISHED BY THE HyANGELICAL LuTHERAN SynopicAL CONFERENCE OF NortH AMERICA. R. A. BISCHOFF, Editor. Entered at the Post Ofice at St. Louis, Mo., as second-class matter. Vol. XXI. St. Louis, Mo., February, 1899. No. 2. Whom I Serve. Jesus, Master! whom I serve, Though so feebly and so ill, Strengthen hand and heart and nerve All Thy bidding to fulfill; Open Thou mine eyes to sce All the work Thou hast for me. Lord, Thou needest not, I know, Service such as I can bring; Yet I like to prove and show Full allegiance to my King. Thou an honor art to me, Let me be a praise to Thee. Jesus, Master, wilt Thou use One who owes Thee more than all? As Thou wilt! I would not choose, Only let me hear Thy call. Jesus, let me always be In Thy service glad and free. Selected. _ Oo ee Come to Jesus. Let all weary and heavy laden souls come to the Saviour in confidence, for He Himself has said: ‘‘Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”’ With this invitation let them overcome all timidity and doubt, and not be kept back by anything in them, of them, or around them; for He invites all the weary and heavy laden _4nd promises to give them rest. Would He break His Word? Would He let those who trust in Him be put to shame? Would He cast out him who comes at His command? Assuredly not. Listen to what he says: ‘‘Him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out.’’ “Him that cometh to me’?—no matter who he is or what he is—‘“‘him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out.’’ “But I am a great sinner, sayest thou? L will in no wise cast out, says Christ. But I am an old sinner, sayest thou? Twill in no wise cast out, says Christ. I have served Satan all my days, sayest thou? L will in no wise cast out, says Christ. But I have sinned against light, sayest thou? 1 will in no wise cast out, says Christ. . Ihave no good thing to bring, sayest thou? Lwill in no wise cast out, says Christ. Where Peace is Found. Who would not like to find peace? Peace of conscience, peace of soul, everlasting peace. Where is such peace to be found? There is One who came into this sinful world to bring peace. It is Jesus. At His birth the angels sang, ‘‘Peace on earth.’’ Of Him the apostle says that He ‘‘made peace through the blood of His cross.’’ As salvation, so peace is found in Him only. He Himself says, ‘These things have I spoken unto you, that in me you might have peace.’’ It is in Christ, therefore, we have peace, and not in ourselves, nor in any- thing that we do or feel. Yet how many seek peace in their prayers or in their feelings or in their duties! If these are not what they desire, away goes their peace, and down they sink into the deepest dejection. Surely they forget that it is not the work of the Spirit in them, but the work of Christ for them, a work finished more than eighteen hun- dred years ago, which forms the sole ground of their acceptance with God, and which can therefore be the only ground of their peace. If their prayers were ever so fervent, if their feelings were ever so sweet, if their duties were ever so faithfully done, all these could not form the faintest shadow of the cause or reason of their salvation or of their peace. Christ’s atoning work is the only ground of our salvation, and therefore the only ground of our peace. That work of Christ is offered to us as complete in the Gospel. —The moment the sinner by faith takes it as his own, and as long as he thus takes it, he has peace — a peace resting, not on his feelings or on any- thing he finds in his own sinful self, but on that which Christ did for him when He bore the punishment of our sins. Yes, peace is to be found in Jesus only. The apostle says, ‘‘Now, in Christ Jesus, ye who sometimes were far off, are made nigh by the blood of Christ. For He 1s our PEACE’’ (Eph. 2, 18. 14). Not He, and something else, but He alone is our peace, and hence it is written, ‘‘Being justified by faith [not feel- ing], we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ’? (Rom. 5, 1). Not through our feelings, which come and go like April clouds, not through anything that we do or suffer, which, even at its best, is imperfect and blotted with sin, but through our Lord Jesus Christ we have peace. ‘‘Now the Lord of peace Himself give you peace always’’ by faith in Jesus, who has ‘‘made peace through the blood of His cross.’ —— + oo > A well-founded Hope. In Wittenberg Luther called to see a very sick student, who had been somewhat frivolous and indifferent as to his spiritual needs, and asked him, ‘‘Should God call you out of this world, what have you to take with you?”” To this the student replied, ‘‘Everything good, my father, everything good.’”’ ‘‘But how can you, a miserable sinner, offer God anything good?”? asked Luther. ‘‘Why, my father, I will offer Him a broken and a contrite heart that is sprinkled with the precious blood of Jesus Christ,’? was the earnest and happy reply. ‘‘Depart in peace, my son,’’ said Luther, ‘‘God will receive you and welcome you as His guest in heaven.”’ After all, how simple is the plan of salvation, and yet how difficult sin and unbelief do make it! SS “Take therefore no Thought for the Morrow.” Matt. 6, 34. “Sometimes,’’ says John Newton, ‘‘I com- pare the troubles we have to undergo in the course of a year to a great bundle of fagots far too large for us to lift. But God does not require us to carry the whole at once; he mercifully unties the bundle, and gives us first one stick, which we are to carry to-day, and then another, which we are to carry to- morrow, and so on. This we might easily manage if we would only take the burden appointed for us each day; but we choose to increase our trouble by carrying yesterday’s stick over again to-day, and adding to-mor- row’s burden to our load before we are re- quired to bear it.’’ 2 + om 9 Though Christ permits us to sink down, He will not suffer His to drown. M. Luther.