# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1847 09 20_S12
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

spiritual life, and it is in particular the powerful lever of today's missionary zeal. Yet mission work needs no such lever, since it already has, in the commandment of love of neighbor, the seal of its legitimacy, and in the universality of the divine call of grace, the seal of its success. But should not the very contradiction of this chiliasm to the doctrinal system of the Reformers and of all the pure teachers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries make us wary of it — a chiliasm whose chronological untenability the course of the last decade has, in any case, demonstrated clearly enough?

I am infinitely far from wishing to cast a blemish upon those godly men who introduced this doctrine into the church; to me, as one who owes to them the first letters of saving knowledge, they are far too dear for me to wish to dishonor their names. There have been a few stray stalks clinging to them, as to many of their like, in this temporal life; but these have been consumed by the fire, while the gold has remained, and they themselves are blessed in the sight of God. Equally infinitely far am I from making the Augsburg Confession, or Luther, or any teacher of the church, a rule of faith. By raising the question posed here I wished to do nothing else, in the first place, than to oppose the opinion that the compatibility of modern chiliasm with the Augsburg Confession is already a settled matter, and I wished to invite an abler pen to demonstrate also its incompatibility with Holy Scripture itself. Th. B.

(Submitted.)
A sample of how the Apologete quotes Scripture and its readers.

Some time ago a few numbers of the Apologete — which, like the Methodists themselves, insinuates itself here and there among the people uninvited — came into the hands of the undersigned, and in No. 432 I found an alleged conversation between a so-called Old Lutheran and a Methodist about loud worship, in which the Methodist, naturally!, thoroughly convinces the Old Lutheran that things go on quite decently and edifyingly at the Methodists' prayer and camp meetings — indeed, convinces him with Luther's own words that women must pray aloud in public assemblies, by quoting the following passage from Luther:

"In the New Testament the Holy Spirit ordains, through St. Paul, that women should keep silent in the church and congregation, and says: It is the Lord's commandment, 1 Cor. 14; and yet he well knew that Joel had before proclaimed that God would pour out his Spirit also upon the maidservants; and had moreover seen the four daughters of Philip prophesy, Acts 21. But in the congregation and church they are to keep silent and not to preach; otherwise they may join in praying, singing, praising, and saying Amen, and at home read and admonish, teach, and comfort one another, and also expound Scripture as well as ever they can. (Dr. Luther, vol. 5, Altenburg, p. 966, a. b.)"

Now one must indeed wear Methodist spectacles to discover, in these words, an endorsement of the mischief that the Methodists carry on with public, loud women's prayer, and for lack of such spectacles this was not possible for me.

Upon the above citation there follows the proof from Holy Scripture that women are even commanded to pray publicly and aloud, in the following manner: "All doubt will vanish, however, when we consider how the Apostle Paul speaks in 1 Cor. 11:5: Every woman who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors her head. And he further, in 1 Tim. 2:8-9, even commands them, just like the men, to pray in every place. He says: I will therefore that men pray everywhere, lifting up holy hands without wrath and doubting. In like manner also the women, etc."

Now let every Christian reader take his Bible and see whether it is not a shameful corruption of the ninth verse when the opening words of that verse, with the omission of what follows, are attached to the eighth verse in such a way that the inexperienced and unsuspecting reader is misled into the erroneous notion that the Apostle says, in verse 9, the same thing to the women that he said, in verse 8, to the men — when in fact there is a period at the end of verse 8, and the Apostle in verse 9 does not say a single word about the prayer of women.

"Now what do you think," the Methodist continues triumphantly, "of your preacher's statement, compared with Luther and Paul, and what was the latter's opinion about disorder?" — Yes, what do you think, Christian reader, of the honesty of such a Methodist, and of the Apologete in particular?! —

In No. 431 there is likewise a little sample of the learned acumen of Mr. Mulfinger. In the "House, School, and Church Book for Christians of the Lutheran Confession" he dubs himself a knight! He proves, namely, that we Christians are by no means released from the observance of the Jewish Sabbath, including Saturday, yet are nevertheless, through a probable command of our Lord, legally bound to the observance of Sunday. We refer the doubting reader to that essay of his; and would only wish, in conclusion, that Mr. Mulfinger had crowned his service to our edification by giving us an exact and faithful translation of the Greek word in Col. 2:16, which, as he says, is translated by Dr. Luther as "Sabbaths." — They wish to be masters of Scripture, and do not understand what they themselves are saying! 1 Tim. 1:7. F. W. Husmann.

Church News from Saxony.

In No. 32 of the weekly Deutsche Schnellpost we read the following notice, dated: Altenburg, June 30. — "These days a meeting of the strictly orthodox took place in the little town of Gössnitz, not far from Altenburg, to which the very devout Muldenthal in particular had sent a very considerable number. Not only clergy but also laymen were assembled. The chair was taken by Professor Dr. Harless, recently elected pastor at the Nikolaikirche in Leipzig. It is said that they deliberated very earnestly on the means of leading the people back to the true faith. In order to be able to work the more effectively, the assembly has divided itself into individual missions according to fixed districts, from which the people are to be worked upon. A new tract society is also to be founded, to work against the Zwickau society."

Traces of Lutheranism in the Midst of the Prussian Union Church.

The Wahrheitsfreund shares in its latest number a piece of church news from the Province of Saxony, dated July 11, which we likewise cannot withhold from our readers. From a journal published there one can see how now, after the Berlin provincial synod has been held, the eyes are being opened for many who thought they could remain Lutherans in the midst of the Union church. In that journal, the "Kirchliche Monatsschrift für die Provinz Sachsen," it says among other things:

"Now, if it should indeed be God's will that the Symbolists [the confessional Lutherans] should be driven from their ancestral ground and soil, from their rightfully acquired possessions, from their churches, parishes, and schools, as they seem to have been driven from their theological chairs and their consistory rooms, then God will certainly not let them starve, and can indeed multiply their little flock again, like the seed of ancient Israel, as the sand of the sea and the stars of heaven. But the robbery of the church will not go well for the Union church." The Berlin synod is reproached as being "not truthful"; it must now be plainly declared that the evangelical territorial church government in Prussia still has under it a Lutheran church as well, which, "by God's grace," is not willing "to let itself be torn away from the great body of the Lutheran church on earth, least of all by a majority resolution of the Berlin synod." According to the definite declarations of the cabinet order of February 28, 1834, the confessional writings are still valid in their old authority, and joining the Union is a matter of free decision, etc.

"One need only ask around in the country, and among a thousand pastors and congregations that are not lying in spiritual deathly sleep, one will not find ten