# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1847 09 20_S14
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Here the monk-provisor Johann Kestner, moved to pity for him, said to him: "O dear Doctor, the Italians are, by God, learned people! I fear you will not be able to maintain your cause before them. They will burn you for it." Luther answered jestingly: "With nettles it might pass, but with fire it would be too hot"; and added with a serious expression: "Dear friend, pray to our Lord God in heaven with an Our Father for me and for his beloved Child, Christ, whose cause mine is, that he would be gracious to him. If he only preserves the cause for him, then it is already preserved for me; but if he will not preserve it for him, then I shall not be able to preserve it for myself either; so He must bear the shame of it."

(Submitted.)

Ah, that I were in heaven!

My Father, I am weary,
Close my eyes for me,
Let your peace comfort me,
Ah, bring your child to rest.

O still my sorrow,
The world is so oppressive to me!
Lead me into my chamber,
Into my little bed, deep and cool.

And in the depths below
There I shall sleep in peace
Until the angel's call,
That I should now come.

Then he reaches out his hands to me,
And says: "Dear brother, you —
The world is now at an end,
Come, rise from your rest.

Do you see in the morning splendor
Jerusalem standing there,
Do you see in the crown of rays
The LORD walking there?"

And all my loved ones,
Who stand around me,
They have all remained mine.
Ah, that I were in heaven!
H. Fick.

*

(Submitted.)

Mission Reports.

Frankenmuth, Saginaw Co., Mich.

Since the mission to the heathen is the cause of the Church, and here in this land the mission among the Indians especially ought to lie close to our hearts, I cannot refrain from once again letting a word be heard concerning our mission work among the Chippewa in the north of Michigan.

When at the end of May of this year, after several fruitless attempts, we succeeded in obtaining an interpreter again, we hurried into the woods to visit the bands on the Pine and Swan Rivers, and above all to see for ourselves the damage which the enemy had meanwhile wrought. With deep sorrow we had to see how furiously he, through his Methodists, had rooted about in our seed-field; yet we also had to rejoice in perceiving that the LORD, our strong God, had set a limit to the latter. After they had for a long time — though repeatedly and earnestly turned away — pestered the chiefs Pämasike and Sauaban in vain, and had had to hear, especially from the former, that he wanted nothing to do with them, since he already had in me a missionary for himself and his band who possessed his trust, they began, especially along the Pine River, to creep about here and there into the houses, and to carry off some old women and inexperienced young people as captives. These then separated themselves, pitched their tents on a neighboring hill, and have since daily filled the woods with their dreadful howling. Among Sauaban's people they attempted the same, though with even less success, although there too, after much pressing and driving, they won a few over to their side. In doing so they again employed abominable lies and slanders, in order, if possible, to undermine the trust the Indians had in us. Among other things, they told Sauaban that we knew nothing to tell of but a snake; that we were not Christians at all, but worshiped a snake. In this they relied on the following story.

Last summer a Methodist Indian boy from Cacallin attended our school for a short time. The iron crucifix, which, intended for our altar, was at that time still standing in my house, drew his attention; curiously he examined the death's-head and the serpent at the foot of the cross, and asked what all this meant. We then gave him a proper answer, telling him how the crucifix represents the LORD Jesus Christ, who died for our sins on the tree of the holy cross, and we explained to him those symbols of death and sin (the latter precisely according to Genesis 3), which lie at the foot of the cross, as at the feet of the Victor over sin, death, hell, and the devil. With this we thought we had done the ignorant boy a service — and now hear and marvel at what a shameful lie they made out of this scriptural instruction. Because we worship him who crushed the serpent's head, and place our whole confidence in Him alone — not in our own holiness, our own preparation, convulsions of penance, prayer- or rather howling-zeal, etc., as the Methodists do — we must be serpent-worshipers. This is indeed a fitting counterpart to the Wesleyan lie that we invoke the holy Virgin Mary, because, namely, we cry out to him who is Mary's son according to the flesh. But what good will it do you, you holy Methodists, to want to spread your name by such unholy, shameful means? Even the heathen will discover your deceptions and abhor you. It is a pity that thereby, at the same time, the name of the LORD is blasphemed among them. For although you gladly call yourselves Methodists and hold more to your methods and machinery than to the eternal Word of God, you nevertheless wish, besides, to pass for Christians — indeed for the only genuine ones — just as your missionary was impudent enough to want to make even the heathen believe that we others amount to nothing at all, and that he alone was the man with whom God speaks!! Yet you shall not hinder the work of the LORD. Thank God, you meant it for evil, but God meant it for good. Only with all the greater trust have the Indians received us. The chief Pämasike paid us a ten-day return visit soon after our visit, and, in addition to the two boys who had already been in our school during the winter, brought three more children, among whom is again a younger son of his. From Sauaban's band, too, we now have three boys and two girls. In all, the number of pupils amounts to 17, not counting the three children of our interpreter, although on their father's side they are of half-Indian descent. New increase is to be expected daily, especially also from Point-au-Gres, whither we intend to travel very soon.

Thus also an old Indian, who lives with his numerous family on our mission land — though he himself, like all the older Indians thus far, refuses baptism on the ground that in the life to come he wishes to be where his fathers are — formally handed over to the mission, for later upbringing and education, two of his small children and two of his grandchildren, whom we at once baptized with his full consent. Two grown children of his as well, and a grown granddaughter, who since last winter have regularly attended our schools and are making good progress, were, according to his wish, to be baptized by us. But behold, what came to light when we questioned the children! These three children — a girl of about 16 years, one of 15, and a boy of 10 — had gone last summer, with an older Methodist brother, to a camp meeting at La Peer. After they had howled and raged there for a long time, an inquiry was made as to which of the Indians present were not yet baptized. All who declared themselves such were then, according to the children's account (they too were among that number), driven together into a group and baptized one after another — apparently all people who first ought and needed to have been taught — without anyone even troubling to ask whether they wished to be baptized or not. None of the three children still knows its baptismal name; none of them knew even the wording of the holy Ten Commandments, the Creed, or the Lord's Prayer — all of which we first had to teach them. But of course, what do the Methodists care about that, so long as they can trumpet abroad that they have again manufactured so and so many dozen new Methodists. O God, look down from heaven upon this! — so we must sigh. True Christians cannot deal with God's holy means of grace in this way; the true Church cannot deal with her children so — merely taking them into her bosom, only to leave them for years without doctrine and instruction, or in the