# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Februar 1860_S49
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Melanchthon's Death-Day. 49

the observance of the death should be placed, in the Lutheran lands. We cannot celebrate the later M. without letting considerable shadows fall over the observance and turning the observance into an accusation. We would therefore have to confine ourselves solely to the earlier M., with a few passing glances at his later life and his end. That might do, and yet it altogether contradicts a death-observance, which is meant to show the man's life in its outcome and end and to say: Thus he lived, and this he sealed with his death. One need only try to write out the same text as for Luther's death-day: "Remember them which have the rule over you, who have spoken unto you the word of God: whose faith follow, considering the end of their conversation." Then one will see how questionable the death-observance is, and what voices will be raised. On the whole, no proper festival observance will come about. In the background there always stands the gloomy recollection that M. himself brought to nothing what we wish to praise in him; besides, his half-heartedness and his wavering allow no proper uplift to occur. Whoever wishes to edify and uplift the congregation in the faith on that day must not set before it M.'s true likeness; he must either draw with pale, indefinite colors, or not shrink from rouge and compose freely out of his own head, as will surely happen often enough.

Since, however, the Lutheran lands too are sufficiently baptized with the spirit of union, one can foresee what kind of observance it will be. From not a few pulpits M. will be raised to heaven as the man of the age. Liberal papers are already working toward having the observance held precisely on April 19, that is, on the Thursday, and not moved to the following Sunday. Luther's death-day, in its time, had to submit to being moved to the Sunday, so as not to wound the religious feelings of the Catholics. But if the death-observance of M. is aimed at a demonstration against the Lutheran Church, will this same consideration then also be shown? Or does one mean to provoke demonstrations from the Lutheran side as well, and turn the festival day into a day of battle? In the Stade Sunday paper a voice has already been raised in earnest, awakened by these liberal presumptions. There it says, at the close of a longer article: "Should there nevertheless come to be, among us, any churchly observance of M.'s three-hundredth death-day, even if only in the manner in which this was done in 1846 regarding Luther, then no Lutheran pastor may extol M.'s services to the work of the Reformation without at the same time bearing decided testimony against his conduct set forth above." No one will wish for that, but neither can anyone forbid it, without making the observance publicly ridiculous.

To these difficulties there are added, moreover, local difficulties. What, for instance, is one to do about the death-observance in rural congregations? Rural congregations on average know not much of the history of the Reformation, but least of all of M., at most that here and there a few know his name. To be sure, one will say, all the more necessary is it to