# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1847 11 04_S37
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

...as Isaiah has written in 60:4-5: "Lift up your eyes round about, and see: all these gather together, and come to you. Your sons shall come from far, and your daughters shall be nursed at your side. Then you shall see and be radiant, and your heart shall thrill and rejoice, when the multitude of the sea turns to you, and the wealth of the nations comes to you." —

The Mission Commission of the German Ev. Luth. Synod of Missouri, Ohio, and Other States.
C. Joh. Hermann Fick, Chairman.
Aug. Crämer, Secretary.
F. W. Barthel, Treasurer.

*

Should the Heathen Missionaries Also Be Bound to the Symbolical Books?

(A portion of a speech given by the director of the Dresden Mission Institute, Graul, at the second Leipzig Conference of members and friends of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, on September 6, 1844.)

When our Lord and Savior took us up in his arms in holy baptism and set us in the garden of Eden, that is, his beloved church, he willed not merely that we should dwell there and walk about in the green pastures of the divine Word, and likewise refresh ourselves at the living streams of the Holy Spirit, but that we, like Adam, should also cultivate the garden. And cultivating is not the end of the matter either. It is written: And God the LORD took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and to keep it! We must therefore, while holding the tools in one hand, wield weapons with the other, as we are told of the builders on the walls of Jerusalem under Nehemiah: with one hand they did the work, and with the other they held their weapons, and everyone who built had his sword girded at his side, and so built.

Now, my friends, the confession is the fence that has been drawn around the garden of the church, to protect it from the intrusion of the old serpent. This fence, then, the workers must guard, for where there is no fence, as Sirach says, the property is laid waste; the church is a possessor and steward of the divine treasures of grace, and whoever tears down the fence, as Solomon says, will be bitten by a serpent. But we know that such a serpent's bite is dangerous; for when, with the doubtful question, "Yea, hath God said?", it sets one word of God to wavering, then in time all the others follow after it, and at last it grows so bold as to ask quite generally: What is truth? — and so it lays waste the whole garden, and the other beasts of the field help trample down the little trees that were once so lovely to look upon and whose fruits were so good to eat. The history of the recent past has furnished us a sad proof of this. Now, in this you are all agreed, beloved brothers, you who have been commanded to labor within the garden of God; the only question is whether we mission people share in this task of preservation, or whether it rests on your shoulders alone. I say, it is a question — but only, of course, insofar as many in our day have actually called it into question; in itself it is subject to no question at all.

Or say for yourselves, beloved brothers, you who do not dare to break through the tightly closed fence of the confession at any point, because you fear the serpent that might slip in there and sting you — could you in earnest wish that we mission people, who are commissioned only to push the boundaries of the church further out, by no means to found a new church, should in our territory abandon the fence of the confession, and so tear apart the common bond that holds us together in one spirit? Oh no — you would rebuke us and say: If you out there do not wish to build in the same sense as we build here within, then build for yourselves alone, for you are confounding our one work and splitting apart the body of the one, holy, universal, Christian Church. Do you not know that we are to be diligent to keep the unity of the Spirit, and are to speak the same thing, and are to allow no division among us, but hold fast to one mind and one judgment?

Certainly, so long as the church does not give herself up, she cannot do otherwise, for she speaks because she believes, and it is a perilous thing to wish to prescribe to the church: so much and so much you may say of your faith, and no more. That is nothing other than if I wished to prescribe to a person whose chest is bursting with health: so much and no harder may you breathe. Oh, that is an anxious, oppressed condition; no one thrives under it — life wants to breathe, faith wants to speak. But she not only cannot do otherwise, she also may not do otherwise; for faith is not a work of man, but of God — who would dare stifle that and fight against God! But if one were to say: Well, at home she should also be permitted to assert her faith; indeed it is even her sacred duty to build herself up at home upon the ground of her confession — only not out among the heathen; then I confess openly that, with the best will, I cannot grasp the difference between "at home" and "out there" in this regard, since preaching among the heathen can differ from preaching among Christians only in manner, never in content. "One Lord, one faith, one baptism," says the apostle too. Unless, that is, the missionary, as soon as he arrives out there, no longer needs to believe the same thing; but if he still must, then on occasion he will also have to teach it, and if he teaches it, he thereby confesses it; hence also in our confessional writings faith, doctrine, and confession stand inseparably together: "We believe, teach, and confess."

Indeed, apart from the preaching among the heathen, the missionaries themselves can have no faith other than that of the church which sends them; or should the church try to represent as uncertain and inessential to them what she herself holds to be certain and essential, and what — as well-raised sons of the church — those who offer themselves to their church for mission service for the most part already hold to be certain and essential — and try thereby to overturn the word: "In Christ Jesus there is not yes and no" — while then dismissing those of her pupils who are independent enough not to let it be overturned in them? Oh, then she would have to dismiss precisely the most faithful and most capable; then indeed her mother's heart should bleed, to disown the sons of her own body.

*
—

Why Are the Words of Institution — "This Is My Body; This Is My Blood" — to Be Taken Properly?

(Continuation.)

We have deliberately posed the question exactly as it stands in the heading; deliberately we have asked whether the words of institution are to be taken properly — and not whether they are to be taken literally or verbally. For, as we shall set forth more fully later, there is a great difference between saying that something is to be taken properly, and saying that it is to be taken literally or verbally. Whether this or that expression in Scripture is to be understood properly or improperly — this question can of course quite well be raised; but that one may not depart from the words or from the letter of Scripture — on this point there should be no doubt at all among decided believers in the Bible.

Unfortunately, however, it is plain to see that the Methodists of this country actually go so far as to assert publicly that one may — indeed must — depart even from the literal or verbal sense of the words of the sacrament. Among other things, in the article communicated from the Apologist, those are expressly rejected who wish to understand the words "this is my body" literally. Now it is indeed possible that Dr. Nast, for his own part, wrote this in error and simply did not consider that the right sense even of a figurative manner of speech can always be only the literal one; but we must fear that such thoughtless talk against the literal understanding of God's Word may, in many hearts, engender the delusion that even a sense which does not lie in the letter or in the words of Scripture could be the right one. Before, therefore, we set forth our reasons why the words in question can and must be taken in no other way than properly, we must first say a few things in advance about whether one may depart even from the literal or verbal sense of them.

To this we say, from the bottom of our hearts: No! — now and never! — and that for the following reasons.

First, it is against all reason to say that one is interpreting a text while at the same time departing from the letter or from the words of that text. To write something down means nothing other than to