# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1847 11 16_S52
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

unity — namely, that the personality of the church's servant recedes into the background, while the overall faith of the church, as the congregation of the saints, comes forward on every side, whether it approaches the Lord, penitent, believing, praying, and interceding, through the mouth of its servant and in part also in the loud joint confession of its own mouth, or receives grace and blessing from the Lord in the same manner. And such an eyewitness and earwitness would, we hope, find this manner of worship — in which the whole congregation approaches its Lord and God in bodily and fitting order, and He, in turn, full of grace and love, draws near to it — far more edifying than when this or that individual spiritual speaker and pray-er, with his own person, thrusts himself forward, as it were, in the so-called free prayers of the heart, pushes himself between the Lord and the congregation, and, with his personality, thoughts, and words, more or less dominates and captivates the minds and hearts of the hearers.

This latter manner, however, even where it rests upon the foundation of pure doctrine, is undeniably a morbid and unchurchly one, since the individual comes forward overpoweringly while the congregation and its collective faith recede into insignificance, and then the danger arises that, in the case of a particularly gifted praying preacher, most members of the congregation cling to his person in a carnal and idolatrous manner, while in the case of a less gifted one they at least secretly despise him and remain cold and indifferent; through either, however, their heart and mind are diverted from the holy matter, and thus, even in the common public worship service, that wretched, man-centered character is produced with which the church life of America is also filled.)

(Conclusion to follow.)

* If, for example, English-speaking Americans, and Germans who imitate them, speak — fresh from the impression of a sermon just heard — of that sermon, one will almost never hear them go into its content, or the question "What did he preach?", but they mostly dwell on the form, and the question "How did he preach?", especially when the preacher has been a fluent speech-maker.

Luther's Life by M. Meurer, in English Translation.

It gives us the most heartfelt pleasure to be able to announce to our dear readers that a worker well known to us, equally well versed in the German and English languages, and zealously active in building the kingdom of Christ, has undertaken to translate into English the Life of Luther published in German by M. Meurer, Lutheran pastor at Callenberg in Saxony, and that our indefatigable Mr. Ludwig in New York has resolved to undertake the publishing of this work. The work, comprising five to six hundred pages in octavo, is to be stereotyped, and at least eight lithographs are to be added to it, containing the portraits of Luther, his wife, Melanchthon, Frederick the Wise, and others, as well as several facsimiles. The price is set at only $2.00 per copy, well bound in leather. As soon as 1,000 subscribers have been found, work on the stereotyping and lithography is to begin. The publisher hopes to be able to make a start on December 1 of this year and, the Lord willing, to complete the work by March 1 of next year.

We rejoice so heartily over this undertaking because we hope that through Meurer's biography, Luther in his true form will first be disclosed to many of our English-speaking brethren, and that thereby d'Aubigne's work on the Reformation — which has unfortunately found so wide a circulation here — will be rendered harmless. D'Aubigne, namely, in his History of the Reformation, as has already been demonstrated, proceeded in a highly partisan manner and, in his hostility toward Luther, permitted himself the grossest falsifications of history. Since here so few have access to the sources of history, the enemies of the Lutheran Church — at present, above all, the Methodists — use his book here without shame or scruple to arouse the worst prejudices against Luther and his work, or rather against the work of God carried out through him, and to spread the most false conceptions of it.

Why we hope that Meurer's biography will prove an effective antidote to d'Aubigne's poisonous slanders may be shown by the explanation which the author himself — who is personally known to us as a faithful Lutheran — has given concerning his own work. He writes the following about it:

"1.) The essential character of the book consists in this: that, with the complete exclusion of all interjection of its own, it narrates Luther's life solely from the sources, and indeed in his own words and those of his contemporaries. This plan has been carried out in the strictest manner. The author has refrained from all judgment of his own,* there is absolutely no contribution of his own to be found in the whole work: he has limited himself to becoming exactly acquainted with his sources, examining them, comparing them, and arranging them together in whatever way seemed to him most fitting, so as to give a vivid picture. Naturally, it was sometimes necessary to abridge, to condense briefly, to change direct speech into indirect, or otherwise to give it a different turn; two accounts, too, occasionally had to be merged into one; but the author has permitted himself neither an essential alteration nor an essential addition. His entire contribution is limited to the linguistic insertions and turns of phrase necessary for connecting and joining together the sentences borrowed from the various sources, and is, at most, comparable only to the thread on which the pearls are strung, or to the mortar that binds the building stones together. Whoever will take the trouble to compare the sources cited at the end of each chapter will find this claim confirmed.

* Where such a thing indeed seemed necessary, it has been relegated to notes at the end of the chapter, which notes, however, for the most part contain historical particulars for which there was no suitable place in the text. — The Author.

This manner of presentation necessarily brings its own shortcomings with it: naturally the narrative cannot flow as smoothly as if it had been poured out from a single pen. But if the work has otherwise succeeded — which others may judge — the gain for the reader will be greater than the loss. Here he has a Luther as he showed himself, as he appeared to those who stood close to him — no ideal and no caricature first fashioned by someone else. The reader must, of course, form his own judgment, but the material for it has been laid before him with complete faithfulness, and as for the language, its freshness, originality, and variety will compensate him for the lack of polish and evenness.

It is thus evident that this biography of Luther stands in direct opposition to those which portray Luther "in the light of our time," or which clothe him in this or that garb according to whatever particular purpose may be pursued.

2.) As for the selection made from the rich treasury at the disposal of any biographer of Luther, the author does not expect to have satisfied everyone here or always to have hit upon the right choice. Yet, for the understanding of some, he must also note in this respect in what way his work differs, if not from all, then at least from many of its kind.

a.) Whereas in many biographies of Luther the entire history of the Reformation is included in outline, the author, by contrast, has strictly adhered to the intention of writing only Luther's life, and has touched upon the events of the Reformation only insofar as Luther himself was personally involved in them.*

* In this way it has been possible, within a relatively narrow space, to give a far greater quantity of detail than is to be found in most biographies of Luther. — The Author.

b.) The author has directed his particular attention to Luther's writings; whatever is of even some importance is mentioned, at least as to its content, and from the more important ones fuller excerpts, or at least samples, are given. A special index at the end gives an account of this. The author hoped that in this way his work might serve those still less familiar with Luther's writings as a kind of introduction to them.

c.) Many an anecdote current in almost all biographies the reader will seek in vain. This is because a good deal of the legendary has crept in among Luther's history