# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1847 11 16_S54
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

that one must work, where possible, toward such marriages increasingly ceasing to occur.

The conference spoke with no small joy of the fact that, by God's grace, it has already come to pass that the Lutheran Church of this land has been presented with a new, orthodox church hymnal, in which neither the leaven of false doctrine nor modern unbelief is to be found, but in which, rather, the church's long-stolen property has been restored to her in the unaltered hymns of Luther and other orthodox teachers. The members of the conference expressed the heartfelt wish that it might become possible for them to see this treasure very soon in the hands of their congregations, to which end they intend to contribute, on their part, whatever they can.

The mission among the heathen was likewise remembered. The resolution was adopted that the members of the conference, as often as it shall be feasible, will hold mission hours in their congregations, in order to bring the cause of missions increasingly to notice, and to let any gifts reach the Lutheran mission among the Indians on the Cass River.

Finally, Pastor Schneider was called to account by the conference for having abandoned his congregations near Marion. After careful investigation of the matter, the conference could not judge otherwise than that Pastor Schneider had acted wrongly in the highest degree. The conference does not shrink from pronouncing such a judgment publicly as well; indeed, it considers this rather its duty. They thank God, however, that Pastor Schneider himself agreed with this judgment and confessed his wrong and his rashness. May the Lord grant us all right patience and wisdom, that we may lead our congregations in His fear and be kept from all crooked ways! Amen.
A. Ernst.

"By their fruits shall ye know them."

Readers will still recall from the third volume of the Lutheraner that Dr. Nast some time ago challenged us to a duel with him, in this manner: that we should print an essay of his, published through the Apologist, in the Lutheraner, in return for which he obligated himself to print our refutation of it in his Apologist. He had expressed himself on this as follows:

"Well aware that it (the Lutheraner) could bring forward nothing against the explanation of the Holy Supper drawn by us from Holy Scripture itself, and solely and alone from it, he calls it simply 'empty chatter,' without daring to indicate to his readers, by citing even a single one of our arguments, and to demonstrate wherein 'the empty chatter of the Methodists concerning the Holy Supper' consists. For shame! What disgraceful cowardice, for so learned a pastor, a former student of theology at Leipzig, against unstudied, unlearned, enthusiastic laymen, such as the Methodists! Or are we hereby attributing a wrong motive to Pastor Walther's silence? Very well! He can vindicate himself from the accusation. If he wishes to lay our 'empty chatter' about the Holy Supper before the readers of the Lutheraner, then we will give our readers his refutation, which shall take up just as much space. If he cares anything at all about the rescue of the poor, deluded Methodists and the other readers of the Apologist, he will accept this proposal. If not, then every impartial person can see that he cares little for the spread of the saving truth, or that his faith rests not on the eternal foundation of divine truth, but merely on human authority and tradition. The former editor of the so-called 'Wahrheitsfreund,' now Bishop of Milwaukee, rejected such a proposal from the Apologist; indeed, it occurs to us that we made this same proposal in vain to Dr. Sihler concerning the doctrine of absolution.*) And so Pastor Walther, too, will probably show his shame and nakedness on this occasion. But alas! the readers of the Lutheraner remain in the fog, let the Apologist write what it will." etc. See: Apologet, No. 446.

*) Dr. Nast prudently conceals here, first, that at that time Dr. Sihler had no paper whatsoever at his disposal, and second, that he had declared himself ready for an oral disputation, which, however, was likewise prudently declined at that time by the Methodist side.

Dear readers may gather from the foregoing that our doctor, when he wrote this down, was truly drunk with the sweet hope that we would find it impossible to bring ourselves to lay his distortions of God's holy Word — as godless as they are hypocritically pious-sounding — before our dear, at times weak, brethren, and thereby to disfigure our "Lutheraner." Therefore the doctor, with a veritable Goliath's mouth, challenges us to a public duel.

When we first read the above words, similar thoughts already forced themselves upon us. We suppressed them, however, and resolved at once to accept the challenge, in the hope that the doctor would soon become sober from his intoxication, beg our pardon for imputing to us the disgraceful "motives" by which we were supposedly guided in our silence, and, of course, keep his promise. We were indeed warned by others, who know the character of genuine Methodists more closely, not to trust Dr. Nast. We were made to notice that this invitation was nothing but a trap into which that cunning gentleman merely wished to lure us; that if, in good faith, we published his essay in the Lutheraner, Mr. Nast would secretly laugh up his sleeve at our foolish good nature, but would publicly, with the most innocent air in the world, set forth the reasons why, under the circumstances then prevailing, he was compelled to withdraw his promise. We were pointed to the clause which Mr. Nast had only seemingly innocuously let slip in: "which shall take up just as much space." Here, we were told, here is where it lies. Mr. Nast knows quite well that with few words he could pour out a mass of confused assertions which could, of course, be simply denied in just as few words, but could only be refuted through a variety of detailed explanations.

We confess that these hints admittedly made us somewhat suspicious at first. Yet, although we had already had many a sorry experience of the dishonesty of the spokesmen among the Methodists, and although our initially not inconsiderable trust in them had gradually sunk from year to year, we still could not believe that they were capable of such defamatory tricks. We therefore set ourselves — because we believed we owed it to God's honor, and out of love for the honest souls led astray among the Methodists — to the truly most unrewarding task of dissecting Mr. Nast's essay, as meager as it is confused, and of showing how, beneath the bombast of his speech, less than nothing was contained. We spared no effort to discover where, in his supposed proofs, the nervus probandi (the force of proof) was actually supposed to lie, and the reader will admit that we did not conceal Mr. Nast's supposed proofs from the readers' eyes, but rather first dressed them up in such a way that they could at least appear somewhat presentable before reasonable people. We also did everything possible to spare Mr. Nast too great a humiliation. We did not think it so base as to misuse the opportunity given us to place an essay in the Apologist. We considered it worthy of a Christian alone, on this very occasion, to treat the editor of that paper, despite his uncouth attacks, with every possible consideration. And that we have in fact done this, even our enemies must bear witness. We were, moreover, well aware that we could not force Dr. Nast to print our refutation in full in his Apologist, and little as we credited him with willingness to do so, we never doubted for a moment that he would print, if not the whole first half directly concerning him, at least as much of our essay as we had printed of his in the Lutheraner. This much, we thought, he would certainly do, in order to escape the shame before God of being a manifest deceiver, even if he had to bear before the eyes of all discerning readers the shame before men of being refuted. We thought that should Dr. Nast not insert a single word more than we had, we would then have to remain silent, for our opponent would then have