# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1848 01 25_S83
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

fashion, but have a more evangelical spirit and an altogether free church constitution. Their first origin took place as early as 1755, through the German Reformed preacher Otterbein, who joined together with a number of Reformed, Lutherans, Mennonites, Baptists or Tunkers, and some Methodists, in doing so leaving certain differences existing among them — particularly with regard to baptism — to each person's own conscience. In 1843 they numbered about 65,000 communicants with 500 preachers; formerly they had only German members, but in more recent times many English-American members as well.

"I remark further that I gladly believe and acknowledge that among the Methodists in general, and in particular among the Episcopal Methodists, there are many precious children of God. It is quite far from my intention to deny this. But I also believe that a high degree of sincerity and humility is required in order to take no harm from the poison of all the incitements to hypocrisy and self-exaltation that lies in the Methodist arrangements.

"Finally, I call out to my dear German countrymen: Be on your guard against the Methodists! If their numbers and their self-confidence have grown somewhat further, and if conditions in Germany shape themselves to some degree favorably for this, then they will come over to Germany! If, then, repentance and conversion have not been preached by the evangelical preachers of Germany, in the spirit of the evangelical church, with a zeal other than has for a time been the case, then the Methodists will do it in the spirit of their church, and many inexperienced souls will fall to them! But do not, either, abandon your German brothers in America into the hands of these people; rather, send them evangelical preachers! For it is only where these are lacking that the Methodists gain entrance, because people think: after all, we have no other opportunity to hear a sermon. Thus I spoke with a man from the region of Minden, of deep disposition and earnest character, who in the first years of his being here had gone through much hardship and want, and had thereby come to inward reflection. He told me the following: "After I had attended no worship service at all for two years — for although I would gladly have walked many miles for it, I nevertheless had no opportunity to do so — I once went, on a Sunday morning, along the bank of the Missouri. Just then a steamboat came up the river, and its bell was ringing. When I heard that sound, I remembered that in Germany I used to hear the church bell ring every Sunday and could go to church, and bright tears ran down my cheeks. In my sorrow I went to a man who was from my region, but did not find him at home, only his wife. When I told her what was weighing on me, she began to weep with me, and told me that it also lay so heavily upon her heart, to live on so without God's Word. Soon afterward a Methodist preacher came here, and I became a Methodist. Had I known that after some time such evangelical preachers as K. and R. would come here, I would not have become a Methodist." Now, you dear brothers at home, do you wish to let such souls as this man's soul become, further, the prey of the Methodists? — But they must become their prey, if evangelical preachers do not come over to North America, and particularly into the western states of North America, in greater numbers than heretofore.

*) If anyone came over to America from Germany with a favorable prejudice in favor of the Methodists, it is I. At first I quite deliberately forced myself to overlook their darker sides. But in time these confronted me so glaringly and so persistently that I could no longer close my eyes to them, and I found myself compelled to give up entirely my earlier good opinion of the Methodists, hard as this also was for me. In a travel report of mine, printed in the "Palmblätter" (January issue, 1847), I said, after various accounts of my dealings with the Methodists in New York, that I did not wish to expand on the darker sides of Methodism, since these were in any case known well enough in Germany. But I now have reason to suppose that a deeper insight into the actual nature of Methodism, such as was formerly foreign to me, is also lacking in many other Christians and theologians in Germany! And yet it is of importance for every Christian to know about it, when so numerous a part of his brethren is straying from the right way. For if one member suffers, all the members suffer with it. Furthermore, in the foregoing description I have this additional intention, which I hereby express as a request: that all Germans emigrating to America, and especially those in whom the Spirit of God has already begun his work, might beforehand be made acquainted with the whole conduct of the Methodists, so that here they may open their eyes and examine well, in order not to mistake tinsel gold and imitation silver for genuine gold and silver. Should anyone think that I have painted the darker sides of Methodism too black, I assure him that very many believing preachers here in this country, if my description were laid before them for review and revision, would, from their richer experience, add yet many another dark stroke, and would considerably strengthen many that I have already made. Thus I recently received a letter from a Lutheran preacher who lives many hundred miles from here, in a quite different state, and whose name has a very good ring among the Christians in Württemberg, which is his home. In it he expresses himself about the Methodists as follows: "The Methodists have of late been carrying on their crafty business here. Cunning and lies accompany them. I must confess I see no spirit of discipleship in their conduct. Nor will they make any great catch here, except that some who are dishonest of heart and would rather teach than listen attach themselves to them. The Word, the pure Word of God, will prevail over the sectarian spirits, as over glaring unbelief."

On the Power of the Keys, Absolution, and Confession.
(From Harless's journal.)

The purpose of the incarnation of the Son of God was the redemption of mankind from sin and its punishments; the first and nearest fruit of his work of redemption, which he accomplished in the human nature he assumed, is accordingly the forgiveness of our sins. As we obtain forgiveness of sins through faith in him who has appeared, so the fathers of the old covenant obtained it through faith in the salvation that was to come. Therefore it is the unanimous doctrine of the Old and New Testament that through Christ forgiveness of sins has been earned and is obtained. The apostle Peter, who certainly understood the prophetic word, says this expressly: To him all the prophets bear witness, that through his name whosoever believes in him shall receive forgiveness of sins (Acts 10:43). And when the Son of God, on whose salvation-bringing coming the eye of faith of the fathers had been fixed, was really to appear, his name was beforehand called Jesus; for — says the angel — he will save his people from their sins (Matt. 1:21). John the Baptist recognized in him the true atoning sacrifice, and pointed to him with the words: Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29); and prepared his way, by taking the confession of their sins from the inhabitants of Jerusalem and of the land of Judea who came to him (Matt. 3:6), and by giving them the baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins (Mark 1:4). The Lord himself clearly testifies to the purpose of his appearing, when he says that he came to give his life as a ransom for many (Matt. 26:28). After his resurrection he names repentance and forgiveness of sins as the fruits of his suffering and resurrection, as the chief content of the preaching about him among all nations (Luke 24:46-47). Forgiveness of sins is accordingly the core and the crown of apostolic preaching; precisely for this reason it is a gospel, a joyful message. "Repent," Peter preaches at Pentecost (Acts 2:38), "and let every one be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sins." "He is the propitiation for our sin," writes John (1 John 2:1-2; 3:5), "and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world." "He was manifested, that he might take away our sins." And from the faith-assured and faith-joyful testimony of this chief benefit of grace earned through Christ, on which, like links of a golden chain, all the others hang, all the epistles of Paul overflow. "In him," he writes, pointing as it were with his fingers toward his cross, "we have redemption through his blood, namely the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace" (Eph. 1:7; Col. 1:14). And the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, who depicts for us the glory of the New Covenant above the Old, especially of the high priesthood, testifies right at the outset (Heb. 1:3) that he who is the brightness of the glory of God and the express image of his invisible being has made purification for our sins through himself.

Our Savior Jesus Christ, however, has not merely earned for us forgiveness of sins; he has not merely taught that he appeared for our redemption, so that our sins might be forgiven us — he has also, here and there, actually granted and applied to individual persons the forgiveness of sins earned through him. Sin is transgression of the divine