# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1844 12 22_S33
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

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Der Lutheraner.

"God's Word and Luther's teaching shall pass away neither now nor evermore."

Published by C. F. W. Walther.

Volume 1.

St. Louis, Mo., December 28, 1844.

Terms: The Lutheraner appears once every two weeks, at a subscription price of one dollar and twenty-five cents for out-of-town subscribers, who must pay half of this in advance and bear the postage themselves. — In St. Louis, each single issue is sold for 6¼ cents.

The Life Story of Dr. Luther.
(Submitted by Pastor G. W. Keyl, of Perry Co., Mo.)

Dr. Luther — this chosen instrument of God, through whom the reformation of the Church, which had seemed impossible in human eyes, was finally brought about, and through whom so many thousand Christians were rescued from the darkness of soul-destroying human teaching and brought to the light of the divine Word that alone bestows salvation; this precious Reformer, after whose name the true-believing Church has now already been called for three hundred years, whose whole life is a loud testimony that the hand of the Lord was with him, who even after his death still lives on in the great deeds which God accomplished through him and whose fruit he has preserved down to our own time, who even now still speaks to us in his numerous writings — he surely deserves, before a thousand others, that he never be forgotten and that his name endure forever and ever.

Since many who call themselves Lutheran unfortunately know little more of Luther's life than a few scattered anecdotes, or know it only from such accounts as often conceal, distort, and cast suspicion on precisely what is most important, so that Luther appears in them quite different from what he really was, a brief but truthful account of the life of that precious man of God, Dr. Luther, shall here be given to the readers of this Lutheran periodical. It is taken for the most part from the biography written by the late Mathesius, which is to be regarded as one of the most reliable, because its author was not only evidently a truth-loving, sincere man, but had also stood for seventeen years in close acquaintance with our Luther.

On November 10 of the year 1483, Luther was born in Eisleben, and on the following day, the memorial day of Bishop Martin, he received holy Baptism and with it the name Martin. His parents were poor*) but God-fearing people of the peasant class, who however later, through mining, under God's blessing, became ever more prosperous, and set great store by godly preachers and schoolteachers. Their little son Martin was still quite small when they sent him — or rather had him carried — to school in Mansfeld, where they had moved. There he diligently and soon learned the holy Ten Commandments, the three articles of the Faith, the Lord's Prayer, and Christian hymns. In his fourteenth year his father sent him to Magdeburg, and in the following year to school in Eisenach, where he had to earn his bread meagerly by singing before people's doors, until in that latter place a devout woman named Cotta, who had grown fond of the young Luther for his devout singing, took him in at her own table. Through the gifts granted him by God, as well as through his own diligence, he distinguished himself above all his fellow pupils, so that already in his eighteenth year he was able to enter the University of Erfurt. Here he studied at first with great earnestness philosophy (worldly wisdom), and then for a time also law (jurisprudence), holding always to his motto: to have prayed diligently is more than half of having studied. Once, as he was looking through the books in the library and found among them a Bible, he was greatly astonished that it contained far more than the customary texts read aloud in the churches, and when in it he came upon the story of Hannah and her son Samuel (1 Samuel 1–3), he read it eagerly and with heartfelt delight, and wished that God would one day grant him such a book of his own.

After he had now studied so diligently that he himself was permitted to begin giving lectures, his course of life suddenly took a different turn toward the end of the year 1505. As he was returning from a visit to his parents during a vacation, he was overtaken near Erfurt by a thunderstorm; the lightning struck down beside him and he himself fell stunned to the ground — another account also says that the lightning struck dead, at his side, his friend Alexius. All this filled Luther at the time with great fear of God's wrath and of the Last Judgment, and in his terror he immediately made the forced vow to become a monk, in order through monastic holiness to attain eternal salvation — by no means, then, out of laziness and incompetence, or for the sake of an easy life. Yet Luther made this vow without the knowledge or consent of his father, who said to him the memorable words: "God grant that this be not a deception, nor a devilish apparition! — and have you not heard that children are to obey their parents?" These words of his father remained in his mind through the whole fifteen years of his monastic life and wrung many a sigh from him; yet after that time he could write to his father: "God, whose mercy is beyond number and whose wisdom has no end, has out of such error and sin nevertheless wrought wonderfully greater goods. For God willed it so (as I now see), that I should learn the wisdom of the universities and the holiness of the monasteries from my own sure experience — that is, from many sins and godless works — so that the godless people should have no ground to boast against me, their future opponent, as one who condemned things unknown to him."

In the Augustinian monastery at Erfurt, Luther now studied the Bible (which he found here chained to its place) with the utmost diligence, and alongside it also the writings of the Church Fathers, especially Augustine. In doing so he observed exactly all the rules of his order and led so strict a life that he could later openly confess: "If ever a monk got to heaven by monkery, I too would have gotten in that way; for I would have tortured myself to death — had it lasted long enough — with watching, praying, reading, and other labor." Yet for all that he anxiously strove to become so holy, he nevertheless felt great anguish on account of his sinfulness, sought in vain for peace of heart, and had much distress of mind. Every evil thought that stirred within him — as he himself relates in his Commentary on Galatians — he sought to beat down by force; fasting*) and praying, under the severest mortifications,

*) "The mother," he says, "carried her firewood on her own back, so that she might raise us children. They let themselves sweat blood for it."

he wrestled at times for several days on end, shutting himself into a cell; but in vain! — the temptations returned with ever renewed force.

Im Auguſtiner-Kloſter zu Erfurt ſtudirte nun Luther mit höchſtem Fleiß die Bibel [continuation of this passage was translated above and does not repeat here]