# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1848 03 01_S120
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

This declaration is a sad proof that the man whose conscience can tolerate a false union, such as exists in the United Evangelical Church, does not stand firm on the Word, but is ruled by his changing moods. We by no means deny to Mr. R. that he, driven by his conscience, has also retracted his testimony against Methodism; but that his conscience in this case was not guided by the Holy Spirit, but was an erring one, is already evident from the fact that he declares he retracts "in part," and leaves it, unconcerned about the consequences, to the readers to decide what is true or false in what he has retracted. We wish for the well-meaning, dear Mr. R. that "precious thing" which he evidently still lacks, and which grace alone gives. (Heb. 13:9.) If that were granted to him, he would, together with the holy prophets and apostles and Christ himself, uncover, reject, and condemn without mercy and in earnest everything that contends against God's Word, without later making himself a partaker in the sin of others through a hasty retraction.

Death notice.

Today, March 21, there died, in joyful faith in her Savior, Liddy Ottilie Lochner, née Bünger, wife of Pastor F. Lochner of Ridge Prairie, Ill., at the age of twenty years and three months, from the effects of childbed fever. She leaves her deeply grieved husband a motherless little daughter of five weeks. This for the information of sympathizing relatives and friends.

The spiritual priest.

"These words which I command thee this day shall be in thine heart. And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, when thou liest down, and when thou risest up." (Deut. 6:6–7.)

Henning Kuse, a pious shepherd on the island of Rügen, was a true bishop of his household. He had earlier been able to read a little, but had forgotten it so completely that he still knew only the letters. Then, in the forty-fourth year of his life, he bought himself a catechism at the fair, began at home to spell out the first commandment letter by letter, with heartfelt sighing to the Lord Jesus that He would have mercy on him, forgive him his indifference in having forgotten how to read, and now help him to learn it again for his blessed knowledge. As he found that it was working, he went on to spell out the second, then the third commandment, and so on, until he had gone through the whole catechism. Since the dear God gave him ever more desire and eagerness, he then also bought himself a New Testament with the Psalter, and even a Canstein Bible, and learned to read very well, clearly, and intelligibly. Yet he did not stop there, but rightly made use of what the dear God, as he used to say, had given him out of great mercy. For whenever he read something in the catechism or in the Bible, he turned it into nothing but sighs and little prayers. In this way Kuse became quite a different man, in heart, courage, mind, and all his powers. His Savior gave him such a taste for the Word of God that he could never hear enough of it, never contemplate it enough. He once said to his pastor, when the latter came to him in the field, that what grass was to his little sheep, and the air to the birds, and the water to the fish, that was the Word of God to his soul. He read and pondered it while tending his flock, marked all the chief passages with red chalk, and had learned many chapters by heart — for example, the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5, 6, and 7; Luke 15; John 3 and 14–17; Romans 8; Psalm 119; and many others besides.

With his children, morning and evening, besides sending them diligently to school and catechism class, he held a review of the catechism. Whenever one or another of them helped him herd the sheep, he would take the child, fall with it on his knees in the field, and pray in the name of Jesus Christ to the heavenly Father, sing, praise, and glorify the name of the Lord. Shortly before his death he took his only little daughter, nine years old, whom he had with him among the sheep, and said to her: "Come, you are still so foolish, and do not yet rightly know the Lord Jesus; come, let us pray that you too may become wise, and may learn to love the Lord Jesus." He knelt down with her behind the bush and prayed fervently to his Savior that He would also have mercy on this girl, and teach her to know sin, corruption, and temptation, etc. — which had such an effect on the child that, whenever she saw something wicked, her eyes would fill with tears.

The Weyl Church Messenger

is, according to its latest, fifth number, exceedingly happy finally to have found, for once, a piece of news reported in the Lutheraner that it can call untrue. We had, namely, reported in the tenth number of the Lutheraner that, according to the report of the Christian Journal, the Pittsburgh Synod had resolved not to be incorporated into the so-called General Synod. Since Mr. Weyl now wishes it to be known that that synod had only "postponed for the time being" its joining the General Synod, he writes that our very headline, "Another Renunciation of the General Synod," contains no fewer than two untruths: 1. that the Pittsburgh Synod had renounced [the General Synod]; and 2. "as if parts of this synod had already at some earlier time separated from it."

To this we answer: 1. If what Mr. Weyl reports is entirely true, then what the Christian Journal reported, and which we took from it, is indeed only half true. 2. But when Mr. Weyl imputes to us as a second untruth the claim that parts had already "separated" from the General Synod, we are glad to attribute this to a lack of knowledge of the language; for if Mr. Weyl did not lack this, he would have to know that there is an essential difference between renunciation and separation, and that a renunciation of something can take place even if one had previously only professed adherence to it, without having stood in any outward connection with it.

It is, moreover, ridiculous when Mr. W. writes: "Will Mr. Walther possess enough honesty to confess, repent (!), hate (!!), and forsake his error in the next number, before his readers?" It cannot, we think, occur to any reasonable person to impose a public penance on a newspaper writer because he accepted as true a piece of church news which he found in another periodical of thoroughly good repute. Instead of holding those words up to us, Mr. Weyl ought rather to have held them up to himself, for the poor man has still not shown "so much honesty" as to "confess, repent, hate, and forsake" what has already been demonstrated against him in No. 5 of the third volume of the Lutheraner.

Finally, we declare that we are by no means ashamed of the "premature joy" which we felt and expressed over the reported new renunciation by the General Synod — which has fallen away to the Reformed faith — for, according to our understanding, joy over the victory of truth and over renunciation of error is nothing unchristian, but rather a mark of true love, since God's Word says: "Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth." 1 Cor. 13:6.

Death, a good test of religion.

When once Valerius Herberger, the well-known Lutheran preacher at Fraustadt, came to an old town councilman who had grown up in the Roman church, but had always attended Herberger's sermons, the councilman, who lay in his last moments, called out to the preacher: "I have never really been on your side, for I was raised in popery; but now, on my deathbed, I feel that your Gospel gives the best comfort."

Children.

There is no greater harm to Christendom than the neglect of children; therefore, if Christendom is to be helped again, one must in truth begin with the children. Luther, to the German Nobility.

Where the devil is to be dealt a real, biting blow, it must come through the young people, who grow up in the knowledge of God, spread God's Word, and teach others. Luther, on Schools.

(Sent in.)

Thanks.

Commissioned by my congregation, I hereby express our heartfelt thanks for the $600.00 (six hundred dollars) given to us by the German Ev. Lutheran congregation of the Unaltered Augsburg Confession in St. Louis, Mo., through which we are now for the most part freed of the debt on our church, and may now indulge the hope that, despite all the raging of Satan, the Word of the Lord will remain with us. May God the Lord, who leaves unrewarded not even a drop of water given from a believing heart, bless the dear donors for time and eternity.

Johannes Gustavus Schmidt,
Pastor of the First Norwegian Ev. Lutheran Church at St. John's in Chicago, Ill.

Church dedication.

Pastor A. Schmidt of Cleveland, Ohio, has just informed us that on January 20 of this year the new Zion Church of the German Ev. Lutheran congregation there was dedicated.

Received

for the Lutheran Seminary at Fort Wayne, Ind.

$4.80 from the Lutheran congregation of the Rev. Pastor Strasen, Horse Prairie, Ills.

Paid.

The 2nd and 3rd volumes: Rev. P. Braasch.

The 3rd volume: Rev. P. A. Schmidt.

The 2nd half of the 3rd volume: Mr. Ant. Meyer.

The 2nd half of the 4th volume: Messrs. Aufdem Brinke, Anton Kerkhof, Kreutel, Dan. Simon.

The 4th volume: Messrs. Pastor Brohm (14 copies), J. S. Bussmann, F. Ernst (9 copies), Andr. Fischer, Körner, Paat, P. Röbbelen (3 copies), Phil. Suffel.

The 1st half of the 5th volume: Messrs. Anton Kerkhof and Dan. Simon.

Printed by Arthur Olshausen,
publisher of the Anzeiger des Westens.