# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1848 05 30_S153
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Edited by C. F. W. Walther.

Der Lutheraner.

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

Published by the German Evangelical Lutheran Synod of Missouri, Ohio, and Other States.

Volume 4.

St. Louis, Mo., May 30, 1848.

No. 20.

Terms: The Lutheraner appears once every two weeks, at the annual subscription price of one dollar for out-of-town subscribers, who are to pay it in advance and bear the postage. — In St. Louis, each single issue is sold for 5 cents.

Only letters containing communications for the paper are to be sent to the editor; all others, however — containing business matters, orders, cancellations, money, etc. — are to be sent here under the address: Mr. F. W. Barthel, care of C. F. W. Walther, St. Louis, Mo.

Dialogues between Two Lutherans on Methodism.*

First Dialogue.
The Chief Seat of the Sickness.

Philip: Were you at the sermon at the quarterly meeting last Sunday evening?

Martin: Yes! My cousin from Germany, who arrived four weeks ago, wanted to see the thing for himself once, and asked me to go along; for I have already taken my share from it, and indeed learned a good many things there.

Philip: You sometimes talk so foolishly that one does not know whether it is jest or earnest; but I would have thought you had become an even more staunch Lutheran, since you were at the Methodist meetings more often a year ago.

Martin: That may well be; the right doctrine and the right practice become still firmer and more certain to a person when he sees error and abuse so palpably before his eyes; and if, on top of that, he has himself been sick, he knows all the more how to value the worth of health.

Philip: Does that mean that once a person has been a Methodist, he knows all the more how to value being a Lutheran? But you have never been a Methodist.

Martin: Outwardly, no; but inwardly I have gone through this school of the Law; indeed, through the pride of my own heart, and under God's patience, I remained in this school for more than ten years, so as to come to know it fairly well.

Philip: You speak very strangely to me; the actual members of the Methodist congregations, who have passed their probationary period and perhaps also been at the mourners' bench once or several times, boast precisely of having come into the glorious liberty of the children of God, and of now experiencing in their hearts, in the fullest sense, the testimony of the Holy Spirit that they are children of God. And you call the whole nature and doings of the Methodists a school of the Law. How does that fit together? Do speak more plainly!

Martin: This spongy, Methodist feeling-faith fits together very little indeed with the old and solid Bible- and catechism-faith of our fathers of old. In those days the pure Word and Sacrament and sound doctrine of salvation prevailed, and people were able to believe rightly and live rightly.

Philip: Now you speak again of feeling-faith, and shortly before that of the legalism of the Methodists. Are the two, then, the same thing? Do make the matter clear to me.

Martin: Now you see, Philip, the matter is this. The hymns, prayers, and sermons among the Methodists are all aimed at people getting, as quickly as possible, a really palpable pain of repentance, sweet feelings of grace, and a really palpable joy of faith. They place a special value on this, and their public and family worship, as well as their special prayer meetings, are directed more or less toward having these spiritual pleasures again. Thus, for instance, at preaching they cling more to the feeling of remorse, fear, and terror which God's wrath in the Law works in them, and then at the Gospel again more to the feeling of God's grace and Christ's love, than to the Word of God itself. From this arise the following ills and sicknesses, which are best known only to one who has formerly had them himself, and who, by God's grace, has also inwardly come to the right standpoint of our Lutheran church doctrine and been made well in it:

1.) In this way they fall unawares into a kind of refined, inward work-righteousness; for since they always have their heart in their mouth — that is, since they like to talk of nothing more than their pains of repentance, their spasms of repentance, and their joy of faith, and of how, on such-and-such a night, at this or that kneeling prayer in the closet or in the bushes, they felt the nearness of the Savior so deeply — and since they look down rather distrustfully and with haughty pity upon those who cannot yet say so much about these particular experiences of theirs, it follows from this that they place a special value on it, and thus quite easily come to imagine that in their pains and spasms of repentance there lies a kind of cooperating merit for the later feelings of grace and enjoyments of faith. But this I call legalism and work of the Law, because it is supposed to help in the obtaining of grace, however much they may deny it. And it lies fairly plainly on the table, and is easy to grasp, that such refined legalistic striving and inward work-righteousness does a fourfold harm all at once; for it obscures a) the free and unmerited grace of God; b) the all-sufficient and solely valid merit of Christ; c) the application of the same through the Holy Spirit in the holy sacraments, as the means of grace ordained by God; d) the laying hold of these means, together with their content, by faith alone — the human means of receiving, as it were the hand and mouth of the soul, even though this too is worked exclusively by the grace of the Holy Spirit.

I will give you a more detailed demonstration of this harm later, if you like. But that refined, inward work-righteousness among the Methodists, applied to their obtaining of grace and blessedness, I hold to be the chief seat of this sickness of Christian faith and life, which is called Methodism in America, but in Germany

* These dialogues on Methodism, composed by Dr. Sihler in Fort Wayne, Ind., have already once been published, namely through the Pittsburgh "Lutherische Kirchenzeitung" (see Volume VI). We are including them in the Lutheraner as well, because — apart from the fact that they have remained unknown to the great majority of our readers and are therefore new to them — we wish and confidently hope that, with this new printing of these thorough instructions concerning a sect zealously carrying on missionary work among our countrymen, the evident blessing of the first printing of the same will also be renewed, for the rescue of the misled, the strengthening of the weak, and the instruction and edification of everyone. We intend, moreover, to have these dialogues printed also in pamphlet form, so that they may be given the widest possible circulation. — The Editors.