# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1848 05 24_S164
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

but the Methodist masses are and remain hunters after feeling, and content themselves with these and those emotions, perhaps also tears, and the painful pleasure that they had in the process. And this pleasure they also want to have again later when they chatter about these little experiences of theirs.

It goes similarly, too, when they hear the Gospel — the glad tidings of God's grace in Christ — preached, or read it in the Bible. The main thing is and remains that here too they feel and enjoy something special, and indeed something sweet and pleasant, that they want to feel powerfully the nearness of the Savior and the breath of the Spirit. Here too they strongly desire to feel again those first sweet feelings of grace and joys of faith, and to experience again those tempestuous raptures which the Holy Spirit does indeed send to many souls in the early period of their conversion, in order to tear them forcefully away from the pleasure of the world and to impress deeply, lastingly, and unforgettably upon their souls the difference between flesh and spirit, world and kingdom of God, Satan and Christ. These are the kisses of love of the Father (Luke 15:20) toward the returning prodigal son. But when these especially tender demonstrations of love — which were meant to give even the timid and despairing sinner ever more courage to return to the Father's house — later cease, that is, when perhaps the same Gospel, heard or read again, no longer makes on their feeling the same deep and sweet impression as before, indeed when they feel themselves empty and dry in the process, then they very easily become confused and unsettled, and toss anxiously to and fro with their feeling-based faith. Their preachers and pastors then frequently know no other counsel to give them than, through special efforts in prayer, to regain that earlier feeling of grace; and at best it is only those more serious and deeper souls who, through the grace of the Holy Spirit, gradually come to realize that God Himself is behind it, withdrawing from them that once so powerful and glorious savor of His Gospel, and indeed for several reasons: 1) in order to lead them away from their former feeling-based faith, which clings only to the impressions of God's Word, and into the true faith of Scripture, which clings to the word of promise itself even without any feeling of faith, for the sake of God's faithfulness and truthfulness; 2) in order thereby to cut away thoroughly the human and sinful admixtures — of subtle pride, self-centered enjoyment, and vain self-admiration — that had crept into their feeling-based faith; 3) in order to train, establish, and build them up further in the bare, unadorned obedience of faith to Scripture. The mass of the Methodists, however, although they believe they have enlightened eyes of understanding, nevertheless do not see this educating love and wisdom of God; rather, they seek by their own means and ways to get rid of this dry and parched condition, and, where possible, to swim again in sheer joy and sweetness. But their chief means for this are those loud and violent shouting-prayers, which they like to call "Jacob's wrestling with the Lord" and "taking the kingdom of heaven by force" — things which, in other cases, they may very well be.

Instead, then, of first examining closely whether the chief cause of their spiritual dryness does not lie in themselves — as, for instance, when, on the other hand, they take the sins of weakness somewhat too lightly, or have again perhaps extended, or failed to withdraw, so much as a little finger to some old besetting sin and to the devil within them — and instead, further, of turning inward to the firm, unchanging word of promise and fulfillment in Christ, and there gaining, for their dry or anxious heart, a firm ground of faith, they gaze upward and expect, from their efforts in prayer, to taste again the nearness of the Lord just as sweetly and abundantly as before.

I once asked a Methodist preacher, who had already been preaching for about twelve years, what it actually meant when it stood printed in the Apologist, from the report of the Reverend Mr. N. N.: "Yesterday (usually after the use of the mourners' bench) ten souls came into the glorious liberty of the children of God."

Answer: Well, they felt the grace of God and the forgiveness of sins in Christ powerfully in their hearts, and testified to it aloud with their mouths as well.

I: But if tomorrow they feel nothing more of it, what then?

He: Well, they must pray and entreat earnestly, that they may feel it again!

I: But if this does not help, and the dryness increases rather than decreases?

He: They must pray and wrestle still more earnestly.

I: But if they cannot do this, indeed if in the end conscience and law rise up against them again, and the dryness turns to anguish, what then?

He: Then they are not thoroughly converted.

I: But they were indeed at the mourners' and grace-bench, and it stood printed in the Apologist: "they came into the glorious liberty of the children of God."

He: Yes! There are also many who nonetheless fall away again.

I: Well, then, you ought at least to be somewhat more cautious, and not always so hastily and confidently give out the exact number in the Apologist, as though you were knowers of hearts like the Lord Himself, and knew exactly what is in man. But this only in passing. To come back to our case: can you not conceive that those souls, spiritually dry or even frightened again by Moses, might not fall back willfully into sin, and yet be unable to regain the feeling of joy in Christ and the comfort of the Holy Spirit, even after they have prayed for it often and earnestly — indeed, that they might no longer even be able to pray properly at all?

The Methodist preacher was silent for a good while, for it seemed to him almost incredible that souls who had come, perhaps after particular groaning and shouting at the mourners' bench, into the glorious liberty of the children of God, should afterward no longer be able to pray properly, without having fallen away again.

At last he said: "But surely God is greater than our heart." Quite right, I answered him; but where does that stand, if not in the Word of God — into which, into the comforting promises of the faithful God in Holy Scripture, those troubled and tempted souls must be directed, once one is first assured that sinful relapses have not brought about this condition of dryness or anguish; but one may not, as it were, load upon them, like some new law, that driven, compulsive praying. To this he then said nothing further, and I went my way. —

You see, dear Philip, how pitiable, on the whole, is the state of the poor Methodists, who nevertheless, likewise going by their deceptive feeling, consider themselves at the very least the apple of God's eye, and regard pretty much everything as "outside" that is not Methodist or Methodist-minded.

They simply have no firm state of grace, because repentance and faith, as we see, are, with them, morbid and legalistic; for, as has been said, they cling more to the individual feeling-impressions of the beginning of repentance and of the beginning of faith, produced by the workings of God's Word in Law and Gospel, than to the Word of the Lord itself. And hence there follow, when we consider their repentance and faith together, the following ill effects:

1. They readily despair of their faith, when they feel sin more strongly.

2. They consider themselves unworthy of faith when they feel sin more weakly; for the stronger the pains of repentance, the worthier they imagine themselves to be of grace and faith.

3. They like to complain and marvel over new discoveries of the old sinful corruption, as though a person could by nature be more or less than simply a sinner.

But whoever marvels at this thereby reveals that he had not, before, actually considered himself so bad and corrupt.

4. They readily forget that they are poor sinners, when they feel their faith more strongly.

5. They remain stuck in the feeling of dryness, or anguish and sorrow, under the Law, instead of laying hold of the comfort of Scripture in the Gospel; and, conversely, in the case of the so-called sins of weakness, they comfort themselves all too hastily with grace, instead of first examining themselves somewhat more sharply under the Law.

6. They take this beginning of faith to be the true state of faith. But with the orthodox and rightly believing Lutheran, a true child of Scripture and a true son of his Church, it is quite otherwise; for:

1. He stands fast in faith upon the promises of grace and comfort in God's Word, and indeed upon its testimony concerning Him who was crucified and raised again for him, when he