# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1848 06 21_S183
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

...drawbacks, however — the useless scruples of conscience of the penitent person who avoids the mourners' bench, and the ruinous delusion of conscience of the impenitent visitor of the mourners' bench — would fall away entirely if the Methodist preachers would leave off this improper addition and this useless side-work altogether; for otherwise, quite easily and soon, by the just judgment of God, the mourners' bench could become for them baptism — which it perhaps already is —, confessional, purgatory on this side, indulgence, Mary, and golden calf besides. This present morbid commotion over it is a true warning sign and a new proof of the old truth, how quickly man falls into legalistic additions and works when he departs in any way from the simplicity of the gospel and from the means of grace ordained by the Lord — preaching and the holy sacraments — as they are joined together by our church in the right order of salvation. If the poor Methodists would only hold to these, they would not fall into the arrogant self-deception of being exactly the right forerunners, co-workers, and followers of the Holy Spirit, and the discoverers of the right way of conversion. They would then be content to divide and join law and gospel correctly, and to proclaim them faithfully and earnestly through the grace of the Holy Spirit in testimony, teaching, and exhortation, to administer the sacraments correctly, to instruct the youth diligently in the truth of salvation and to ground them "in the pattern of sound words" (2 Tim. 1:13), and to feed the sheep and lambs with all diligence, that is, to teach, to reprove, to comfort, to entreat, to warn, to urge on, to strengthen, to break down and to build up, to root out and to plant, to bear, to wait, to hope, and to pray. And especially these latter expressions of the pastoral office would restrain them very much from all stormy, immature zeal for conversion and from the great and weighty sin of, as it were, botching the Holy Spirit's own craft, and of tearing from him, by means of the birthing-stool and the oven-heat of the mourners' bench and company, premature seven-month children and sickly hothouse fruits; for the Holy Spirit, after all, takes a slow and gradual course with not a few souls, and only relatively few are converted like Paul or brought back like Peter.

Philip. What do you say, then, to another defense which the Methodists offer in favor of their pet child, the mourners' bench? For, as is well known, they claim that the stepping forward of penitent souls, and this — as they hitherto suppose — decided going-out from the world and coming to Christ before the congregation, gives these souls and their preachers and leaders the opportunity, through prayer, intercession, and pastoral care, to support these troubled souls spiritually and bring them safely through; that this measure of the mourners' bench or penitent-place is the best means of holding fast, in the penitent, the impressions received through the sermon — in short, as we might say, to strike the iron while it is hot.

Martin. Of this defense and this recommendation of the mourners' bench I can say nothing other than that it springs from that same impure source, that is, from that same arrogant self-deception, and expresses the same superstition regarding this magic spot; for in it they mean, in short, that the Holy Spirit, without this assistance of theirs, is not strong or faithful enough to preserve the impressions worked by the word of the sermon in the penitent and willing-to-believe soul, or that without them he delays too long in bringing the little child to birth; for that this has long since taken place before, outside of, and above them, and entirely without their cooperation and assistance, through holy baptism — even if the little child has slept a good while or been sick — this seems to them, as proper enthusiasts, fairly enough a loose fable; for it has simply pleased the spirit of spiritual pride within them to put their human invention, in essence, in the place of the divine ordinance of baptism, even though they retain it outwardly, in order to have an appearance of churchliness, and not to appear as manifest sectarians and fanatics. — But let us now see what assistance, comfort, and counsel is given to the troubled souls at the mourners' bench. Hymns of the congregation, prayers and intercessions of the preachers, exhorters, class leaders, or other members of the same, and comforting exhortation from their mouths to the penitent; and this last takes place during the hymns and prayers, which are sometimes also performed by women, against the express command of the apostle (1 Cor. 14:34; 1 Tim. 2:12), in these supposedly scriptural services. Now I ask, however: how is it possible for the counselor, under these circumstances, to discover the actual spiritual need of his charge and to counsel him accordingly and comfortingly point him to Christ and his merit? Furthermore, how is it possible that the penitent soul, in this mere emotional excitement, is master of itself and can give clear account of itself? With one ear it listens to the hymns and prayers, with the other to the counsel and comfort of its counselor, without clearly and distinctly perceiving either the one or the other. But the Methodists care very little about that; the main thing for them, and it remains so, is precisely through this simultaneous pressing-in to hasten, as they think, the spiritual hour of birth, whereas in most cases it is only a drowning-out and a spiritual intoxication of the feelings. Now it is of course possible that a sincere penitent soul on the anxious bench, after this urging and driving, may feel a sweet sense of grace and a joy of faith in Christ, a liberation from anxiety and the pressure of conscience, and may perhaps also express this in sounds and gestures; for God's grace is immeasurably wide and is not essentially annulled by human folly, especially since there are certainly also childlike-believing intercessors among the Methodists. Nevertheless it is childish and immature to regard these individual feelings of grace and shouts of joy as already a thorough conversion and the right state of repentance and faith, and immediately to trumpet in the Apologete that this soul too "has broken through to the glorious liberty of the children of God." Although their preachers know very well that of these printed children of liberty, this one and that one has later fallen away again, they nevertheless do not abandon their bad habit of having every new wonder-working of their mourners' bench promptly entered in their paper. But even granting that the greater part do not later fall away again, or become altogether unchurchly, the mourners' bench and the whole procedure connected with it still is and remains an unevangelical and improper, and therefore fanatical and morbid, measure, and indeed for the following reasons:

1. The mourners' bench, together with its accessories, has neither command nor indication in Holy Scripture as a divine ordinance or an essential means of grace for proper use in worship, as, for example, preaching, teaching, and feeding, the administration of the holy sacraments and of the office of the keys, the instruction of the youth.

2. It has no similar precedent or example in the history of the worship of the Christian church from ancient times, before the rise of the Roman-papist false teachings and abuses. For the mourners' bench of the old evangelical-apostolic church, to my knowledge, was a special place for those who had fallen but had penitently returned, who were indeed permitted to take part in the sermon, but not yet in the holy Lord's Supper, and who on that special place and in special clothing also publicly testified their repentance (the so-called church penance) before the congregation. All the supposed proof-texts of the defenders of the scriptural and churchly character of the mourners' bench are, according to customary fanatical interpretation of Scripture, torn out of context and have not the slightest evidentiary force to establish this little human invention.

3. It rests:
a. upon a secret unbelief and distrust of the sole faithfulness of grace and power of the Holy Spirit in the means of grace ordained by the Lord Christ as alone essential, that is, the pure preaching of the gospel and the correct administration of the holy sacraments together with everything that scripturally and churchly belongs to both, such as, for example, all the feeding and pastoral care of individual souls in the one case, and the evangelical exercise of the office of the keys in the other.

b. upon a fairly open superstition and fanatical trust in the power of human cooperation and acceleration in the work of conversion. But this is a defiling of the gospel and its manner (in point a) through the law and its manner, a disfiguring of God's Word through the addition of man's work, an obscuring of the essential means of grace of the holy sacraments and the setting-up of a non-essential illusion, a constricting of the free working and ruling of the Holy...