# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1848 08 02_S205
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Der Lutheraner.

"God's Word and Luther's teaching shall now and nevermore pass away."

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

Edited by C. F. W. Walther.

Volume 4.

St. Louis, Mo., August 22, 1848.

No. 26.

Terms: Der Lutheraner appears once every two weeks, at the annual subscription price of one dollar for out-of-town subscribers, who must pay it in advance and bear the postage themselves. — In St. Louis, each individual number 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, remittances, etc. — are to be sent here under the address: Mr. F. W. Barthel, care of C. F. W. Walther, St. Louis, Mo.

On the Friends of Light, by Wilhelm Redenbacher.

(Dresden, published by J. Naumann. 1846.)

(Conclusion.)

What, then, are the Friends of Light with respect to their religion? If one inquires more closely into what real, substantive doctrine they still possess, and in doing so keeps to the majority of their spokesmen and to the churchly addresses of their preachers, one finds: they are, at present — Jews; and so that we do not do them the slightest injustice, we immediately add a qualifying word and say: they are refined Jews. This is also quite understandable when one considers that they have expunged from their Christianity precisely the doctrines distinctively Christian — those of redemption and what is connected with it; nothing is then left to them but a kind of Judaism without the aversion to pork and similar superstitions, which in fact many children of Israel themselves have already, in more recent times, laid aside.

The religion of the Friends of Light still comprises roughly the following articles of doctrine: of the existence of one God (and indeed only one divine person) — of the attributes of God, that he is eternal, almighty, omnipresent, etc. — of the works of God, that he created the world, sustains it, and governs it — of the moral commandments which God has written into our conscience, and which Moses set forth in essential agreement therewith — of the happy consequences of a virtuous life and the unhappy consequences of a vicious one, in this world and in another. — But this is approximately the doctrinal content of pure Judaism.

I became acquainted, in my first pastoral charge, where I was at the same time inspector of an Israelite religious school, with a Jewish catechism there (published, if I am not mistaken, in Würzburg) which contained precisely the doctrines just named, and not much more, and, as far as I recall, nothing at all of superstitious observances.*)

Such a catechism the Friends of Light could, with little alteration, put into the hands of their own children and lay as the very foundation of their religious instruction. I am also convinced that many compilers of Jewish catechisms, that many enlightened rabbis, flatter themselves with the hope that the time is not far off when Christendom will go to school to them — just as I once heard a rabbi say with great satisfaction: "Pure Mosaism (the teaching of Moses) is destined to become the world religion (the religion of all mankind)." And it is plain to see that the Friends of Light of today are working vigorously toward making that rabbi's pronouncement true, and him ever more satisfied. With the purified children of Moses they know and feel themselves to be one. Many of them themselves confess without concealment that between an enlightened Jew and an enlightened Christian there is no longer any difference in religion; and that a rabbi of the newer cut and a Friends-of-Light pastor preach out of one spirit and often with one mouth, and could very well exchange pulpits — of which one may have experience in N. and N. Indeed, quite a few rabbis no longer hesitate to weave individual beautiful sayings of Jesus concerning divine providence, and his moral sayings, into their addresses, only that out of consideration for the Jews of the old faith they do not pronounce the author's name. Yet this name is also, after the text has been read, only rarely or no longer pronounced by many Friends-of-Light preachers — in which, however, they doubtless do better than those among them who still take it often into their mouths, indeed even with the addition "the Savior," for it is clear from everything we have said that the former is at the least a forced affectation, the latter a grave hypocrisy.

*) How utterly un-Old-Jewish the manner of speaking has become in such newer Jewish catechisms about propositions that would otherwise have called forth the crassest notions — of this, the following passage from Herxheimer's textbook, which has just come into my hands, is proof:

The Kingdom of the Messiah.

"The time when the true veneration of the one God will be so widespread on earth that all peoples will unanimously glorify the All-Father, love one another as brothers, and through brotherly love, fear of God, and virtue be happy — that is called the time of the Moschiach, or the kingdom of the Messiah."

This far, then, have the Friends of Light brought it, up to now — to a refined Judaism!! That is their great progress, which is trumpeted into the world by a thousand trombones. But — their watchword is, after all: "Forward! Ever forward!" — and so we must assume that they will not remain standing at this point, and that the rabbi mentioned above will yet find his sweet hope disappointed. And because their progress, as we have heard and seen, takes place only in the field of denial, of negation, they will probably before long arrive at the realization that eternity too, and judgment, and the holy law of God, and finally dear God himself, can no longer be maintained and must be carried out of the temple — as indeed already once happened in France, at the time of the second-to-last revolution, when not only the king but also the great God was deposed, and in his place Reason — namely, an unchaste woman as the image of Reason — was set upon the altar of the principal church of Paris and venerated with hymns of praise and incense-burning. Many of our German Friends of Light, too, are probably already a good way beyond pure Judaism; a judgment unto damnation, a hell in the other world, most of them, if asked upon their conscience, will not admit. I wish to make one further remark here, namely for the Friends of Light — some of whom may perhaps happen to see this little pamphlet — for the better-meaning among them, who in their delusion really expect salvation for mankind to come from Köthen — a remark for them to take to heart: the common man does not easily maintain himself in a certain middle position or suspension between belief in the Bible and complete unbelief; with him it tends to be a matter of: "Either — or."