# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1848 08 02_S208
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

his burden of sin and given him the spirit of sonship. This is the new seed of life in man — faith: I am reconciled, all my guilt is forgiven me, God is again my Father with the whole of a father's love, I need fear neither death, nor judgment, nor damnation, the right of inheritance to eternal life has been given to me — in Christ Jesus, my Lord. Then thankfulness breaks forth from the blessed heart; then it drives one, with holy power, to love God again and to praise him with heart and mouth and life, who has shown us such great grace in his Son (compare Luke 7:47). — But if the Mediator is taken away, then the gulf remains between God and us, torn open by our transgression (Isa. 59:2); the heart, in its depths, is shy of God and seeks to forget him; if the atonement is gone, then the true love of God is gone, then true life is gone. You can, from this or that motive, as conceded above, display an outward uprightness and decency and do good works before men; but this does not proceed from the right, holy foundation, and therefore it is also not good and well-pleasing, and cannot count before God. Moreover, it is understandable, indeed very natural, that the works of the old Adam should all the more frequently come forth from the unrenewed heart, when a person simply is as he is; and indeed undeniable experience teaches that, with the loss of faith in revelation, a general deterioration of morals goes hand in hand. Let one look with a testing eye into a congregation, to see on which side chiefly the drunkards, brawlers, fornicators, adulterers, liars, cheats, the despisers and blasphemers of authority, etc., are to be found. Usually it is those who have suffered shipwreck of their faith, who do business with the Jew on Sunday morning instead of going to the sermon, and in the afternoon mock Scripture in the tavern. Special attention here is deserved by the testimony of the men who occupy themselves with the spiritual care of the morally most corrupted — the convicts. The prison chaplains report unanimously "that nowhere does so-called enlightenment, or rational belief, prevail more than in the prisons." In the excellent Görlitz monthly paper "The Prodigal Son," published by such chaplains, we read, among others, the following passage: "The writer of this, as a prison chaplain, has ministered pastorally to about 800 prisoners, and in doing so has naturally also come to know their beliefs, and behold, they were, with few exceptions — those who had never at all reflected on these matters — Friends of Light; and other prison chaplains have made the very same experience. It is truly remarkable how the worst criminals speak exactly the same language as the Friends of Light, etc." Now it emerges plainly enough from other passages of this paper that we are to understand here such Friends of Light as have already progressed particularly far forward in their belief, who hold in particular "that with death it is all over for man," and find in this "the comfort that makes them feel so thoroughly secure in their sins and misdeeds." But I ask everyone: does one not have every reason to be distrustful of a belief which, in its natural development, flourishes most of all in the prison — if I am not to say, populates the prison?

My brothers! hear finally: as Friends of Light you have no Christian hope. And what is this transient existence, so full of toil and sorrow, without the hope of a new, imperishable existence in the joy of the Lord and in the heavenly rest of the people of God? But do you believe that any Friend of Light has ever yet fallen asleep with a sure prospect of that? I would wish it for everyone, but I believe it of none. Only he who says from the heart, "Christ is my life!" can also say from the heart, "To die is gain!"; only he who has kept Paul's faith will, at the end of the race, be assured with him that henceforth the crown of righteousness is laid up for him. Observe, if you have occasion, the deniers of evangelical truth on their deathbed, whether Christian courage is shown there, Christian joyfulness, the profound longing to depart and be at home with the Lord, the eager desire for the trees of life of paradise already beckoning from beyond. You will perceive in them a dull expectation of what is to come, which is usually further dampened by eager preoccupation with earthly affairs — for the self-made hope of a "better life with ever-increasing perfection" cannot lift the wings of the soul to a joyful flight into the eternal world. Or you will perceive in them a cold renunciation of all life; for indeed many of them already, and not only among convicts, doubt personal continuance after death, and the opinion gains ever more ground among them that man dies off like the beast of the field, that he dissolves, body and soul, back into mother nature. Or else the slumbering conscience still awakens on this side, the majestic judgment seat of eternity presents itself before the soul, and it grows afraid, and trembles in its depths, and would now gladly still have a reconciler. The Friends of Light do not entirely deny this experience, but they explain that it is only the death-struggle and pain which makes individual enlightened persons weak in their final moments. But why are they not encouraged and strengthened by the Friends-of-Light grounds of comfort? Answer: because these, in the hour of death's distress, are altogether miserable comforters. Indeed, in that hot wrestling with "mighty" death, even a believer will at times grow weak; but how differently can such a one be comforted! What power of overcoming a single such word pours into the soul, when one calls out to him: your Redeemer says: "Fear not, I am with you, do not be dismayed, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will also help you, I will uphold you with the right hand of my righteousness" — or the saying of the Lord: "I am the resurrection and the life; whoever believes in me will live, even though he dies, and whoever lives and believes in me will never die!" And one thing yet remains for the Friends of Light to explain more closely: if it is beyond dispute that many, in the weakness of dying, have already fallen from their fortress of reason and have sought to crawl back over onto the ground of Bible-faith — how does it come about that not a single one, in that same weakness of dying, has ever left his evangelical fortress and looked about for Friends-of-Light consolations? The highly renowned chief court preacher Reinhard, in Dresden, once preached a penetrating sermon "On the remarkable phenomenon, that in death no one has yet repented of his pious faith, but many have repented of the lack of it" — should not this remarkable phenomenon indeed be a serious, a very serious, pointer? — — Dear friends! "It is appointed unto man once to die, but after this, the judgment." Now, this judgment we may fairly leave to God the Lord. But be fully assured of this: a Stephen's end you, as Friends of Light, have not to expect — the end of a Stephen, who, still on this side, saw heaven opened and the glory of God, and the Son of Man, his helper, standing at the right hand of God; — nor Luther's end, whose departing soul embraced God's glorious words of comfort (John 3:16; Ps. 31:6; Ps. 68:21) and thus knew itself sheltered amid the roaring of death, who prayed: "Though I am now torn away from this life, yet I know for certain that I shall remain with you, my heavenly Father, forever, and that no one can tear me out of your hands"; — nor Gellert's end, who on his deathbed said to a friend: "This is surely and certainly true, and a dear, precious word, that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners! This, dear friend, is my confession on my deathbed," and continued with visible joy: "Mercy has been shown to me! This too is my confession of faith, on which I now live and die" — who at the last asked his friends how much longer his struggle might last, and when they answered, "Perhaps still one hour!" lifted his hands to heaven with a transfigured countenance and cried: "Praise God, only one more hour!" and then waited in quiet prayer, until his friend came from heaven to take him up to himself.

My dear brothers! Look back on what I have said. Do you wish to become Friends of Light? Hear it once more in a single word — though one that indeed weighs upon the soul like a hundredweight: as Friends of Light you no longer have a Christ, who has been made for us by God unto wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and redemption.