# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_October 1859_S320
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

320 Church and Contemporary History.

...decisive struggle. For with the dark powers that now threaten us with destruction, we ourselves have long dallied and flirted, one way or another. We came close to letting ourselves be made foreign once again. By this I do not mean the kind of German striving for culture that does not disdain to learn from other peoples, and that, instead of stagnating in the conceit of self-sufficiency, is also willing to take up and make its own whatever is praiseworthy and good in other nations. For that is the German way, and we may well keep to it. But herein lies at the same time a temptation close at hand: to turn genuine German character into that apish bad habit by which we take in the good and the bad alike without examination, indeed hang even foreign shame upon ourselves as if it were a German jewel of honor. We do not rest until what is natural to our own being has been wrenched into a foreign pattern, until the inheritance historically given to us has been thrown into the lumber-room, and the empty house hung with all the rags in which the fashion-mongers of foreign lands drag to us the cast-off of the latest modes from their markets, and haggle away to us, as a favor, at a cheap price — that is, at the cost of surrendering what is peculiarly best in us. That is what is called: marcher à la tête de la civilisation — for this ragman's trade there is no German word."

"But let us look at the matter more closely, without going back beyond the nearest past. When, over there across the Rhine, that revolution broke out which raised the 'upstart' upon its shoulders as its very own child, German fidelity and the German sense of justice likewise went to the grave and fell asleep in many lands of German stock, and we ourselves took part in a revolution that turned out badly for us. And when the emperor of the revolution made the revolutionary principle his motto, but wrapped the caustic stone in a wrapper bearing the device of peace, and above all took care that the consuming poison should do no harm to his own — the emperor's — power and might, then among us men in power bowed like men in need of protection, and the guardians of order like seekers of order, in order 'to eat of the crumbs that fell from Napoleon's table.' They ate 'death in the pots' and did not notice it. Now they may notice it. The comedy of the 'cry of pain of the oppressed nationalities,' which the revolution now plays, was once played along with in Germany itself, and Germans, to Germany's shame, forged out of that very outcry a weapon against the right and the power of a brother stock of the German nation. As if, in the whole of world history, a nation had ever forfeited its independence merely through the injustice and violence of others, and not rather in consequence of dispensations in which the Lord of world history visited upon such nations their sins and their guilt, and laid bare their incapacity for self-government and self-preservation. — When the goods and property of thousands collapse, in part through the well-calculated blows of that power which fostered, nursed, and exploited the intoxication and delusion of the service of Mammon for its own ends, then we ought first to ask ourselves whether all this would have been possible to such a degree had we not ourselves run after that decoy-whistle, and had we not made a cult out of the cultivation of 'material interests,' in which we thought little more of those true foundations on which the lasting power and honor of peoples rest. — When Latin presumption, frivolity, and forgetfulness of God, instead of dreading the power of resistance of our people, speculate instead on a kindred wantonness and perversity of mind, whom do we have to thank for it? Do we not have to thank those in our own midst who, for a long time now, in word and writing, have disgraced the honor of the German tongue by making it the herald of un-German license, manners, and godlessness? And if the sword of the enemy should become master over us, for a longer or shorter time, would that be simply and solely a story of suffering, or also one of our own guilt? Truly, not only would a misfortune break in upon us from outside, but the cancerous sore of un-German sentiment would break out at the same time — that sentiment in which we are ashamed of what once made us great, mock in conceited pomposity the simplicity of our fathers, squander inherited sacred possessions for the counting- and gaming-pennies of hollow notions of the future, and, out of selfishness and quarrelsomeness, drive the members and tribes of our national body against one another, following the promptings of a wretchedly petty politics of the day and of faction, like envious yelping dogs, instead of holding together in faithfulness and self-denial, so that each member, according to its gift and station, may help fulfill the calling of the great whole. If God wills to heal us of such a malady, how can he heal us except by striking us with rods which, as we must recognize, we have for the most part bound for ourselves? A minister must have understood, felt, and recognized this before he rightly presumes to raise his voice to strengthen the German people in a hard time. Paint no false halo of sanctity and glory around our people's head, if you seriously wish that it be sanctified and glorified. Preach that the hope of victory truly rests not on the righteousness of our people, but solely on the great mercy of the Lord."