# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1845 03 08_S56
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

the heathen philosopher Libanius once asked a schoolmaster from Antioch mockingly: "Tell me, what is your carpenter's son up to these days?" (He meant the Savior.) The schoolmaster answered promptly: "He is making a coffin for Julian." — And what happened? Shortly afterward the emperor met a miserable death in a campaign against the Persians.

"The Evangelical Church in North America."
(Conclusion.)

The third reason which the Evangelicals of our West give for the manner of their church fellowship is this:

"That such a procedure has already been applied, with beneficial success, in a large part of our German fatherland."

Even if, accordingly, we readily believe that the members of the Association really founded their union with the good intention of thereby advancing the kingdom of God, we can nevertheless never approve their union on that account, for what is good is not what we do with a good intention, but what we do in accordance with the Word of God. It is written even of the enemies of the Gospel that they would think they were doing God a service by killing an apostle (John 16:2). Saul, too, doubtless thought he was doing quite right when he wanted rather to offer to the Lord as a sacrifice what he was supposed, by the Lord's word, to destroy utterly; but what did he have to hear about this from the prophet of the Lord? He said: "Hath the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams; for rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry. Because thou hast rejected the word of the Lord, he hath also rejected thee." (1 Samuel 15.) However much one may therefore always think that, by not insisting so strictly on pure doctrine, one might better promote the spread of the kingdom of Christ, one must nevertheless not go here by one's own good intention, but must, in defiance of one's own heart, hold obediently to the Lord's Word; that is better than any self-chosen sacrifice. Whoever concedes the least particle of the truth in order thereby to help the church along shows that he believes it is not God but men who must sustain the church, and this secret unbelief is certainly also the true and proper root of all false union-mongering. One loses heart at the power of the truth, and so human counsel and cleverness are supposed to do the work; one takes flesh for one's arm, and in doing so departs in one's heart from the Lord.

Even if we were further willing to grant that, as the Evangelicals claim, some good has really been brought about in our homeland through the union, we still cannot let ourselves be bribed and won over by that,

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for God's Word says plainly that we should not say: "Let us do evil, that good may come." Romans 3:8. The good end by no means sanctifies the sinful means, as the Jesuits teach. God is, to be sure, so gracious that he turns even evil to good, but that does not make the evil good. The sons of Jacob were not thereby justified in that the selling of their brother Joseph had to turn out, in the hand of the all-governing God, for the preservation of much people (Genesis 50:20). The violence done to Joseph nevertheless remained a shameful deed. So too the heretics remain grievous wolves (Acts 20:29), and unauthorized preachers remain reprehensible self-runners (Jeremiah 23:21), even though souls are sometimes converted through them too, because they nonetheless preach God's Word in part; so also the new Union remains an ungodly and calamitous work, even if some good should have come out of it.

We must confess, however, that probably no example could have been more unfortunately chosen than that of the union already established in Germany; for in what, then, is its "beneficial success" supposed to consist? We do not deny that within the last three decades God has finally awakened many sleepers in Germany out of their deathly slumber, and has there, against hope and expectation, wonderfully brought about a hopeful movement both in the Lutheran and in the Reformed Church; but this did not happen through the Union — rather, the Union came in at once as an unblessed means of poisoning the reviving love for divine truth, of stifling it in its first shoots, and of stunting its new, joyful blossoming. Or has the Union at least perhaps rekindled dead Christian love? We think not — unless it should be called Christian love that the Evangelical Church of Prussia has distrained the goods of the Lutherans who wished to remain faithful to their church, entangled them in costly lawsuits, imprisoned them, robbed them of their pastors, catechists, and churches, and driven them out of the land through every kind of pressure upon their conscience. Or have parties perhaps become fewer through the Evangelical Church? On the contrary, countless more; for the party of the Lutherans and of the Reformed not only continues to exist, but the new sect of the Evangelicals also splits, both in Germany and in America, into a whole host of varieties, which have only this in common: that they cherish and nurture indifference toward the purity of doctrine, and hatred toward all who seek to preserve it.

But we hasten toward the close. The last reason of the Evangelicals here is this:

"That such a union is not only in itself highly desirable, but has also, in fact, already taken place in many congregations here, and that it must therefore appear timely to also declare this union publicly."

If the Evangelicals mean to say by this that there are many congregations here in the West all of whose members already belong to the united church, then we must call this into doubt. For we find by experience that the usual way in which the Evangelicals here gradually turn congregations into united ones is this: for a longer time they let the Lutherans believe that their preachers are Lutheran, and the Reformed believe that they are Reformed; but once they are exposed to the light by orthodox Lutherans, or once they have themselves gradually brought it about that even those members of their congregation who had at first still clung with some conscientiousness to their mother church have become indifferent, then at last they lay aside the burdensome mask and reveal that they are actually neither Lutheran nor Reformed, but Evangelical. In this they act just as insincerely and ambiguously as the Methodists, who, in order to catch Lutherans, likewise often initially use as bait the pretense that they are actually the true Lutherans.

We do not deny, however, that a yielding Evangelical certainly finds his field here more readily than a faithful Lutheran does. The Germans here, especially in the backwoods, are mostly poor, so that when they want to have a preacher, they are strongly tempted, for the sake of the necessary help they need, to enter into such a false union. To this is added the unbelievable sluggishness, lukewarmness, and ignorance of right doctrine which we must lament among our dear countrymen as the fruits of the rationalist preachers in Germany. A faithfully Lutheran preacher is therefore here in a most precarious position; the obstacles he must contend with if he wants to gather and maintain a little congregation are unspeakable. Scarcely has he entered upon his office when, because of his confession of the truth, he is spread about and suspected as a person addicted to condemning others or as a stubborn crank. No one sees his tears or hears his sighs over the distress of straying souls, except the Lord; and precisely his greatest faithfulness and conscientiousness are therefore interpreted as carnal obstinacy. His whole bearing is an offense; he must appear repellent everywhere; he must set himself against the spirit of the age; he can never, in the eyes of the crowd, act "in keeping with the times," as the Evangelicals boast of doing, and he would therefore have every reason to lose heart, were it not for the comfort that the Lord, who requires nothing of a steward except that he be found faithful, knows his heart.

We close with the heartfelt wish: may the Savior, who governs hearts, bless this critique of ours — composed out of love for the truth — of the statutes of the Evangelical Association in the West, so that the members of this Association will not simply dismiss our humble appeal, but receive it with gentleness, and will therefore once more examine their work before God according to the holy standard of his sole true Word, give God the glory, and let fall whatever does not stand the test. May many another reader also be stirred up by it not to grow weary, if he must now swim against the stream, but to hold fast to the Word, which is sure and able to teach (Titus 1:9); for God says: "If thou wilt hold to me, then I will hold to thee, and thou shalt remain my preacher. And where thou teachest the righteous to separate themselves from evil people, thou shalt be my teacher. And before thou shouldst fall away to them, they must rather fall away to thee." (Jeremiah 15:19.)

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