# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1845 03 22_S57
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Der Lutheraner.

"God's Word and Luther's teaching shall pass away neither now nor ever."

Edited by C. F. W. Walther.

Volume 1.

St. Louis, Mo., March 22, 1845.

No. 15.

[illegible — decorative rule]

Terms: Der Lutheraner appears once every two weeks, at a subscription price of one dollar and twenty-five cents for out-of-town subscribers, who must pay half of this in advance and bear the postage themselves. — In St. Louis each single issue is sold for six and a quarter cents.

The First Passover Celebrated by the Holy Child Jesus at Jerusalem.

To keep the Passover feast in Zion's city, thousands stream in from near and far; the royal singer's psalms resound everywhere, proclaiming Zion's praise before all; all Canaan seems transformed into the halls of one single great temple; and where the roads open the way toward the holy city, the festival song of the caravans rings out:

"By the waters of Babylon they sat and wept — the fathers — when they remembered you, O Zion; when, homeless, surrounded by their enemies, their harps hung silent, mourning day and night; when they thought themselves forsaken by the God of Jacob, who in love remembered even the outcast; when they were made to sing the song of Zion, and their tears fell rolling onto the strings.

And yet, in that foreign land, they cried out: Jerusalem! if I do not remember you — bound to you as I am by the bonds of love, my star of hope and bright light of joy — until, on the golden rim of a distant future, the glory of the LORD breaks forth from your walls: then let no spring give me refreshment, and let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth."
Psalm 137:1–6.

So they sing — and, ah, they never suspect that He himself already stands in their procession: a holy child with no earthly splendor, yet radiant with the majesty of God — the Eternal One, who, hidden, walks amid the ruins of his fallen people of God, going up from Nazareth, in the midst of his parents, to the feast, after the custom of devout children.

Do you see him there in the bright, teeming festival crowd, standing like a lily among thorns, with a clear eye, pure as the spring sky, often gazing upward there toward his Father, so that he may walk, undefiled by the noisy tumult, humbly at his mother's hand? Do you hear him now asking his foster-father whether the towers of his Zion rise up yonder? —

There they gleam in the golden evening light! Many thousands stream in through their gates, and all rejoice aloud to be counted among the congregation of the house of Israel; they all rejoice, and He alone walks, lost in thought, into the loud streets; he thinks with wistful sorrow of the beautiful times when David sang upon his holy strings.

(O holy Child! forgive that sinners presume to guess, ah, what your heart then felt —) Surely his eyes filled with tears when this city stood before his gaze, and a homesick, anxious longing seized him for the city of Salem in the eternal fatherland; for the first time, just as for the last, he greets it weeping in this earthly vale.

He is not captivated by the splendid palaces, gleaming, adorned with gold and silver; he is not captivated by the structure of the royal citadel, though it once graced David's throne; one thing — one thing alone — was to him the most glorious, the best, the thing that wonderfully delighted his childlike heart: Jehovah's house alone was worthy, above all else, to please the holy Christ child.

Here he lingers, to his Father's praise, from the red of dawn until the light of the stars; here he refreshes himself on the sweet food of heaven, and joy shines upon his countenance, for he listens with attentive diligence to what the teachers' mouths declare of the Word of God; full of childlike humility, he asks the elders to unfold clearly to him the meaning of the Word.

And they marvel at the lofty questions that this wondrous boy puts to them, who tirelessly, in these days, joins their circle again and again; often, at a loss, they do not know how to say what illumines the deep meaning of his questions; they do not suspect that this wise boy has his high wisdom from the Father himself.

Thus, surrounded on every side by admirers, the holy boy stands there full of humility, and young and old with one voice raise the praise of this rare child far and near, because no one, in all this earthly life, had ever seen such a child of such wisdom: then Mary comes with hurried step, and Joseph, anxious, into the midst of the temple.

Astonishment filled their anxious hearts when they saw the Son again in the temple; Mary says: We sought you in sorrow, my son, why have you done this to us? Yet, as though transfigured by the bright candles of heaven, he shows the reason for the long separation: Why do you seek me? did I not have to hasten here, to dwell in what belongs to my Father?

Over the assembly rests a holy silence, as he — since it was his parents' will, though they do not understand his words — hastens away from there, so as to fulfill every commandment, to go to Nazareth. There he lives quietly, renouncing the right to rule; he humbles himself — and — dies — for worthless servants!

Here my song falls silent; my knees sink down in worship before his throne. Have mercy on me, holy Child, and see how far I am from your likeness! Have mercy on me, Son of God, and draw my mind up out of the dust to you, that I may see you there, where the airs of heaven blow, as my Lord, face to face!

Otto Hermann Walther,
formerly pastor of the German Evangelical Lutheran congregation of the Unaltered Augsburg Confession in this place, died in the Lord on January 21, 1841.

(Submitted by G. H. Löber.)

The False Teacher Arius and His End.
(Continued.)

2. The False Teaching of Arius and the Struggle against It.

In the previous section — God grant it, for the warning of us all — we examined the ecclesiastical ground in which the ruinous Arian heresy was able to take root and spread as far as it did. Now we wish to look at the poisonous plant itself, which, through Satan's cunning and malice, has caused such great harm in the Church.

The blessed Luther says very fittingly, in his instructive writing on the first three Christian creeds: "I have learned and observed, in all the histories of Christendom, that all those who have rightly held and maintained the chief article concerning Jesus Christ have remained sound and secure in the Christian faith; and even where they have otherwise erred or sinned, they have nevertheless been preserved in the end; for whoever stands rightly and firmly on this, that Jesus Christ is true God and man, who died and rose again for us, to him all the other articles fall into place and stand firm beside him."*) — "Again, I have..."

*) Note. This remark is very important for the right assessment of many earlier and later Christian teachers who, while faithfully holding fast to the article concerning Christ, nevertheless [here the source text inserts a displaced line, apparently strayed here from the poem above: "And angels hover down to see him,"] in the presentation of this article, and otherwise indeed in one point or another, departed from the pattern of sound words... [footnote continues on the next page]