# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1849 05 29_S157
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

...of the Preface, since the conclusion of that hymn also stands in no proper connection with the beginning of this one. —

The Exhortation to the Communicants, for which forms are found in all the older service books, later displaced the Preface — entirely contrary to the sense of the Lutheran Church — since this Exhortation's proper place had been assigned after the Sanctus.

The Consecration, or blessing of the bread and wine in the Lord's Supper, was carried out by the singing of the Lord's Prayer and the Words of Institution; and the former was, following the pattern of the whole ancient Church, ordinarily sung by the preacher without the so-called conclusion "For thine is the kingdom," etc., and the congregation answered only with the Amen. After the Consecration followed the Distribution, or the giving out of the Holy Sacrament, during which choir and congregation sang, besides the shorter Agnus, or "Christ, Thou Lamb of God," and "Isaiah the Prophet," in particular the two hymns translated by Dr. Luther, "Jesus Christ Our Savior" or "God Be Praised and Blessed," and at the close, though before the Collect, the greater "Agnus," or the hymn composed around the year 1525 by Nic. Decius, "O Innocent Lamb of God," whose three verses are, in content, entirely alike to one another, except that the close of the third reads: "Grant us Thy peace, O Jesus, O Jesus!"

(To be continued.)

(Submitted.)

Old Lutheran Wax Candles.

Are "wooden crosses, crucifixes, and candles on the altars" a mark of "so-called Lutheran churches," as Pastor Weyl asserts under date of October 20, 1848, in No. 22 of the "Lutherischer Kirchenbote"? Are such things "ceremonies belonging to the papal church alone," as this same pastor maintains?

Testimonies on this matter "coming from the Prussian Church" strike Pastor Weyl as "quite absurd." Let us therefore be permitted to cite the elder Valerius Herberger, of the former Greater Poland, on similar matters. He says, in his evangelical "Herz-Postille" on the Sunday and festival Gospels, in the edition of J. T. L. Tauscher, Sorau, 1840, p. 31, of a faithful preacher: "He must bear in mind that he is an angel and ambassador of God as often as he looks upon his white, paschal, evangelical surplice, and therefore must claim nothing for his own person in the things of God." The note beneath this states: "In earlier times the evangelical-Lutheran preachers in Silesia and Greater Poland wore, over their black clerical vestments, a white surplice called the alb, which is still (1840) in use in some places even now." — On p. 216 of the same "Herz-Postille," Valerius Herberger says of himself: "When I stand in the pulpit, I am, in all the world, like nothing so much as a sower; my white surplice is my proper sowing-cloth. My little seed-grains are the comforting words, the glorious wonders, and the beautiful mysteries of Jesus Christ. My bushel-basket, into which these grains are gathered, is the Holy Bible, which always lies at my right hand, from which I bring forth things old and new. Matt. 13:52."

Valerius Herberger, evangelical-Lutheran pastor at Fraustadt in the former Greater Poland, was born on April 21, 1562, Old Style, and baptized on April 23 of the same year. Among other things that he says about Holy Baptism — and which also contains much worth taking to heart for certain "Lutheran Christians in our free America" — he speaks, on page 110: "The little child's breast and forehead are marked with the form of the holy cross. In this we consider that the heart of every Christian must be the little grave of the cross of Jesus Christ." — The writer of this himself saw, still in the year 1836, in the "Kripplein Christi" at Fraustadt, where Valerius Herberger had formerly been preacher, a crucifix and burning wax candles upon the altar; he still heard the antiphonal singing (see page 291) between the clergyman — at that time Superintendent Gerlach — and the choir or congregation; he still heard, in that same year, the Words of Institution at the Holy Supper sung by one of the clergy. — But no instance is known to the writer of this that the wax candles customary there from ancient times, and the other ceremonies, had lighted the way to the Roman Church for even a single person. Even in Herberger's time, no one was lighted toward Rome by wax candles in the Lutheran Church. For he could say (page 813): "To this very hour not a single person has fallen away from the Gospel."

The cause why, precisely in "our free America," individual members of the "American Protestant Church" bow beneath the *) newly legalistic yoke of the Roman Church seems to him to lie rather in the lack of Christian upbringing, unfamiliarity with God's Word, and the lack of that faith which our fathers won through so many struggles and so many sacrifices, and sealed with their blood. No small share of the blame for this, moreover, in "our free America," is probably to be attributed rather to the spirit of faction and sect. Certainly this state of division drives many a soul — one who dwells more on the outward appearances of the so-called "Protestant churches," and who is impressed by the seemingly outward unity and power of the Roman Church — into that Church sooner than do "Old Lutheran wax candles."

C. A. S.

*) See The Evangelical and Roman Church Doctrine, According to Its Principles and Documents, by Dr. H. Richter. Barmen, 1844. P. 26.

"Be not deceived, God is not mocked."

Since cholera has now been raging here in our St. Louis for some considerable time, several congregations of our city had resolved to hold, on the 17th of May last — the day of the Ascension of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ — a common day of repentance and prayer, and to entreat the angered God for mercy and for a speedy and gracious turning-away of the great judgment that has come upon us. The editors of the German political newspapers of our city, who can never refrain from mocking, in their pages, every utterance of humbling oneself before the Almighty, did not shrink from publicly greeting, with the bitterest mockery, this intended church observance as well. The local "Deutsche Tribüne," which knows how to season its insipidity for the local Germans by nothing other than blasphemous jests, remarked scornfully, among other things, in its issue of May 17: "Tomorrow — a general day of rest and quiet, also a fire-day, but no holiday. Burn pitch and drive away the pitch that clings to us in the form of the cholera." — This was read with laughter that morning; laughed at by the narrow-minded people who hurried to church on that day to fall at the feet of the Lord of all lords. But what happened? Out of the blasphemous jest, God, who is not mocked, made terrible earnest. The Ascension Day which the Christians had celebrated was not yet over when the holiday was indeed turned into a fire-day — but not as the mockers had intended. A devastating conflagration broke out, in which, within a few hours, no fewer than 418 houses (not counting the rear buildings) in the most populous and wealthiest part of our city, and 23 boats in our harbor, were turned to ashes. The resulting loss of property amounts to more than five and a half million dollars; the loss of human life has not yet been fully determined. Would that our German countrymen might take warning from this, and not make blasphemers ever bolder in their blaspheming by applauding them, thereby drawing upon themselves the very judgment which blasphemers bring upon themselves!

Concerning a Submission Against Pastor Selle.

In No. 8 of the "Christlicher Hausfreund," a paper of the Union faith formerly published in Cincinnati, Pastor Selle of Chicago was harshly attacked. Pastor Selle accordingly defended himself against this in No. 10 of the "Lutheraner," fifth year. Thereupon the gentlemen who had made the first attack fabricated a new, most unmannerly sally, full of common abuse, without bringing forward any proof whatever for their case — only with the magnanimous promise that, should it be demanded, the proofs would yet be supplied. This fine product was sent to us, and the ridiculous demand was made of us that we make it common property for our readers by printing it in our "Lutheraner." We naturally refused to admit it