# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1850 01 08_S79
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

sermon. I promised to do so, although I had only prepared myself for a short address which I intended to deliver on the evening of the festival. I was greatly astonished when I saw the church. For the still young and small congregation I had pictured to myself a little church, but I found it very spacious, and my attention was drawn especially by the beautiful, tall, and broad windows, and even more by the well-dressed pulpit, charmingly adorned with wreaths, and by the altar. Very many people were present. The singing at the service was splendid, pure, and clear-toned. After the main sermon the glorious hymn "Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme" [Awake, the voice calls to us], etc., was sung according to Layritz.

Pastor Schieferdecker preached the main sermon. He preached on Exodus 20:24, "On the Blessing of the House of God," namely: 1. wherein this blessing consists, and then 2. on what it depends. In this he brought out especially that the blessing of the house of God is a blessing that can only be found where God has established the remembrance of his name. Since, now, the remembrance of his name is in the house of God, in that his word, his works, and his wonders are preached there, so also his particular blessing is to be found only there, and nowhere else. He also pointed out that it might be regarded as a joyful sign that the first church in Centreville is a church of the pure Lutheran confession, expressing the hope that God indeed intends to build his Lutheran Zion there, to set the word of his truth upon a lampstand, and to make that house a house of blessing extending to children and children's children. I preached the afternoon sermon on Psalm 84:2–3, in which I sought to portray the glory of the house of God. This glorious day was concluded with many songs (in several parts), fitting for the solemnity of the festival, sung by the choir in a tone of Christian cheerfulness. On the following day Pastor Johannes still arrived among us, who, at the request of Pastor Schieferdecker and his congregation, undertook to preach an afternoon sermon for the after-celebration. He preached it on the Gospel of Matthew 22, from the previous day, which was very fitting for a church dedication, and in it presented the invitation to the royal wedding, especially for the servants of God, in a truly comforting and refreshing way.

May God, then, let his pure word forever resound in this newly dedicated little church, and grant that through it many children may be born to him who remain with the right doctrine of our Lutheran Church and serve the Lord their God according to his will.

Test of Faith.

I once had, Luther relates, a table companion at Wittenberg named Matthias de Vay, a Hungarian, who also lived in my house at Wittenberg. This man, after he returned home to Hungary and became a preacher there, fell into disagreement with a papist preacher. Now when the papist accused him before the monk George, brother of the Voivode and at that time governor and regent at Ofen, and in the hearing each had harshly condemned the other, and the monk could not bring the parties to agreement, since each wanted to be in the right, Monk George said: "Wait, I will soon find out which side is right or not"; and he proceeds to set two barrels of gunpowder in the marketplace at Ofen and says: "Whoever wishes to defend his doctrine as being right and the true word of God, let him sit upon one of the barrels; then I will set fire beneath it, and whoever remains alive when the fire reaches the powder, so that he is not burned, his doctrine is right." Then Matthias de Vay quickly jumps up onto one of the barrels and sits down on it, but the papist, together with his assistant, would not get onto the other barrel. Then Monk George said: "Now I see that the faith and doctrine of Vay is right, and that your religion, that of the papists, is false"; he fined the papist priest and his assistant 4,000 Hungarian gulden and made them, for a time, pay and support 200 soldiers, but he allowed Matthias de Vay to preach the gospel publicly. (Luther's Works, Halle edition, vol. XXII, 72–73.) — Guericke writes in his Church History that this Matthias "Devay" is called the "Hungarian Luther," that he worked in Hungary from 1531, and that he finally died in 1549.

A Preacher without Hearers.

In the latest number of the Apologete we read the following story — one we might almost call comical, were it not that it also contains a most sinful abuse of the word of God:

"Recently we read of a Methodist preacher who preached without having a single hearer, and yet it had a good result. His appointment was on a Saturday afternoon in a schoolhouse; not a soul came into the building, only a few children were playing nearby. The preacher, however, was not to be discouraged; he sang, prayed, and preached, while the children now and then stuck their heads in through the open door." (What, dear reader, might these children have thought of the man?) "When he was finished, he told them he would preach there again in fourteen days. And when he came the second time, the schoolhouse was full." This does not surprise us; who would not be eager to see so remarkable a person! — To this story Dr. Nast gives the heading: "How a Preacher Can Get Hearers." Excellent advice! This probably belongs among the very latest methods.

"The Friedensbote" [Messenger of Peace].

Under this title the first number of a religious periodical has recently appeared in our city, which is henceforth to come out monthly as the organ of the "German Evangelicals," that is, of the united or mixed "congregations of North America." The paper is published by the "Evangelical Church Association of the West." According to the prospectus placed at its head, it is intended "to serve the purpose of edification. On this basis," it further states, "the Friedensbote can and will never enter into strife with other German papers, and just as it will never make attacks, so too it will never repel them, should they be directed against it, otherwise than with silence."

Now, if one could see from the paper itself that the gentlemen editors meant these declarations honestly, then certainly no one would have anything to object to, and it would indeed be cruel not to let so harmless a Friedensbote go quietly on its way. Unfortunately, however, the very first number that this so-called "Friedensbote" brings us already shows that it is not a stickler for the letter, and that its own words, therefore, must not be understood as they read. For this very first number is — who would have expected it? — in the shape of a Friedensbote-pouch nothing other than a quiver full of embittered and poisoned arrows, which, as everyone can see at once, are aimed above all at us poor Lutherans, and are, moreover, shot at us not from an open line of battle, but secretly, as from a peaceful thicket. For when, in it, sidelong blows are dealt at every opportunity against those members of Christendom who bear their name from a man, and these are presented as proud enemies of Christ who "would rather bear party-names taken from men than the name of Jesus," then this can hardly be meant of the Israelites, the Muhammadans, the Campbellites, and others, but is in any case meant of us poor Lutherans. For what, then, are we now to take the declarations of the "Friedensbote" — that it will never make attacks and never answer attacks — to be worth? We confess honestly that we regard the first declaration as dishonest, and the other as cowardly. One may find this judgment harsh; but a genuine German Lutheran cannot be a hypocrite, and holds to the good old German proverb: honesty lasts longest. If the "Friedensbote" wished to justify the name "Evangelical," it was surely not necessary that, already on its first outing, it should abandon the character it outwardly displayed, sound the trumpet of war, and glorify its own name at the expense of others. That the name Evangelical is an excellent name is an undisputed matter; least of all is this disputed by the Lutherans, who have laid claim to this name from the beginning