# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1850 01 08_S146
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Der Lutheraner.

"God's Word and Luther's teaching shall not pass away, now or evermore."

Published by the German Evangelical Lutheran Synod of Missouri, Ohio, and Other States.

Edited by C. F. W. Walther.

Volume 6.

St. Louis, Mo., May 14, 1850.

No. 10.

Terms: This paper appears once every two weeks, at an annual subscription price of one dollar for out-of-town subscribers, who must pay it in advance and bear the postage. In St. Louis, each individual number is sold for 5 cents. Only those letters containing communications for the paper are to be sent to the editor; all others, however, containing business matters, orders, cancellations, money, etc., are to be sent here under the address: Mr. F. W. Barthel, care of C. F. W. Walther, St. Louis, Mo.

(Submitted by P. Gruber.)
In Honored Memory
of the blessed
Gotthold Heinrich Löber,
faithfully devoted pastor of the Evangelical Lutheran congregation
at Altenburg, Perry Co., Mo.,
who died on August 19, 1849.

Nine months now the bones of this faithful servant of Christ have rested on the quiet, solitary, forest-crowned height of the churchyard at Altenburg, in the dark bosom of mother earth, beside the bones of his sister who went before him, and in the midst of the graves of his congregation's members who fell asleep before and after him; but his memory lives on among his own, here and in the old fatherland; it lives on in his congregations there and here; it lives on in the whole Lutheran Church there and here. This memorial of honor is therefore set for him not so that his name might be snatched from oblivion, but because God's Word commands that teachers who have fallen asleep in true faith be remembered; because love, of that whereof the heart is full, must speak, as loudly and as far as it is able; because other brethren also, who did not know the blessed one as long or as well as we, might mourn with us over his early departure; because the younger brothers in office might have yet another encouraging example of faithful pastoral labor; and finally, because the generation of the church yet to come might know who and what kind of laborer the blessed Löber was, who, by God's wondrous way, helped to tend and build the Lutheran Church in this last age of the world here in this distant West. We will therefore first survey the divine guidance of his life's course from his birth to his blessed end, and then set before us the picture of his conduct as it appeared to us in his last years.

Our dear Löber was born at Cahla, a small town of the Duchy of Altenburg, on January 5, 1797. His father, whom he lost early, was superintendent there; his mother (who likewise fell asleep on August 19, in 1823), a née Stopffel from the same place. Of three sons he was the middle one. Two of his forefathers had been general superintendents of the Duchy of Altenburg, the latter of these, Friedemann Löber, also the last orthodox chief overseer of the Altenburg territorial church. The memory of these honorable forebears often encouraged the blessed one in the conduct of his office. But who must not admire the ways of God, who transplanted a branch of this old line of preachers in Upper Saxony into this distant West, and now lets it grow and flourish anew here in his bodily and spiritual children? Here indeed we see fulfilled before our eyes the promise: the generation of the righteous shall be blessed, Ps. 112. After his father's early death, the blessed one attended for a time the boys' school at Cahla, then the Gymnasium at Altenburg, where, supported by benevolent relatives, he remained five years. He often recalled the quiet Sunday observances in his parents' house, and often too the still fairly unadulterated catechism instruction in the boys' school at Cahla, and often also the faith, the prayer, and the tears of his mother, who lived in straitened widowhood. At the Gymnasium, it is true, the tender plant of faith was not cultivated through the religious instruction then given from Niemeyer's textbook, yet the enemy could not entirely trample it either. A glimmering spark of faith remained, shone forth in the diligence and modest conduct that won him the affection of all his teachers and fellow pupils, and blazed up brighter again when he entered the University of Jena at Easter 1816. There he soon turned away in his heart from the pernicious rationalistic exegesis and dogmatics of the then still highly celebrated old Gabler, and attached himself more closely to Professors Schott and Köthe, who at that time taught at Jena as the foremost bearers of the newly, though very sparsely, dawning evangelical light. In this first year at the university it also happened that the writer of this was, through God's gracious hand, given a friend in the blessed Löber, who for thirty-three years, until his end, proved himself a true friend through faithful support in all manner of bodily need, as well as through spiritual ministration in admonition and encouragement, comfort and warning. At a prize assignment given in the homiletical seminary he won the first prize with a well-executed sermon. After successfully passing his examination in 1819, in which he did not deny Christ, he became a candidate of the holy preaching office. After a short stay in his mother's house he was called by the two brothers, the Barons von Ziegesar of Hummelshain and Drakendorf, to be tutor to their children. These five years spent as a house tutor were very laborious years. The oversight of the children entrusted to him, the many lessons requiring much preparation, together with the strong impulse of his heart and conscience to prepare himself further for the preaching office at the same time, drove him almost to working through the nights. This, however, also laid the foundation of his whole later frailty and weakness of digestion, which more than once brought him to the brink of the grave. Even in these distinguished families he was not ashamed of the confession of the whole Word of God, and especially over the confession of the doctrine of Satan and his whole kingdom he had many a hard stand, yet was respected and honored for his unshakable steadfastness. In the year 1824 he followed the call of his elder brother, to whom, after their mother's death, the manor estate of Eichenberg near Cahla had fallen, into the pastoral office there, to which the congregation of Bibra was assigned as a filial congregation; he again confessed Christ in the examination before the Consistory and entered upon his office on the third Sunday in Advent with many holy resolutions and with much prayer and supplication. A year later he married the eldest daughter of Pastor Zahn of Wasserthalleben near Sondershausen, and found in her what he had sought: a devout, faithful, and sensible wife and helpmate.