LCMS Convention Proceedings St. Louis, Missouri — 1973, Page 73

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RIT ANAT Soe

THE CONVENTION ESSAY 75

their friends and relatives on the Amalia. But the ship
did not come. Otto Herman Walther, the poet-laureate
of the group, penned the famous poem, named after the
ship. The poem consists of fervent pleas to the Savior
to rescue the souls on board. Allow merely a sample:

Lord Jesus, Lord Jesus, the ship has not come,

The ship named Amalia is missing!

When wilt Thou, O Pilot, convey her back home

From the storms that are howling and hissing?

Have we, Lord, been favored Thy mercies to share?

Was their ship too small for Thy kindness and care?

Lord Jesus, come, still all our yearning,
And hasten Amalia’s returning!

The poem then gives the reply of Jesus:

I granted her prayer

For kindness and care.

She was not too small

For tempest and squall.

My love went with her a-sailing.

My power and presence prevailing.
My sheep, neither hopeless nor craven,
Were led to a beautiful haven.

[Amalia was translated by W. M. Czamanske and
appeared in Theo. Graebner, Lutheran Pioneers I:
Our Pilgrim Fathers (St. Louis, CPH, 1919) p. 13]

Ever, only, all for Thee.

In spirit we reflect momentarily on the courageous
spiritual antecedents whose arrival in New Orleans as
pilgrims and strangers was directly responsible for our
returning to this convention. Their trials and hardships
in Perry County, Mo., still lay before them.

Some 14 years after Walther arrived as an immigrant
in New Orleans, he returned in order to install a young
seminary graduate, Georg Volck, as the first pastor of
the Missouri Synod in this city. Someone quipped that
Walther came back a second time because he had missed
the Mardi Gras on his first stop.

News had reached St. Louis that St. John’s Lutheran
Church was seeking a confessional Lutheran pastor.
The President of the Synod, F. C. D. Wyneken, commis-
sioned Candidate Georg Volck to explore the field.
Overjoyed at the reception he received and convinced
that the Synod ought to send a permanent worker,
Volck returned to’ St. Louis to render his report (Der
Lutheraner, IX [5 July 1853], 158) and immediately
President Wyneken instructed Walther to accompany
Volck to New Orleans and arrange for his ordination
and installation. The two, with a suitcase full of new
hymnals, a gift to the congregation, arrived on May 19.
Three days later, on the Feast of the Holy Trinity, Can-
didate Volck was installed as St. John’s pastor.

Missouri had returned to New Orleans! But the joy
and enthusiasm surrounding the 22-year-old pastor’s
ministry was short-lived. Only a little more than three
months later, yellow fever snuffed out his life. Today
the remains of this pioneer lie in the Hope Mausoleum
in this city, awaiting the resurrection trumpet from the
same Lord who will call us also.

But this gives us cause to reflect. The fact that we
today, as a large Synod, can conduct our convention
here has been due to the Lord’s overwhelming blessings
on the work of the hands of those who preceded us. Far
too often we think of the Missouri Synod as an imper-
sonal “they.” We see only an organization, and forget

the individual people, the lay men and women, the pas-
tors and teachers who were at work bringing the
Good News of God's love to people. Like St. Paul the
missionaries and workers in the Synod, filled with his
zeal and dedication, preached the Gospel, facing isola-
tion, persecution, and even death. (2 Cor. 11: 23-33)

As we focus on the Synod’s planting here we note
the frightful years which came as the result of the yel-
low fever scourge taking the lives of thousands upon
thousands of the inhabitants of this city and surrounding
territories. For almost 25 years it raged intermittently.
Our Synod, too, witnessed a series of deaths among its
youthful workers, and we do well to remember them
as we are gathered for this 50th convention.

1. Georg Volck — after three months of service, age
22, died on 5 September 1853;

2. The wife of Pastor C. C. Metz, Volck’s successor,
died after two months of work in New Orleans, on
24 October 1854;

3. William August Fick, brother of Mrs. Metz —
after a nine-month ministry, age 30, died on 15
August 1855;

4. Friedrich Wilhelm Hermann Hattstaedt of Shreve-
port—after eleven months of service, age 24,
died on 17 September 1873. Only a week before
his own death, Hattstaedt had written to a friend:

For almost two weeks now the yellow fever epi-
demic is mowing down many people. Excitement is
running high. The inhabitants of Shreveport are
fleeing in all directions, two thousand in a few
days. God be praised, I have been spared until
now and have had only a few cases of illness in
my congregation. So far, I have buried only one
person. Don’t worry about me; I am here, as well
as elsewhere, in God’s hand. . . [Der Lutheraner,
XXIX (1 December 1873), 226 f.]
5. Christoph Adolph Eirich of Algiers —with less
than 2 years of work, at age 24, on 4 September

1878;

6. Gustav Adolph Julius Baumann, of St. John’s,
New Orleans, after one and a half years of work,
died at age 37 on 17 September 1878;

1. Mrs. Gustav Adolph Baumann, wife of the above,
who died one week earlier than her husband, on
10 September 1878;

8. Gustav Ernst Friedrich, the third pastor of Zion,
New Orleans, to die of yellow fever, after 5 months
of work, age 25, on 23 October 1879.

Ever, only, all for Thee.

Read the records, the letters and reports issued by
these men! See how together with the members of
their congregations they ministered and served with
untiring effort during the epidemics. They went from
bedside to bedside, from pest house to pest house, from
coffin to coffin, and finally from grave to grave. The
church was planted through them and we stand as
their heirs today.

With such a “cloud of witnesses” hovering about this
convention we see they were personally and sacrificially
involved in Christ’s ministry. Would to God that we,