The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1879, Page 23

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The Lutheran Pioneer.

23

matters, of which we only mention our mission
among the colored people of the South, this
surely being the most interesting to our readers.
The Rev. F. Berg, our missionary at Little Rock,
was present. The report of our Mission Board
was very encouraging. Conference could not
but give thanks to God for His great blessing
resting upon our mission work. It was resolved
to call another teacher for our mission-school at
Little Rock, Ark., to enlarge the school-build-
ing, and to encourage the Rev. F. Berg and his
assistants to prepare gifted colored boys for our
Colleges and Seminaries. It was also resolved
to sent a missionary to New Orleans, Louisiana,
to open a mission at Mobile, Alabama, and, if
possible, at Sherman, Texas. We were very
glad to see that the Synodical Conference in-
tends to carry on its mission work with all
energy, and to do all it can to send the pure
Gospel of Christ to our dear colored people in
the South. May our merciful God bless our
mission work, may He bless the Synodical Con-
ference and all its resolutions, may He bless the
dear Lutheran people of Columbus for their
kind hospitality shown to the members of Con-
ference during its sessions.

relics. On the day of St. Paul and Peter, for
instance, the priests set up two heads, which
were said to be the real heads of these apostles,
and the common people believed it; but the
pope and the cardinals, and the priests knew
right well that they were two wooden heads
carved and painted. They afterwards laughed
at the ignorance of the people. At the same
time the pope, the cardinals, the priests, and
others led the most wicked lives. Murder,
adultery, and the most shameful sins prevailed
among all classes, high and low. Luther says
of the priests: ‘“‘The greater their honors and
dignities, the more wantonly they sin, so that
it has long since become a proverb: the nearer
Rome, the worse Christian.’’ Again he says:
“No one believes what villany and what hor-
rible sins and vices are practised there; to be
convinced of it a person must see and hear it
for himself. I myself heard it said publicly on
the streets in Rome, that if there is a hell,
Rome is built over it, that is, next to devils
themselves there is not a more depraved crew
than the pope and his crowd.”” Thus God let
Luther become acquainted with that wicked
city of Rome, so that he, in due time, could
bear testimony against it. Therefore he says
himself: ‘‘I would not for a thousand florins
have missed seeing Rome, for then I would
always fear that I might do injustice to the
pope; but now we speak that which we have
seen.’’—lLuther returned home a wiser and a
sadder man. He had hoped to find holiness
and consolation in Rome, but he had found it
to be the very seat of wickedness and sin. On
his way home he was laid up with a severe sick-
ness. He thought his end had come. Then
suddenly the words again rang through his soul:
“The just shall live by faith’, but now those
words were like music from heaven, like fresh
water from a cool spring bringing life to his
heart. He now clearly understood the mean-
ing of these words; he now saw that the
righteousness mentioned so often by the apostle
is not the righteousness with which God punishes
the sinner, but the righteousness of Christ
which God gives to the believer, and that thus
the poor sinner lives and is saved by faith in
Jesus. In this light he now studied the Bible
and found it all so clear. The Scriptures and
heaven itself were now opened to him. He
himself says: ‘(I now began to value and love
those words as the sweetest and most consoling
words in the Bible. ‘his passage of St. Paul
was now to me the very gate of paradise.”
‘After Luther's return to Wittenberg, in the
year 1512, he was created Doctor of the Holy
Scriptures. He at first refused to accept this
high title and office, but he was compelled to
yield his consent. In after years, when Luther
had lifted up his voice against the corruption
of the church, he often found consolation in his
title and office as Doctor of the Holy Scriptures.
When Satan and the world would seek to ter-
rify him with the question who had ordered him
to do this, and how he would answer for making
such a disturbance in all Christendom, he could

—_—+ +e e p>

The Life of Dr. Martin Luther.

VI.
Senr Tro Rome.—Crearep Docror OF THE
Hoty Scrierures.

In the year 1510 Luther was sent to Rome
on some business of the cloister. He joyfully
entered upon his journey; for he had often
wished to see that ‘‘holy’’ city, hoping to find
peace and comfort in that ‘‘seat of holiness’.
The moment he came in sight of the great city
he fell upon his knees, and lifting up his hands
to heaven, cried out: ‘‘Hail, sacred Rome!
thrice sacred for the blood of the martyrs here
shed.”? When he had entered the city, he
sought in deep devotion to satisfy his soul.
He ran from one church to the other, and from
one ‘holy place’’ to the other, he said masses
whenever he had an opportunity ; but the words
he had read in the Bible: ‘“The just shall live
by faith’? rang through his soul at every work
he did.—There was a flight of stairs in Rome,
said to have been brought from Jerusalem, and
to be the same steps down which our Saviour
walked from Pilate’s hall of judgment. The
pope had promised pardon of sins to all that
would climb those stairs on their bare knees.
Luther, dressed as a monk, with his shaven
head and bare knees crept up those steps, hop-
ing thereby to work his way to heaven, when
all at once he felt as though a voice of thunder
cried to him in terrible tones: ‘The just shall
live by faith.” It was the voice of God show-
ing him the true way to heaven.—Luther was
also shocked to find the greatest ignorance and
wickedness in that ‘‘holy’’ city of Rome. He
heard the highest officers of the church make
fun of religion and of all sacred things. The
people were deceived with all kinds of so-called

earnestly than ever.

joyously say: ‘‘I, Doctor Martin Luther, was
called and forced to become a Doctor from mere
obedience, without any choice of mine.
compelled to accept the title and office of a
doctor, and to swear allegiance to my beloved

I was

Holy Scriptures, and to vow that I would
preach them faithfully and purely. While do-

ing this, popery obstructed my path and desired
to stop me; but you see what has happened

to it, and worse still will befall it; it shall not

hinder me.”’

Luther now studied the Scriptures more
In order to understand
them thoroughly he diligently studied the He-
brew language, in which the Old Testament
was originally written, and the Greek, which
is the original language of the New Testament.
His lectures and sermons, in which he showed

from the Bible the true way to heaven by faith

in Jesus, were to his hearers like a heavenly
light breaking forth’ after the long darkness of
papacy.

“Be Ye Also Ready.”

When it pleases God to send a plague into

our land by which many of our fellow-men are
suddenly taken out of the land of the living,

we should consider Him as speaking to us in
solemn language: ‘Be ye also ready’’. It is
as if He said, ‘““Thoughtless mortals, remember
your latter end! Prepare for it—prepare to
die—prepare to meet your God!’’ He that
hath an ear to hear, let him hear it.

It is awful for a person to die without being
prepared, to die in his sins, to die without a
Saviour. To sucha person death is the dark
entrance into eternal damnation. But “blessed
are they who die in the Lord’. If we there-
fore want to be prepared for death, we must be
in the Lord, that is, we must as poor sinners
believe in Jesus, our only Saviour and Redeemer,
If we are thus united with Christ by true faith,
death cannot hurt us; it is like a serpent that
has lost its sting. So the apostle says: ‘‘The
sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is
the law; but thanks be to God, who giveth us
the victory, through our Lord Jesus Christ’.
1 Cor. 15, 56. It is sin that makes death so
terrible to nature; therefore sin is called the
sting of death. And that which gives such
power to sin, whereby it throws sinners into
death and into everlasting misery, is the holy
law of God; for the law of God curses every
sinner and binds him under the guilt of his sin
to the damnation of body and soul. But thanks
be to God, Jesus has taken away our sins by
His sufferings and by His death; He redeemed
us from the curse of the law, by becoming a
curse for us; and thus He has taken away the
sting of death. If, therefore, we believe in
Him, death cannot hurt us; for ‘‘there is no
condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus”,
says the apostle. And Jesus says, “I am the
resurrection and the life; he that believeth in
me, though he were dead, yet shall he live.”
John'11, 25. Blessed then are they, and they