The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1882, Page 10

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(os The Lutheran Pioneer.

(For the ‘‘Lutheran Pionccr’’.)

What is Self-righteousness ?

A self-righteous man relies, either, entirely
or partly, upon his own merits, expecting to
receive salvation as a compensation for his good
works. He may indeed have the knowledge
and belief that.Christ is the Saviour; but he
does not believe that the true righteousness be-
fore God is a free gift by grace only, imputed
and imparted to the sinner by the means of
grace, and appropriated by faith in Christ
alone. He does not believe that the sinner is
accounted righteous for no other meritorious
cause than Christ’s atonement. In the boast-
ing sinner’s opinion Christ suffered and died
for mankind to no other purpose, than to render
it possible for man to earn heaven by his own
exertions. Being confident of his own virtue
and merit he, in his self-conceit and self-decep-
tion, claims heaven as a recompense due to
him for his good conduct. He knows nothing
of the forgiveness of sins.—Self-righteousness is a
dangerous, injurious road to walkin. It may
appear to the wanderer to be a pleasant, cheer-
ful avenue. It névertheless is a road that
leads to eternal perdition—to damnation. Self-
righteousness is n beggarly, mean cloak, which
the old Adam prepares for himself by sewing
his own filthy rags together, which, foolishly
and proudly, he calls innocence and good deeds.
But such a garment can render him no better
service in the presence of the most righteous
God, than our first parents could derive from
the aprons they made themselves out of fig-
leaves, in order to cover themselves in the
sight of their Creator. Self-righteousness is a
spurious coin. Much as it may glitter, it never
can deceive the all-seeing eye of the righteous
Judge. No, ‘‘it won’t pass.’’ It will not ad-
mit its owner into the Golden City, but will
most assuredly leavé him outside of the heavenly
kingdom forever. Self-righteousness has wings
made of wax. They melt away under the burn-
ing sun of God’s holy wrath, and the higher
the haughty sinner would soar, the deeper he
falls into the sea of unspeakable woe. Self-
righteousness is the lock fastened to the gate
of the dungeon the criminal is kept in. Unless
-that lock be forced open and taken away, the
prisoner's doom must and will be a deplorable
state to all eternity.

All sects promulgate, more or less, such
doctrines by which lost sinners are advised to
trust in their own righteousness. However we
do not deny the fact that the pernicious heresy,
as though heaven were to be secured by the
svorks of the law, is emphatically and expressly
taught in the Romish church. Deceived and
led astray by that abominable papistic fiction,
a monk of the Carthusian order, when lying
on his death-bed, exclaimed, “Give me now,
o{God, what Thou owest me.” Being asked
by one of the attendants, under what obliga-
tions God were unto him, he blasphemously
replied: ‘God is bound to pay me everlasting
life on account of the good deeds I have per-

formed. For more than forty years did I
serve Him in this monastery. I wore a rough,
hairy shirt, I fasted and prayed, I observed,
strictly and diligently, all rules of my order.
Now, for all these things God is obliged to
award heaven to me as my reward.’’—Pity the
soul that, when called to appear before the
judgment seat of Christ, has_no other garb to
wear, than its own filthy rags! ‘‘Our strictest
life is but in vain, our works can nothing win.”’
—A certain Jesuit once declared: ‘‘It is not
possible for us to be damned, because God is
so just that, if we live according to our vows,
He can not help giving us our reward, which
consists in eternal life.’’ O the horrible im-
piety! What pernicious and cursed presumption
is this! Attributing righteousness to works, is
to reject Christ Himself, to deface and to deny
the whole gospel, to contemn grace, to con-
tradict God who, in His holy Word, declares
that a man is not justified by the deeds of the
law, much less by obeying human precepts, but
by faith alone in Christ Jesus. With reference
to the papistic teachings that men are able to
merit salvation by their own works, Luther
writes, ‘‘ With this doctrine the enthusiasts and
confused factious spirits in our days darken the
grace and benefit of Christ and take away from
Him the glory that belongs to Him, whereas
they hold that not He alone doth justify us.”

Whoever asks heaven as a reward, will not
hear the sweet voice of Christ the Jfediator,
Come, enter thou into the joy of thy Lord, but
he will hear the aweful sentence of Christ, the
most righteous Judge, Take up that, which is
thine and go thy way !—

‘«By grace are ye saved through faith; and
that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not
of works, lest any man should boast.’”’ Eph.
2, 8. 9.—

———_0 + 0<ae +

Luther and his Translation of the Bible.

In Literature not Jess than in Religion Lu-
ther was the commanding spirit of the age; but
he was so rather by accident than by choice.
For form, for its own sake, he cared little; he
studied it solely that he might the better pro-
duce the moral effort at which he aimed. ‘My
husk may be hard,” he himself said, ‘‘but the
kernel is soft and sweet.’’ We do extreme in-
justice to Luther if we do not recognize in him
a strongly poetic element— an element which
had free play only in the best of his private
letters, and in his still popular hymns. By the
highest of his literary achievements, his trans-
lation of the Bible, he made a truly splendid
contribution to the spiritual life of his people.
No body of literature has been so fortunate in
its translators as the Scriptures; ond Luther’s
rendering ranks with the best. Its absolute
simplicity brings it to the level of a child’s
understanding; its strength and grace give it
an enduring place as a work of art. Germany
instantly felt its charm; and for three centuries
it has been to innumerable millions the supreme
consoler and sanctifier, the power associated

with their tenderest, most pathetic memories,
the one link which has connected sordid lives
with noble and sublime ideas. And for the
first time it gave the nation a literary language.
Up to this stage every author had written in
the dialect with which he was himself familiar;
henceforth for the men of Swabia, of Bavaria,
of Saxony, and of all other districts, there was
a common speech, which the writers of each
State could use without any sense of inferiority
to those of another. It is thus to Luther that
the Germans owe the most essential of all the
conditions of a truly national life and litera-
ture.—James Sime, in Encyclopedia Brittanica.
——2 + 0—<= 0 +

Fate of the Apostles.

All the apostles were assaulted by the ene-
mies of the Master. They were called to seal
their doctrines with their blood, and nobly did
they bear the trial. Tradition says:

Matthew suffered martyrdom by being slain
with the sword, at a distant city of Ethiopia.

Mark expired at Alexandria, after having
been cruelly dragged through the streets of
that city.

Luke was hung upon an olive tree, in the
classic land of Greece.

John was put into a caldron of boiling oil,
but escaped death in a miraculous manner, and
was afterwards banished to Patmos.

Peter was crucified, perhaps at Rome, with
his head downward.

James, the greater, was beheaded at Jeru-
salem.

James, the lesser, was thrown from a lofty
pinnacle, and then beat to death with a fuller’s
club. :

Philip was hanged up against a pillar, at
Hieropolis, in Phrygia.

Bartholomew was flayed alive.

Andrew was bound to the cross, whence he
preached to his persecutors until he died.

Thomas was run through the body with a
lance, in the East Indies.

Jude was shot to death with arrows.

Matthias was first stoned and then beheaded.

Barnabas, of the Gentiles, was stoned to
death by the Jews, at Salonica.

Paul, after various tortures and persecu-
tions, was at length beheaded at Rome by the
Emperor Nero.

Simon Zelotes was crucified in Judea.

On Human Depravity.

The late Chief Justice Thompson, of Penn-
sylvania, said in relation to human depravity:
“Tf those who preach had been lawyers previous
to entering the ministry, they would know and
say far more about the depravity of the human
heart than they do. The old doctrine of total
depravity is the only thing that can explain the
falsehoods, the dishonesties, the licentiousness,
and the murders which are so ripe in the world.
Education, refinement, and even a high order
of talent, cannot overcome the inclination to
evil which exists in the heart, and has taken
possession of the very fibres of our nature.”

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