The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1891, Page 17

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Che Lutheran Pioneer.

A MISSIONARY MONTHUY.

Posusnep py THE EvANGeticaL Lurweran SynopicaL ConFERENCE OF NortH AMERICA.
R. A. BISCHOFF, Editor.

Entered at the Post Office at St. Louis, Mo., as second-class matter.

Vol. XIII. St. Louis, Mo., May, 1891. No. 5.

Panting for Heaven. enly-minded. By faith in the ascended Sav-
iour they are on the way to their eternal home.
They pass through this world as pilgrims and
strangers, their affections being set upon the
treasures and beauties of heaven, and their
hearts longing to be at home with the Lord.

Look up, dear Christian reader, look up to
Jesus, our ascended Saviour! And teach your
family to look up to the mansions in our Fa-
ther’s house.

——s>-oa o>

to his own struggles, to his own prayers and
feelings for salvation. But this is not the Gos-
pel. No. The Gospel does not tell us what we
must do in order to redeem or save ourselves,
but it tells us what Christ has done for us and
that by His sufferings and death we were re-
deemed more than eighteen hundred years ago.
The Gospel brings the full merits of Christ to
sinners and works in their hearts that true faith
with which they simply rest on the finished
work of Christ in the full assurance of eternal
salvation.
“Ty IS FINISHED: yes, indeed—
Finished every jot.

Sinner, this is all you need;
Tell me, is it not?”

I am panting for heaven, the land of repose,
Where peace, like a river, eternally flows;

And when landed in glory, ah! then I shall prove,
’Tis Christ that makes heaven the heaven of love.

I long to depart to the land of the free,

And there with my Saviour forever to be,

To witness, engaged in its hallowed employ, -
’Tis Christ that makes heaven the heaven of joy.

How happy! away from the world and its din,
All sorrow shut out, and all blessing shut in;
To know in its fulness, which never will cease,

Redemption Finished.
’Tis Christ that makes heaven the heaven of peace. P

From labor and turmoil forever away,

To bask in the light of a ne’er ending day,
Confessing while joining the song of the blest,
’Tis Christ that makes heaven the heaven of rest.

“God sent forth his Son, made of a woman,
made under the law, to redeem them that were
under the Jaw,’’ says St. Paul.

From this we learn that our redemption was
the work which Christ came to do. And He
did not do part of the work, leaving the other
part for us todo. No. He finished the work
of our redemption. ‘The apostle says, “Christ
hath redeemed us,’’ Gal. 3, 18. And the whole
Bible sets forth the work of our redemption as
a finished work in which sinners are simply to
trust for salvation.

Jesus Himself cried out upon the cross: “It
is finished!’? God the Father, by raising Christ
from the dead on the third day, made known
to all sinnersthat the work of their redemption
is finished. And when we on Ascension Day
behold Christ ascending into heaven, we see the
crowning proof of the fact that our redemption
is finished. He ascended into heaven as the
Conqueror over all our enemies, leading our
captivity captive. He, therefore, told His dis-
ciples to go into the world and preach the Gos-
pel to all creatures. For this the Holy Ghost
was poured out upon them on the Day of Pen-
tecost. ‘The apostles were to become witnesses
of the finished work of redemption to a sinful
world. ‘The Gospel which they preached is not
a doctrine which tells sinners what they must
do in order to redeem themselves and to earn
salvation. No. The Gospel is the glad tidings
of the finished work of our redemption. It tells
sinners that they are redeemed by the precious
blood of Christ from all sin, from death, and
from the power of Satan. . c

False teachers will tell the anxious sinner
to look to his own works, to his own holiness,

—————

Ah, yes! ’twill be happy—so different from here! “What a Saviour!”

His name and His image forever to bear

And own, through the ages which never will close,

’Tis Christ that makes heaven the home of repose!
Selected.

Missing from her place in the house of God
on a certain Sunday, one of those faithful ones
never absent from the place of worship without
urgent reasons, the pastor called at her house
and found’ her on a sick-bed. After a little,
she began to tell him of her experience that
Sunday.

‘(As I lay here,’’ she said, ‘‘there suddenly
passed into my view a picture, it seemed to me,
of all the sins I had ever committed. They
were more than I could count,—sins of heart
and sins of life; sins of shortcoming and sins
of transgression; sins of thought and sins of
tongue. And well I knew that every one of
them deserved God’s wrath and curse now and
for ever!”’ .

The pastor now expected nothing else than a
dismal account of spiritual distress. But what
was his joy to hear her confess her firm faith in
the blood of Christ. He asked her, ‘‘Well,
how did this view of your sins affect you?”
“Why,” she exclaimed, “glory to God fora
Saviour whose blood cleanses from all sin.””

——_>-o-< o>

DEcORATION.—In the olden time, when a
mother decorated her child on Sunday, she
eaid: ‘As I have adorned thee outside, may
God adorn thee inside!”’ If she placed a Sun-
day wreath in her daughter's hair, she said:
“May Jesus Christ thus place the crown of
eternal life upon thee in heaven!” ;

: From the German,

———_——>_ + 0 =e

Heavenly Minded.

In one of the churches of Germany there is
said to be a memorial tablet fastened against
the wall, and put there in honor of the old
Lutheran theologian, George Major.

The picture represents the ascension of Christ.
The disciples are seen standing around the spot
from which the Saviour bas just ascended, and
directing their eyes up to their Lord. But
around the disciples a still wider circle of fifty-
four persons is formed, all of them looking up
to heaven and beholding the wonder of: their
Lord's ascension with anxious yet hopeful eyes.
These fifty-four persons all belong to the family
of Dr. Major.

It is a beautiful picture and it has a deep
Meaning. It teaches us what the condition of
every Christian family should be. The eyes of
all its members should be directed to Him who
Went to prepare a place for us in His Father's

Ouse, where there are many mansions. The
earts of all should be set upon things that are
Above, where Christ aitteth at the right hand

of God.
eae natural man can not but be worldly-
Hee seeking the joys, and honors, and
of this world; but Christians are heav-