The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1895, Page 21

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Che Lutheran Pioneer.

A MISSIONARY MONTHLY.

“

PuBLIsHED BY THE EVANGELICAL LutHEeRAN SynopicaAL CONFERENCE OF NorTH AMERICA.

R. A. BISCHOFF, Editor.

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

Vol. XVII.

St. Louis, Mo., June, 1895.

All’s Well.

The day is ended. Ere I sink to sleep,
My weary spirit seeks repose on Thine.

Father, forgive my trespasses, and keep
This little life of mine.

With loving-kindness curtain Thou my bed,
And cool in rest my burning pilgrim feet:
Thy pardon be the pillow for my head;
So shall my sleep be sweet.

At peace with all the world, dear Lord, and Thee,
No fears my soul’s unwavering faith can shake;
All’s well whichever side the grave for me
The morning light may break.
Selected.

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The Work of the Holy Spirit.

Christ was sent into the world to be the
Saviour of all sinners. By Him the work of
redemption was accomplished for all men.
This redemption must be applied to the soul.
Man must be brought to faith in the finished
work of his Redeemer and thus be made par-
taker of the blessings of salvation procured
by Christ for all sinners. If I am to enjoy
& treasure, it must be made my own. So the
treasure of salvation must be made the sin-
ner’s own, if he is to enjoy its benefits and
its blessings. :

This is the work of the Holy Spirit. Man
can not do this work, nor can he assist in this
work. He is ‘‘dead in trespasses and sin,”’
and there is not the least particle of strength
in him by which he could bring himself into
spiritual life or in any wise assist in this work.
Man is born of flesh, and therefore is nothing
but flesh, and flesh is ‘‘enmity against God.”’
“The natural man receiveth not the things of
the Spirit of God; for they are foolishness
Unto him: neither can he know them, because
they are spiritually discerned,” 1 Cor. 2, 14.
“No man can say that Jesus is the Lord but
by the Holy Ghost,’’ 1 Cor. 12, 8. Such are
the plain statements of the Bible. We there-
fore confess in our Lutheran Catechism: ‘‘I
believe that I can not by my own reason or
Strength believe in Jesus Christ my Lord, or
Come to Him; but the Holy Spirit hath called
me through the Gospel, enlightened me by

His gifts, and sanctified and preserved me in
the true faith.’? And in the Larger Catechism
Dr. Luther says, and with him the Lutheran
church confesses: ‘‘Neither you nor I could
know anything of Christ, nor believe in Him
or have Him for our Lord, except as it is
offered to us and granted to our hearts by
the Holy Ghost through the preaching of the
Gospel. The work is finished and accom-
plished; for Christ, by His suffering, death,
resurrection, etc., has acquired and gained the
treasure for us. But if the work remain con-
cealed, so that no one knew of it, then it were
in vain and lost. That this treasure, there-
fore, might not lie buried, but be taken and
enjoyed, God has caused the Word to go forth
and be proclaimed, in which He gives the Holy
Ghost to bring this treasure home and apply
it unto us.’” :

From these quotations we learn also tha
the Holy Spirit does His work through the
Word of God, which we read in the Bible,
which we hear in every true Gospel sermon,
which we see connected with certain signs in
the Holy Sacraments. We are not to run to
and fro in quest of the Spirit. We are not to
invent all kinds of schemes by which to ob-
tain the Spirit. We are not to introduce all
kinds of new measures by which to accom-
plish the Spirit’s work. No! The Word of
God is the means by which the Holy Spirit
comes to us and by which He works in our
hearts. He that accepts the Word, thereby
accepts the Holy Spirit; and he that rejects
the Word, thereby rejects the Holy Spirit.
Stephen says to the people who resisted the
Word of God which he preached to them:
‘Ye stiffnecked and uncircumcised in heart
and ears, ye do always resist the Holy Ghost:
as your fathers did, so do ye,’’ Acts 7, 51.
By resisting the preaching of God’s Word
they resisted the Holy Ghost, and hindered
His work in their hearts, and did not come
to faith; for ‘‘faith cometh by hearing, and
hearing by the Word of God,” Rom. 10, 17.

May we, therefore, be diligent in the hear-
ing of God’s Word. The Word is the bearer
of the Holy Spirit, and therefore the Word of
the Gospel is ‘‘the power of God unto salya-
tion to every one that believeth.” That Word

is never without the Spirit, and the Spirit
never comes to us without the Word.

May we also be diligent in bringing the
Word of God to those that are still sitting in
the darkness and misery of sin. The Word
is the only means by which the Holy Spirit is
brought to them to give them light and life
and salvation. ‘‘How shall they believe in
Him of whom they have not heard? And how
shall they hear without a preacher? And how
shall they preach, except they be sent? As it
is written, How beautiful are the feet of them
that preach the Gospel of peace, and bring
glad tidings of good things!”’ Rom. 10, 14. 15.

<r oO

The Love of God.

God manifests His loving kindness in a de-
gree beyond all measure. What He gives He
gives not as something merited, or because it
is His duty to give it, but simply, as the
‘golden text,’? John 3, 16, says, through
love. He is a giver who begrudges not His
gifts, but delights in bestowing them; He
gives on account of endless, Divine love, as
Christ says: ‘‘For God so loved the world.”

There is no virtue so glorious as love. What
we dearly love we are ready to defend and
protect at the risk of our life. Patience,
chastity, temperance, etc., are also praise-
worthy virtues, but can not be compared with
love; she is queen over them all, and com-
prehends them all. Surely if one is pious and
righteous, he will not defraud or injure his
brother, but will assist him in everything;
but if we love a person, we are ever ready to
deyote ourselves entirely to his welfare and to
assist him, according as he has need, with our
counsel and our possessions. Thus, as Christ
declares in our golden text, does God also do
toward us. He gives us blessings beyond
measure, not because He is patient or because
we are righteous and deserve it, but through
love, the greatest of all virtues. In view of
this fact our hearts should awake, all our sad-
ness should vanish, for we see before us the
inexhaustible love of the Divine heart, which
we ought to cherish in true faith as the
greatest of all gifts, knowing that God is the

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