The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1908, Page 75

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el I

The Lutheran Pioneer.

A Religion Without Happiness.

A religion without the Gospel is a religion with-
out happiness, for it is a religion without Jesus,
in whom alone there is true happiness for sinners,
because in Him alone “we have redemption through
His blood, the forgiveness of sins.” ‘The Gospel
of Jesus only can make of sinners happy children
of God, who rejoice in the assurance of their sal-
yation and serve their heavenly Father in grate-
ful love.

The religion of the Romish church is a religion
without happiness, because it is a religion without
the Gospel of Jesus as the only Savior of sinners.
It makes men slaves to a human system, a system
which keeps them in bondage and fear. Dr. Phelan,
himself a strict. Romanist, told the truth when he
recently wrote in a Roman Catholic paper about
Roman Catholics:

“No, you are not happy.
for God and your souls through compulsion. You
go to church on Sunday because you must. You
go to confession because you must. You go down
on your knees in the morning and again at night
to say your prayers because you must. You abstain
from meat on Friday because you must. But I
don’t see that you are very happy in all that. * You
come to the confessional with sour faces, and you
go away with faces sometimes a little sourer. And
you come to the Holy Table sometimes as slaves
driven thither. I don’t see happiness depicted in
your faces. You are very much like people going
to pay their taxes. Go down to the collector’s office
on days when taxes are due; you see people press-
ing up to pay their taxes. There are no particularly
happy people there. They come because they must.
They are like people standing around in a dentist’s
office, who come to have teeth extracted. You come
here on Sunday and look like people who are going
to have their teeth pulled out. You don’t find any
particular happiness in your religion.”

‘No, such people are not happy, and they never
will find happiness in a religion which as man’s,
work in the place of ,Christ’s work and man’s word
in the place of God’s Word, a religion which teaches
that- Christians must always be in doubt and can
never haye the assurance of their salvation. Such
a religion, a religion without the Gospel, is a re-
ligion without happiness.

You do what you do

Shire best name by which we can think of God
is Father. — Luther.

75

Luther on Preaching.

“Cursed are all preachers,” says-Luther, “that
in the church aim at high and hard things, and
neglecting the saving health of the poor unlearned
people, seek their own honor and praise. When
I preach, I sink myself deep down. I regard
neither doctors nor magistrates, of whom are here
in this church above forty; but I have an eye
io the multitude of young people, children, and
servants, of whom are more than two thousand.
I preach to those, directing myself to them that
have need thereof. Will not the rest hear me?
The door stands open; they may be gone. I see
that the ambition of preachers grows and increases ;
this will do the utmost mischief in the Church, and
produce great disquietness and discord; for they

“will need teach things touching matters of state,

thereby aiming at praise and honor; they will
please the worldly wise, and meantime neglect the
simple and common multitude.”

‘

Our Missionary Duty.

There can be no claim so solemn and impera-

tive as that which even now seems to call to us with
the voice. of God from heaven, and say, “I have
given mine own Son for this rebellious and apos-
tate world, the sacrifice is offered and accepted, but
you—you who are basking in the sunbeams of
Christianity, you who are blessed beyond measure
—why will you not bear to fellow-creatures sitting
in darkness and in the shadow of death the tidings
of this universal and incomprehensible love?”
_ If I saw a man drowning I should hold out my
hand to help him. How much more strongly, then,
is the duty incumbent when there are thousands
on thousands perishing in sin and ignorance on
every side! — Gladstone.

Under the Shadow of the Almighty.

One evening, when Luther saw a little bird
perched on a tree, to roost there for the night, he
said: “This little bird has had its supper, and now
it is getting ready to go to sleep here, quite secure
and content, never troubling itself what its food
will be, or where its lodging on the morrow. Like

" David it abides ‘under the shadow of the Almighty.’

It sits on its little-twig content, and lets God
take care.”