The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1915, Page 73

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The Lutheran

ioneer,

A MISSIONARY MONTHLY.

PuBLISHED BY THE EvANGELICAL LuTHERAN SyNODICAL CONFERENCE OF Nortu AMERICA.

REV. F. J. LANKENAU, EDITOR.

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

Vol. XXXVII. ST. LOUIS, MO.,

OCTOBER, 1915. ‘No. 10.

The Lord Is My Shepherd; I Shall Not Want.

My Shepherd cares for me; TI am content;
Oh, how I love His Word and Sacrament!
O’er verdant fields He leads me to my goal;
Beside still waters He restores my soul.
Yea, though IT walk through death’s dark shadows still,
I tremble not, because I fear no ill,
Kor Thou art nigh; I put my trust in Thee;
Thy rod and staff, dear Savior, comfort me.
Anointed with Thy Spirit from on high,
I walk in paths of righteousness and joy.
Thy table cheers my heart, my cup o’erflows
Before the very faces of my foes.
Goodness and merey follow me each day,
And in God’s temple shall I dwell for aye.
H. Ostertus.

The Thirty-First Day of October.

On Sunday, the thirty-first day of this month,
our Lutheran Church will observe her 398th birth-
day. It was on the last day of October, 1517, that
Lether nailed his Ninety-five Theses to the door
of the Castle Church at Wittenberg, thus uncon-
sciously and involuntarily beginning the great work
of the Reformation of the Church.

Sick, utterly sick in all her members, was the
Church. Though she looked strong and vigorous,
there was no real healthy strength in her. In the
days of the apostles she had had thie best of food,
the pure Word of God; then she had developed the
toughest and strongest of muscles. But as the years
went by, and she gradually began to enter upon
_ days of ease and peace, she lost her spiritual strength
and grew weak. She forgot her former lowliness
and grew proud. Having tasted the sweetness of
Tiches, she grew avaricious for more. Forgetting
the days of her own persecution, she, in turn, visited

bloody persecution upon all who dared to oppose

her. In her who claimed to be Christ’s body Christ’s
Spirit no longer dwelt. His voice was hushed within
her walls, and His Word was buried beneath the
rubbish of human traditions and foolish legends.
The Gospel, which in her early days had supplied
her with strength, was no longer a pleasant and
desirable food to her. Her life had gone; her sap
was poisoned; her strength was no more.

But on that 31st of October, 1517, Luther set
heaven’s bells a-ringing, proclaiming to the whole
world the beginning of a new and better day for
the Church. He rent the dark clouds that had
hidden and shrouded the Gospel of Christ for hun-
dreds of years, and permitted the glorious Sun of
grace once more to shine in all its brightness: upon
a benighted world. He called the prophets and
apostles from their graves, and bade them again
speak to us in the writings of Holy Scripture.
Christ and His Word once more: began to rule in
His .Church.

O blessed day! O blessed people to whom the
blessings of the Reformation have come: as they
have come to us! How grateful we should be for all
it has given us! How precious should we deem
our treasure! How desirous we should be to make
others the partakers of our riches! There is nothing
that should so strongly impel us to spread the
Gospel truth far and near as just the knowledge of
what this Gospel has done for us, and the thought
of what inestimable blessings those of our fellow-men
are deprived of who are without Christ’s precious
Gospel. All that we need to be happy here and in
eternity the Gospel of Jesus affords us. It teaches
us to believe right, to live right, and to die right.
Oh, therefore, let us with renewed strength and
vigor help to carry out the parting command of
Christ to preach the Gospel to every creature!

EF. J. L.