The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1916, Page 65

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_—_—_——"T Tee eS Te

The Lutheran Pioneer.

A MISSIONARY MONTHLY.

PusiisHeD BY THE EVANGELICAL LuTnERAN SyNopIcaL CONFERENCE OF NortH AMERICA.

REV. F. J. LANKENAU, EDITOR.

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

Vol. XXXVIII.

ST. LOUIS, MO., SEPTEMBER, 1916.

No. 9.

What the Law Demands.

The Law demands that we
Should serve our God alone;
The only living God is He
Who sits on heaven’s throne.
To Him we are to pray

And praise His gracious name;
We are to keep His holy-day
And spread His glorious fame.

The children should obey;

Obedience God will bless

With length of life and with the ray
Of earthly happiness.

We should not hate or kill,
Commit adultery;

Steal, or transgress Jehovah’s will
By fraud or usury.

False witness and all greed,
Envy and covetousness

We should avoid, and always lead
A life of holiness.

Alas! we cannot keep

The Law of God, our Lord;

We are by nature wayward sheep,
And sin against His Word.

But when our misery
Would drive us to despair,
We flee to cross-crowned Calvary,

And find true solace there.
: - H. Osteruus.

The Divine Law.

God, our Creator, Preserver, Ruler, and Bene-
factor, who has indeed the authority to require of
us that we fulfil His holy will, wrote His Law into
man’s heart when He created him (Rom. 2, 14. 15).
Aft that blessed time of our first parents’ primeval

innocence they by nature clung to their heavenly
Father with perfect love, never departing from His
will. But when they transgressed the divine com-
mand, the bright ray of the natural Law within
them, which up to that time had enlightened them
so that they walked faultlessly in the path of right-
eousness, had become very dim. They were, for
instance, no longer able to recognize many sins as
such. Thus it was necessary that God should pub-
lish His Law again, so that fallen humanity might
know what He demands of us, and that we abso-
lutely fail by nature to comply with His demands,
yea, that even the regenerate cannot be perfect in
His sight. In fire Jehovah descended from heaven
upon Iount Sinai, which smoked, greatly quaked,
and emitted a voice as of an exceedingly loud
trumpet, while thunders rolled and lightnings
fiashed. These phenomena terrified the people, im-
pressing on them the holy and just majesty of the
divine Lawgiver. The “len words,” containing the
Moral Law, which the Lord then spoke to His
people Israel through Moses, the Mediator of the
Old Covenant, are not only meant for that nation,
but for all men of all nations and ages, while the
Ceremonial:and the Political Law, which God also
issued, only concerned Israel. God wrote the Deca-
log on two tables of stone.

The First Commandment does not only forbid
gross idol worship as practised by the heathen, who
“in their blindness bow down to wood and stone,”
but also fine idolatry. We should not cling to any
creature with our hearts as we should cling to God,
whom we should fear, love, and in whom we should |
trust above all things. ;

When the Second Commandment speaks of
God’s name, it thereby designates all that the Bible
reveals concerning Him. We should not utter this