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| H. C. Schwan |
Some quotes from Chapter 13c: (458-480)
461: Schwan's address: "For only those to whom the Lord grants victory are victors."
463: "For the more… the dear simple-minded people are concerned about the general promises of grace of the Gospel, the easier it is to persuade them that only from these passages can the doctrine of God's eternal election be taken or explained."
464: "No, if we sincerely believe that it is the Lord… then our joy must be… the joy in the Lord."
466: Hochstetter's Review: "Are we to watch idly when the Pope, as the real Antichrist, fights against Christ with his servants?"
467: "Those err grievously who think that it is best for the church to live quite peacefully, without struggle."
470: "…convinced that Luther was… the angel with the eternal Gospel… to fly through the midst of heaven"
470: "…while we do not… accept such open questions as the Iowans prefer"
471: "but we accept the Lutheran Confessions without reserve, because… thoroughly Scriptural confession"
473: Luther: "Contradict the willful spirits, otherwise your confession will be merely a mask, and of no use."
474: "one read in a radical public paper… these Old Lutherans would also be driven out of America!"
476: "… church property insurance, with which other synods… chain the congregations to themselves"
477: "whether the world despises or praises us for it… we will not be judged according to its standard"
479: "United States… which had made the separation of church and state and complete freedom of religion"
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The following is an English translation of C. Hochstetter's Geschichte… by BackToLuther utilizing the DeepL Translator with minor assistance from Dr. Fred Kramer's translation. All hyperlinks, highlighting and red text in square brackets [] are mine. All internal hyperlinks are active in this embedded window, external links should be opened in a new tab or window.
United States of America?
As joyful the Old Missouri Lutherans were over their new land of "North America's United States", so fearful are these times for this same country. They highly valued this country's “separation of church and state”, i.e. no Roman Catholic domination, and “complete freedom of religion”. These principles are no longer defended widely anymore, perhaps even ridiculed. As the German deacon Uhrlandt stated at the founding of America (Hochstetter, p. 479):
“The Church of Jesus Christ should and will remain, even if He… should rebuild it outside Europe, and the political circumstances are becoming more and more conducive to this, especially since now in the West an independent Christian state has come into being.”
One could substitute "America" for "Europe" in the above statement. Occasionally one reads of Christian strength in Africa… Lord, have mercy on us! — After the break below, the customary fine text version, then Part 20, Hochstetter's obituary.
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The History of the Missouri Synod, 1838-1884, Chapter 13c
By Christian Hochstetter (p. 458-480)
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XIII.c
The 19th Synodical convention (1884) (458). [H. C. Schwan address) (459)] — Review and conclusion (A Look Back). (465)
On May 7, 1884, the Fourth Delegate Synod, representing the 19th General Synod convention, met in St. Louis; it is composed, as its name indicates, of delegates from the various District Synods, which have now reached the number 11 and cover the entire territory of the United
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States, as well as Canada within their borders. Already at the Jubilee Synod, which took place in 1872, it was decided that from two to seven congregations with voting rights would meet and send a pastor and a deputy as delegates. In addition, the professors at the educational institutions are obliged to attend the delegate synod. As a result, 200 members were present at the recent synod, not counting the considerable number of visitors. They filled the chapel of the great and magnificent seminary building almost to the last seat and waited until the end of the sessions for ten full days. What moved the hearts at this Synod convention was summarized in the opening address of the venerable general President H. C. Schwan in a way that made everyone rise to joyful praise and thanksgiving toward the Lord God. The synodical address reads as follows:
“The Lord hath done great things for us; whereof we are glad.” (Psalm 126:3)
This word of the Psalm expresses what moves our hearts now, and so we must above all make our voices heard. The Lord has done great things for us, a great help in the great distress that had affected us.
Let us just think back. There was a lot of pressure on all of us the last time we got together. An article of our Christian faith had been attacked, an article which Scripture clearly reveals, and our confession testifies to just as clearly; an article which, if overturned, had to take with it the basis for our salvation. In its place they had tried to put a doctrine which, if accepted, would have transferred our salvation on to a very different ground.
And this had not been done in a straightforward and open manner — in that case it would hardly have been dangerous — but it had been done in a rather veiled manner and under a deceptive pretence. The opponents presumed highly and solemnly that it was not the doctrine of the Scriptures and the confession of faith that
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but rather our terrible falsification of those whom they were fighting; they insisted that it was the truth of the Gospel itself which they needed to save against us and to preserve it for Christendom.
And those who talked like this were not our old enemies, whose voices were known. They were brethren who did this. They professed their hearts were bleeding, but they couldn't help it. Therein lay the danger.
And this danger had come quite close to us. There were already some of us back then who were openly on the side of our accusers. Others seemed to be on the way. Some had let themselves be confused. Quite a few saw nothing but division and ruin for our fellowship. Yes, who would deny it, with anxious hearts we all waited for the things that were to come. This was the situation we were in when we last met. Fightings without, fears within.
And now? Now we see all happy faces here. Our sadness has been turned to joy. The danger is over. The battle is over. We are at peace. Isn't that something?
But how is it? Doesn't the cries of war still echo around us today? Is not the air filled with the arrows of our enemies? And we should have peace? — But what the world calls peace, we do not. There is no peace with those who make war. As long as they fight against the truth, they must be our enemies. But still, we have peace. We have peace even as and in the same way as the first Christian congregation, Acts 9:31, had peace. The apostolic church also had enemies at that time and continued to, and these enemies also had and kept their great wrath and did what they could to disturb the church of God. And yet Scripture says, “So now the congregation had peace throughout all Judea and Galilee and Samaria,” for He who ruled over it like sun and shield, and protected it with His right hand, had called out to its persecutors: “So far and no
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further! That's enough.” That gave us peace in the middle of a fight. And so now we also have peace, peace throughout the country, through all our districts, in all our congregations. The quarrel no longer troubles us, not even outwardly, and as many of us as are children of God, they have peace not only with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, not only with their own conscience, but also among each other, and now also in this matter they hold firmly to each other in one sense and one opinion against all attempts of the enemy. Is that not a great thing?
But it is also not a shameful peace, but a victorious peace that we have. Not as if our opponents had declared themselves overcome, which they might have done. Not that everyone else has fallen to us. Even the apostolic congregation should not be so well off. But just as they once did, so we now have victory. For only those to whom the Lord grants victory are victors. But before God, always and at any time, the one who has survived the temptation and has kept faith is the one who has already won and wears the wreath. And that is the victory that has been given to us. And O! how gladly we want to be content with it! After all, this is the only victory that brings the true booty.
And there was no shortage of such booty. We know we've won something because we enjoy it. The dear Holy Scripture, studied in temptation and opened up more deeply, has become all the higher, more glorious and sweeter for us. The confession of our Church has once again proved itself in this struggle to be the good confession of the faith that was once given to the saints. But this has only increased its prestige. We have become all the more confident by standing, against all regard of man, solely on the Word of the Scriptures and becoming fools before the world for this Word. For even a source of consolation, which had been badly buried, has been opened to us again abundantly and has also done its part to make our hearts firm and confident
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in the truth. United and stronger than before, we stand now.
Let us now look at all this, consider how little this in particular was to be expected according to human probability, and how hoping quickly turned into good what was intended to be bad: we do not know what else to say but: A great, great thing has happened to us!
Now then, who did this great thing? Who has won victory, peace and booty? Was it us? Did we at least do our part? Were we perhaps too much superior in scholarship to our adversaries? Oh, our erudition, no matter how great it was, could not have been the deciding factor here. Or did we understand better than they did how to explain the apparent contradiction between general grace and the special election of individuals and make it acceptable to reason? That helped us even less. We did not even try. No, no! to speak humanly, we had everything against us in this struggle — except one thing. Our opponents had an enormous advantage over us. For before the crowd, which does not think, but would rather be considered enlightened and free, not we, but they, as fighters of dark madness, heroes of light and martyrs of freedom, could appear, and that has seldom missed its effect. In the case of those who always want to first understand and make sense before they decide to accept divine truths themselves (and that is what old Adam wants in Christians as well), they were able to invoke the judgment of “common sense”, which we were not allowed to do. After all, there was no secret in their teaching about what even the wisest man has to put his finger on. There everything rhymed with the natural human thoughts and feelings. Conclusions of any kind had free play and full validity. For the sake of their doctrine no one had to become a fool before the world. Was
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that not a great advantage for them? And did they not make use of it? — Among those who base their convictions on human respect (even if unconsciously), even in matters of faith, they could point to a number of “fathers” who, though not of their own mind, often seemed to agree with them in words. And how much use this was to them, especially for those who knew the least about these fathers, is more obvious by the day. — Indeed, they were able to present the Holy Scriptures themselves to unsuspecting and untrained Christians here and there, with greater success than we did. For the more — and rightly so — the dear simple-minded people are concerned about the general promises of grace in the Gospel, the easier it is to persuade them that only from these passages can the doctrine of God's eternal election be taken or explained. In short, what only reason and feeling of the natural man (also in Christians) thinks, desires and wants, all this spoke in this struggle for them and against us. Would it have been a miracle if they had succeeded in enchanting our people in crowds and finally even led them over to their camp with a resounding performance?
And yet the exact opposite of all this happened. After the first shock had passed and now it came to light where this attack actually came from and where it was aimed at, our congregations turned their backs on their supposed saviors and liberators in such an overwhelming way that they themselves stood there dismayed, and that they have not yet been able to find their way in. Congregations which had previously paid little special attention to the doctrine in question are now, to their amazement, firmly opposed to all the attempts of our opponents.
Well, whose work was all this? Was it supposed to be our doing? No, no! It was done by the Lord and it was a miracle before our eyes. [cp. Ps. 118:23] No one could do this, no one did this, but He who does great things to us and to all ends.
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But why do you think He did these great things properly? If it was not for the sake of His beloved Son, if it was not by free grace, if it was not because He caught the wise in their wisdom, and because He chose that which is weak before the world, that He might bring shame to that which is strong, that no flesh should boast before Him; if it was not because of these, we know not why He did it. Nor do we know how it was done. Except that it must have been done by his Word and his Spirit. In this way He must have entered into our hearts, must have made the text more powerful than all the glosses of the false art, must have broken and hindered all evil counsel and will, and must have strengthened us and held us fast in His word and faith. Otherwise it could not have happened. For that is His good, gracious will.
But if it is really the Lord himself and the Lord alone who has done so much for us, and by grace, well then, let us rejoice from our hearts.
Happy, not gloating. Let us not rejoice in the fall of our enemies. That would not please Him who can and will restore the fallen. Merrily, not gloriously, as though we considered that robbery which has been given us by grace. Then we would take back from God the glory we had given Him, which we had only given Him by pretense. That would be a fine sign that we ourselves are already facing the trap. — No, if we sincerely believe that it is the Lord who has done great things for us, then our joy must be of a completely different kind, it must be the joy in the Lord. He who rejoices must rejoice in the Lord and be joyful in the power of His strength; He who boasts must boast in the Lord alone. So may He then be the joy of us all.
But in such joy we should really forget what is behind, all the wrong that has been done to us, all the fear and misery that has been inflicted on us. Let it no longer be thought of for the sake of the great things that God has done for us.
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Like a woman whose hour is past no longer thinks of fear for the sake of her present joy. — With this joy in our hearts, let us rather confidently stretch ourselves forward, let us be joyful in hope. We want to trust the One who has sustained us up to now, that His faithfulness and grace will hold us to the end, yes, we want to rejoice in advance of the Great things which He will certainly do for us even further. — But at last we are to prove by deed that this joy does not leave us lazy and barren in good works, but that it makes us willing, zealous and powerful for all that pleases the Lord. So let us make good use of the time of peace, following the example of the apostolic church! Let us build ourselves up like her, walking in the fear of God, and there will be no lack of the comfort of the Holy Spirit.
Just as in the Old Testament burnt offerings the clouds of incense surrounded, enveloped and covered up everything that would have been unattractive and unpleasant for the senses, so also with us the joy in the Lord and the praise of the great God and our Saviour must envelop, hold down, dampen and devour everything that is still in us from below; but on the other hand lift, carry and strengthen that which strives upwards in us. Then our sacrifice of joy and thanksgiving will be a sweet savor before the Lord, He will remain with us with His grace, and we will be able to sing anew day after day:
The Lord hath done great things for us; whereof we are glad. [Ps. 126:3]
A look back
at the history of the Missouri Synod may still be permitted with a few words. At first sight it is a story full of church struggles, but in which victory is not lacking. Where there is faith, there is also victory, Rev. 15:2. While the Church of the Reformation is the prefigured, predicted Second Temple of the New Covenant (see the sermon in Dr. Walther's
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Lutherische Brosamen on Ezra 3:8-13) [“Lutheran Crumbs”, or Baseley’s From Our Master’s Table], it is not surprising that those who are building this temple today will suffer the same fate as those in Nehemiah 4:17: “with one of his hands wrought in the work, and with the other hand held a weapon.” It must be fought, although it is something very distressing that there is so much strife in Christianity. Many push themselves against it and go astray. Many fall in battle or are wounded at least. It is also, let us say with Luther, the greatest and most harmful annoyance of the Church, the dissension and division in doctrine, which even the devil drives to the highest, and is generally brought about by a number of arrogant, stubborn and overambitious heads, who want to be something special, to fight for their honor and glory; they cannot be compared with anyone else, thinking it would be their disgrace if they were not of a more learned and greater spirit, others do not give honor to anyone, even if they see that he has greater gifts than they. Therefore it must be fought against the false spirits, it requires the honor of God. Where the Word of God is taught clearly and more purely, where the doctrine is diligently pursued, that we are justified without works by faith alone, there the name of God is sanctified. But Satan does not like this; he wants us to teach and live differently than the Word of God teaches; he tries to lead us away from the Word in every way, in a crass way so that we reject it, in a finer way so that we allow ourselves to be led astray from the right meaning of it. And Satan never lacks tools. The world is an enemy of the Word, for it takes all glory from the haughty hearts of men and disturbs them in their lust for sin.
Are we to stand by and watch Satan rob God of His glory, when He wants to deceive us that we do not give God His due glory? Are we to watch idly when the Pope, as the real Antichrist, fights against Christ with his servants? — when the rationalists want to put blind reason over God's Word and take away the sole dominion of the divine Word. Shall we let the United “evangelicals”
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have their way, who betray the heavenly truth, and consider error equal to error? Shall we be silent when the doctrine of grace is obscured by innumerable people?
No, we cannot do this. If there is to be peace, if there is to be peace, if there is to be an end to war, then this is only possible if Satan ceases to be Satan and God's adversary; but this is not possible; or if we deny Christ and his Word and make common cause with our enemies; — we cannot, we do not want to, we would dishonor God. — It cannot be otherwise; the salvation of the Church also demands a struggle. Only through struggle are the treasures given to the Church preserved, which the enemies want to snatch from her. The crown is robbed from the one who does not hold what he has and does not defend himself against those who want to take it from him. — — Those err grievously who think that it is best for the church to live quite peacefully, without struggle. God's Word and experience tell us otherwise. How can the church be in a happy state when truth and error are peacefully reconciled, when the wolves are not prevented from tearing the sheep apart? “These are”, — says Luther, “very wise, excellent people who can teach the Holy Spirit how to govern the Christian Church. Yes, my friend, if the devil did not want to bite Christ's heels, or had to leave it alone, such a quiet, peaceful church would be easy to have.” — (see Prof. Günther's Foreword to volume 40 of Der Lutheraner.)
Such a cemetery peace reigned in the Lutheran Church in this country before the Saxon Lutherans and those who left the Ohio Synod raised their voices, before Der Lutheraner in particular let its testimony go out. Where Satan's works are attacked, such things cause much uproar. He meant it seriously and led many a companion into battle. But what did the founders of the Missouri Synod do? What weapons did they use in battle? It is often emphasized in this writing that they brought the divine Word and nothing else.
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But they were also serious about God's Word, so the truth they fought for had to win. They did not try any experiments in church order, they did not rely on human statutes and authorities, they wanted to build the temple, which is invisible in itself, yet stands firmer than heaven and earth, because Jesus Christ is its cornerstone. For the name of the Lord Jesus they offered their souls, as it is said of Saul and Barnabas. This is why they also fought against delusion, as if the efficacy of the Word and the holy sacraments were bound to some human institution, or to a particular teaching within the Church. Christ and His Word alone shall prevail, otherwise no one shall rule in the Church of God! The Missouri Synod is built on this foundation. “The written Word of God”, so the Constitution of the Missouri Synod declares, in agreement with the Lutheran Confession, that Holy Scripture alone must be and remain the source, rule and guideline of faith, both for those who come with us and for those who wish to remain members of our church fellowship. The Word of Christ also proves its worth in the case of a synod; that only such a house built on a rock will stand still when the rain is falling and the winds are blowing; but such a house built on sand must make a great fall in the time of trial. Someone might object, it goes without saying that in a Lutheran synod one refers to the Scriptures! Yet there are not many of them today who do not prefer a sandy ground to the rock-solid ground of the divine Word. The spirit of union, which is like a pestilential air over the Protestant area, has led to the opinion that in many doctrines, especially those concerning discernment, the Holy Scriptures are dark and some articles of faith are so doubtful that they should be relaxed for everyone until perhaps the whole Church has decided them, that is, until they have become one. Such people build their houses on sand! They do not believe that the Word carries the church, they think,
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the church must sustain the Word. That is why some base their faith on the so-called Christian consciousness, or on their enlightened reason, or on a doctrinal development in the history of the Church, i.e. on tradition. Even our newest opponents cry out: The fathers, fathers! and boast that they have “witnesses” for their little finds, even though they do not meet the meaning of these fathers, who are actually the later Lutheran dogmatists. But even if it were the case that they could rightly refer to such fathers, the Christian conscience is trapped only in God's Word, and cannot be bound to any human testimony. Luther's enemies had much more reason than our opponents of today can have when they said that not with the Holy Scriptures but with the Roman Catholic fathers, and with the decisions of the councils, they could refute Luther's doctrines. But just as Luther, when asked: “Would you be wiser than so many fathers, popes and councils?”, answered: not my word and not yours, nor the word of the fathers shall apply, “The Word of God shall establish articles of faith, and no one else, not even an angel!” [SA II, 2, 15] How Luther pointed backwards from the Fathers to the foundation of the apostles and prophets, and recalled Christianity to Christ, the only arch-Shepherd, and how Luther spoke the word to all the rebellious spirits who wanted to teach him, Matt. 17:5: “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear ye him”, so the founders of the Missouri Synod also went back, they preferred to sit at the fount of the Reformation, through which the pure fountains of Israel were reopened to Christianity. Already in 1866 Dr. Walther confessed in a Synod address: “When 20 years ago, 16 pastors gathered in the city of Fort Wayne (as reported in chapter VI of this writing) to draft a constitution for the then newly formed Synod of Missouri, Ohio and other States, these pastors proceeded from the conviction, which they had acquired by God's grace, that the Evangelical Lutheran Church of the Unaltered Augsburg
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Confession is the true visible Church of God on earth, and that therefore the doctrines laid down in the public confessions of this church were pure, as purified silver in an earthen crucible, and that they proved their worth seven times over; convinced that Luther was not a mere witness of this or that truth, but the angel with the eternal Gospel promised in God's Word, who was to fly through the midst of heaven, the Reformer of the Church chosen, awakened and called by God Himself, and that the Reformation victoriously carried out through Luther's ministry was a real Reformation, a true renewal of the Church, they decided to do nothing new, but to take the Church of the Reformation as their model in all aspects, in doctrine and practice”, (Lutherische Brosamen p. 535) [From Our Master's Table, p. 251].
When the founders of the Missouri Synod took this path, there was no shortage of enemies who prophesied their doom, and there was no lack of manifold accusations and blasphemies. To this day, however, the exhibitions of the opponents cancel each other out. Because the Missouri Synod with Luther granted the preaching ministry no violence other than that of the Word and the full dignity of the spiritual priesthood to believing Christians, it was accused of abandoning the faith to the arbitrariness of the mob; and because it was at the same time anxious to lay the foundation for a Evangelical order and discipline and to sharpen the use of confessional registration and of both keys, it was accused of Papist presumption of power and priestly rule. The same thing is still happening today. While our newest opponents accuse us of apostasy from Lutheranism, as if we had fallen to Calvinism, which is rejected in our confessional writings, they accuse us once again of being far too exclusive Lutherans, of associating “exaggerations” with the confessional writings, while we do not tolerate differences in subordinate points (namely doctrinal points) and do not accept such open questions as the Iowans prefer. This is the judgment of Pastor W. Rohnert, who already made himself known in the Election of Grace controversy,
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and his booklet entitled: Kirche, Kirchen und Sekten (Church, Churches and Sects), published in 1885 in 3rd edition. Only then, if the Lutheran confession did not go back to God's Word in all parts, would we have to distinguish between those doctrines which we consider binding and those which we release. That is the way we judge the teachings of the heterodox, whose confession is only partially correct; but we accept the Lutheran Confessions without reserve, because we recognize in it the thoroughly Scriptural confession and the Evangelical Lutheran Church, to which the Missouri Synod wants to belong, as the orthodox church of this last age.
It was this realization that lived in those who gathered in 1847 to found the Missouri Synod. Not church-political plans, but: “I believe, therefore I speak”, that was the sole reason for that documentary testimony of their confession. The old Lutheran rhyme: “God's Word and Luther's Doctrine Pure Shall to Eternity Endure” was not only written by the Synod as its watchword at the top of its publications, it was also written and it shone and burned as a light and fire in the hearts that Luther was the Reformer or church-renewer awakened by God in this last age of the world, and that the church named after him was the bearer of pure Christian doctrine appointed by God. From this also follows the seriousness with which the Missouri Synod follows the apostolic injunction: “Contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints.” [Jude 3] The Lutheran symbols should not only be carried around in the hand or reside on the pastors’ bookshelves, but the solemn subscription to the Word of God and of the Church's confessions should not only be regarded as an church law, whereby one enters the synodical association as if through a door, generally by committing oneself; the inner conviction of truth should move the whole heart and life, and whether the number of synod members is increasing or decreasing, the testimony of truth must nevertheless go forth, and
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unity on the basis of truth, that is the unity of the Spirit alone, must be the one that is to be held ever more firmly, the more old and new enemies rise up against this testimony. As St. Paul prophesied to the apostolic church in Acts 20:30, it was also fulfilled in the Missouri Synod that false spirits arose from their own midst. The word they wrote on their banner was not taken from Scripture, nor from the Lutheran confessional writings, but its wording was in accordance with later dogmatic writings. The temptation came close to letting these spirits be granted. In other synods one is used to tolerate the deviation from the individual doctrines, and even to enter into communion and pulpit fellowship with false believers, if one only generally professes to be a Lutheran! It is certain, however, that where no doctrinal discipline is practiced, the gates are opened to the enemy who undermines the walls of the church; there the church becomes more and more a playground for those whom Luther at Marburg in 1529 once called: “You have a different spirit than we!” That is why the Missouri Synod was only able to exist as an orthodox church fellowship in itself, by renouncing, according to the command of God, not only all fellowship with sects outside its camp, but also the false spirits that arose from its own midst. — As much as the members of the Missouri Synod liked to extend the hand of fellowship to those who shared the same doctrinal ground with them, or as much as they were increasingly determined to follow the Lutheran doctrine in practice, they had to testify decidedly, and prove by their action, that an outward, “paper” pledge to the Word of God and the symbols is not sufficient, for wherever a synod or a church body tolerates a syncretistic practice and in fact declares that it is right, there it has either already fallen inwardly, or it has never even stood in the confession of the truth. Where false doctrine and practice is not resisted, there can also
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the commitment to pure doctrine does not last long. That is why we hold Luther's word against those who stand in the midst of such syncretistic fellowships and yet want to be considered Lutherans: “Contradict the willful spirits, otherwise your confession will be merely a mask, and of no use. Whoever considers his doctrine, faith, and confession, to be true, and not uncertain, cannot stand in the same stall with others, who teach false doctrine, or are adherents of the same, and cannot continue to speak fair words to the devil and his allies. A teacher who keeps silence in the face of errors and nevertheless wants to be a true teacher is worse than an open enthusiast, and does greater harm with his hypocrisy than a heretic; you cannot trust him.” [St.L. ed. vol. 17, p. 1180; not in Am. Ed.; from a talk with Georg Major]
It was Luther's steadfastness and loyalty to his confession that the dead indifference in matters of faith and the syncretistic spirit, which is only concerned with increasing the visible crowd, was stopped for quite some time. But it again required all the more seriousness and zeal to raise the banner in the midst of the current generation, following the example of the Church of the Reformation, which not only represents a certain trend, but calls back the scattered children of the Lutheran Church to the previous path, the path of truth.
“We have, if you want to call it that, made an attempt”, Dr. Walther testified in the synodical address of 1866, “to see if the doctrines of the 16th century could not also help souls in our 19th century. We have made the attempt to see whether the tree of our old Lutheran Church, which once bore such wonderful fruit for the salvation of millions of people for thousands of years, will not still show its old driving force and fruitfulness today, — and behold! our hope has not been shamed. … The old doctrine has now again shown its old and eternally new force; thousands of souls have been led to faith
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and through faith to salvation, and a church has risen, united in faith and confession and shining in love and good works.” — — “Remember, my brethren! the blessing bestowed upon us is not due to our wisdom, still less to our dignity or our zeal, but by God's grace alone to the fact that we have desponded of our knowledge, will and ability, as obedient children of the old Lutheran Church, returned to our mother's church, namely to her doctrine and practice.” (Lutherische Brosamen, p. 541) [From Our Master's Table, p. 254] What is the state of the Missouri Synod now? By God's grace, she is still united in faith and confession and radiant in love and good works today. It is already noted at the beginning of this writing that the world wanted to prophesy to the founders of the Missouri Synod from the beginning an imminent end of its activity. No sooner had the Saxon Lutherans settled in this country than one read in a radical public paper that the founders of this fellowship had been driven out of Germany (which is not true), and that the time would come when these Old Lutherans would also be driven out of America! Now no one dares to say that the Missouri Synod has grown to the detriment of the Church or the civic estate. If one were to weigh the diligence in literary works or the industriousness in good works with the activity of other fellowships, the Missouri Synod, as recent years have shown, does not lag behind others; this should be remembered especially by those who think that our Orthodoxy is something dead, that the spiritual life must be lacking in the strict Lutherans. The new seminary building, which is an ornament not only for St. Louis, but for the whole Lutheran Church, the schools for higher education and other educational institutions, of which there are more and more, with a total number of 900 students, taught by 34 professors, the orphanages, asylums, the Emigrant and Negro Mission, and finally the church buildings, of which in the last year 1883 in the Missouri Synod 92 were completed, while the General Synod
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had 54, and General Council 82, all these are signs of life of which we must not be ashamed. Although the number of Missourian pastors has also grown to nearly 850, we must not forget that rapid growth and expansion sometimes occurs among enthusiastic fellowships, and even the Mohammedans of old are an example of this.
In the narrower sense, therefore, the question should be asked: where does it come from that congregations *) are pressing to get pastors from us? Could it be because they realize that we are only seeking the wool of the sheep? Or is it not rather because they know that our pastors do not deceive them, do not feed them empty-handedly, but take good care of them. We can comfortably point to what is before our eyes and say: come and see! We can see and notice that it is a matter of the heart for the pastors, that they themselves have experienced what they preach. It is true that they base their sermons on pure doctrine; they are not for the so-called revivals, for revivals brought about by compulsion; they do not resort to new measures; they do not intend to only stir up the minds and thus to catch them, but they preach the Word of God publicly and privately, the Law in its severity, the Gospel in its sweetness, of which it is certain in their hearts that the Word of God has a power that makes it alive in itself, that true heavenly divine life comes only from the Word, that it is not their ministry to give the Word even more special power and emphasis through their own actions and doings. They relentlessly punish all sins, go after the erring, seek to raise up the fallen, to comfort the afflicted, to make those in doubt certain. — Even
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*) Also in the present year 1884, 70 congregations asked for candidates and therefore turned to the St. Louis faculty. Unfortunately only 40 could be provided with standing pastors. However, it is gratifying to see the trust that these vacant congregations place in the St. Louis faculty and the District Presidents.
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R. Hoffmann, who died in the Union (“Evangelical”), has to acknowledge some things in his booklet about the Evangelical Lutheran Missouri Synod and writes about it, p. 23: “This much must be acknowledged, that the Missourians owe no small part of their influence to the unshakable consistency with which they suppress everything that looks like a strange fire on the altar, for the simple Christian in particular does not want to waver and vacillate in matters of faith, but rather desires a firm ground and secure support.”.*) R. H. thinks that this firmness is the power of the Missourians, but it is something much greater, because the Missourian pastors like to put their own person in the background. It is rather the power of the Word of God, which breaks its way into the hearts of the listeners, and fills them with such a clear conviction that the church members can say with those Samaritans: “Now we believe, not because of thy saying: for we have heard him ourselves, and know that this is indeed the Christ, the Saviour of the world”. [John 4:42] — We are servants of God and not of men, therefore we also want to strengthen in our hearers the state of grace which they have through faith in Christ, so powerfully that all doubts will give way and the joyful certainty will be worked through the Holy Spirit, of which it is said: “You have received an anointing!” [cp. 1 John 2:27]
Such Lutherans, who are attached to pure words, no longer want to hear the voice of the stranger, therefore we do not need any church property insurance, with which other synods sometimes want to chain the congregations to themselves. God protect us
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*) R. Hoffmann adds: “We could at least learn this much determination from Missouri, that we finally close the doors of the churches to those who have broken the foundations of faith, and that we stop building even more stern bridges, where every bridge is a denial of Christ.” — This is a pious wish which cannot be realized in today's state churches, because the principle of the ruling Union is this: Indifference in matters of faith, equal justification of error with truth; the truth itself must only be half preached, because everything is more permitted than the Lutheran reproof [Elenchus]; false doctrine must not be publicly rejected.
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from such coercive measures! The sheep of Christ, though simple-minded, have a sensitive ear, and so they learn to distinguish between the voice of a stranger and the Shepherd's voice of Christ, and so they realize what a pasture it is to which they are led! Such a small group of Christians, who are firmly convinced that this is the right way to eternal life, which God has revealed once and for all, who know in whom they believe and who do not equate their God with a fashionable man who reveals himself today in this way and tomorrow in another way, certainly arouses the wrath of the devil and turns the world against us. But we must not care about the judgment of the world, if we only bring souls to Christ and to heaven, then it must be the same for us, whether the world despises or praises us for it, because we know that we will not be judged according to its standard.
Where does it finally come from,that people not only hasten to hear God's Word, but that the members of the congregation also become zealous to do the Lord's work, that they give large sums of money every year for the purposes of the kingdom of God, without being forced to do so by pastoral command, even without the synodical assembly being allowed to impose any conditions? Is this dead orthodoxy, or is it the love of Christ that drives them? That they receive, with great sacrifices, their own week-day schools and are not only concerned with the education of their children in the Lord, but also with the spreading of the Word of God in general? The children of God, who have come to true freedom in Christ their Lord, recognize the purpose that God has with them in this world, namely, that they should serve their fellow man for their salvation and benefit. Otherwise He would certainly take Christians out of the world into heaven as soon as they were converted, but now He makes them for the time being associates and co-workers in His Kingdom of Grace on earth. The joyfulness of Christians, who have become certain of eternal life, also drives them to the right use of earthly goods; once they have become masters over sin, death and the devil, they have
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also become masters of Mammon, and scatter it for the blessing of others and for the edification of the kingdom of God. But there is also a lack of love where the hope of eternal life is missing, as it must be under the fetters of the Law. The Apostle, 1 Cor. 13:13, does not link hope with love (sanctification), but to faith; he leaves hope between them: “But now there remains faith, hope, love!” [after Luther Bibel 1545] Let an example show how overflowing with comfort also the rightly understood doctrine of the Election of Grace is for Christians, for this doctrine is preached only to Christians. Just at the same time that the prevailing doctrinal controversy, which grieved many minds, forced them to preach more thoroughly and more often than usual about the Election of Grace for the children of God, the question arose in a small congregation in Illinois whether and what the members wanted to give to the new building in St. Louis. The pastor in question, G. G., writes that he was glad that his congregation was willing to give a sum of money in the congregation, because he was almost worried that his congregation would feel burdened because of a bad harvest that year. The next day, however, three men came to him and declared that they found this sum too small and had decided among themselves that they (the three of them) wanted to themselves alone give this sum for the new building. They asked that another meeting be called. This happened, and the sum agreed upon the first time was doubled. When the pastor asked the three men what motivated them to do this charity, the answer was: “If you hear such sermons as the sermons of the Election of Grace, your heart will have been such that you would like to do something in honor of God!” — If we add to all this the fact that the stream of immigration from Europe, like a slow-moving migration of peoples, is pouring into America, it is certainly not presumptuous to recall here the old prophecies and testimonies which already in the last century pointed to America as the country which in its time
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would become a Pella to orthodox Christians. Thus Dr. Joh. Ph. Fresenius wrote in Frankfurt in 1756: “Let us consider that perhaps this remote part of the world, in time, when God will visit European Christians with severe punishments for their great ingratitude, could become a place of refuge and salvation for the few believers.” — When somewhat more than twenty years later the North American United States had formed, which had made the separation of church and state and complete freedom of religion a main principle of its constitution, the deacon Uhrlandt wrote in Gera: “The Church of Jesus Christ should and will remain, even if He, since the earth is large, should rebuild it outside Europe, and the political circumstances are becoming more and more conducive to this, especially since now in the West an independent Christian state has come into being.” What these enlightened men suspected, a careful observer must now see fulfilled with astonishment. Although even here in this country ruin penetrates like a flood of blood, it pleases God to build His Church from this family; the door is wide open for the Church of the Reformation here; it, which lies in ruins in Germany, is to be rebuilt here in this country on the old, eternal foundation! Therefore it happens, without doubt, that the faithful God preserves our Synod without our merit and worthiness, and permits it to stand; it is to work as leaven and as a renewing salt, and by means of true Christianity and true Lutheranism to resist destruction; it has already proved itself as an asylum for many who entered the hospitable shores of this country in a depraved and neglected state. In a period of forty years, while other synods wavered and sought many arts without finding the right support, the Missouri Synod remained solid and immovable on the ground upon which it was built from the beginning. As impetuously as she was invaded on all sides, she did not allow herself
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to be made to waver in her resolve to follow the example of the Church of the Reformation unwaveringly on the path she had trodden. On this way that came to pass which is now plain. The confession of the full, entire heavenly truth is again placed on the lampstand, thousands and thousands know again what Lutheran doctrines and ways are. Should we now think that the time has come to go for once beyond Luther, and to correct the God-appointed Reformer, who leads his students back to Holy Scriptures, as our contemporary opponents and other wiseacres have tried to do? That would mean to forsake and despise the God-given blessing of the Reformation and the pure doctrine that has been given again! We may be called Lutherists, but if we are only true Lutherists, then we are also honest Bible Christians, who admittedly renounce false teachers and sects according to God's command, “for they believe not in Luther (as Luther writes), but in Christ Himself. The Word has them, and they have the Word.” [St. L. ed. 15, 1670, § 18; Am. Ed. 43, 68: “To All Who Suffer Persecution”] This is the Word or faith that the Missouri Synod has remained in until now, and what St. Paul writes to Timothy again applies to us today: “Keep that which is committed to thy trust!” [1 Timothy 6:20] There can be no greater grace for a church fellowship than to be the bearer of pure doctrine as appointed by God. The more clearly we recognize it, it is not by our merit that we hold on to the pure gospel, it is God's grace alone that holds us, the more seriously we must watch and pray that no one takes our crown from us!
O Lord! Let it be so ordered
The Christian holy church congregation,
Preserve them on earth!
Through war and victory,
Through suffering and joy,
Until there the glory of heaven
Will be revealed.
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In the next Part 20, Hochstetter's obituary.
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