W-Ltr2: Walther's Letters, full listing: W. shot at by liberals; on slavery; against Methodist hymns, etc.

      This continues my series (Table of Contents below) on the Letters of C. F. W. Walther. — What follows is the result of many days (weeks) of work compiling, cataloging, organizing, translating, polishing, and hyperlinking the following:

• Prof. Ludwig Fuerbringer's 2 volumes of Walther's letters, Briefe, and
• Martin Guenther's included letters in his 1890 biography of Walther Lebensbild

But the published letters of Walther were not all made available in their original German text.  Carl S. Meyer and Roy Suelflow each published books of English translations of Walther's letters taken from originals held by Concordia Historical Institute (CHI).  So these German texts are unavailable to the public, and German speaking readers are at a disadvantage.  The bulk of the English translations are:  

• CSM69: Carl. S. Meyer, Letters of C. F. W. Walther : A Selection, Fortress Press 1969 (*)
• CSM73: Carl. S. Meyer, Walther Speaks to the Church, CPH 1973
• RS80: Roy Suelflow, Correspondence of C. F. W. Walther, Roy Suelflow 1980
• RS81: Roy Suelflow Selected Letters of C. F. W. Walther, CPH 1981 

Along with these, the following books translated a sampling of Walther's letters:

• WGP47: W. G. Polack, The Story of C.F.W. Walther, CPH 1947
• AS00: August Suelflow, Servant of the Word, CPH 2000 
• MH11, M. Harrison, At Home in the House of My Fathers, CPH 2011

      The reason I undertook this project was to give public access to as many of Walther's letters as possible. All German letters have separate links to my BTL English translations. Along with my translations, I also linked to the English translations of Roy Suelflow's 1980 work previously made available.   Not yet hyperlinked are the CPH books of Carl S. Meyer and Roy Suelflow/CPH 1981, although see my note below (*) about a possible change on this.

    After I had made my compilation, I discovered that Prof. Thomas Egger published a similar listing in his contribution for the 2011 CPH book C. F. W. Walther, Churchman and Theologian.  The listings are similar except my listing is, I believe, more extensive since it includes references to the German letters from Guenther and the English translations by Polack, August Suelflow, and Matthew Harrison. Prof. Egger had the advantage over me with full access to CHI's extensive holdings (“approximately 1200”) of original Walther letters and their transcriptions.  It it too bad that so many letters of Walther at CHI are held there untranslated and are not even publicly listed. Whose fault that is, I will leave open. (Why has Prof. Egger not translated any of these?)

Some notable quotes:

1. Liberalism & radicals (1849-03-19): “The liberals of our city are already much aroused against me. On New Year's Eve somebody fired a shot through the glass window just over my bed, which stands very close to the large window and in which I was fast asleep with wife and child. It appears that the shot was only intended as a scare, but it might also be a prelude to real intentions. You can well imagine that I, though not afraid of a martyr's death, do not consider myself worthy of the death of a martyr, yet would not really care very much to seek martyrdom.”
2. On Slavery (1860-01-08): “What God permits even for Christians in the New Testament and does not command to be abolished, but regulates, cannot be a sin in itself.…Therefore, what the apostles did not condemn in Roman slavery, we must not condemn either, if we want to be Christians.… After all, we are only servants of the Word, not lords of the Word; therefore, we must stick to the Word and leave the consequences to God.… Fight only against the abuses, not against the use.”
3. To Friedrich Brunn in Germany (1865-11-08): “I cannot express how much we owe you here. Our practical seminary is by far the greatest part filled by your dear sendlings.…”
4. On Methodist hymns (1883-01-23): “The singing of such hymns would make the rich Lutheran Church into a beggar that is forced to beg from a miserable sect.”

Notes on the DeepL/BTL machine translations – LF-xx, MG-xx: (1) Page breaks were not accommodated so sentences which spanned across page breaks were not universally corrected, although some were. (2) Some letters were polished, but most were not; some terminology was corrected, e.g. Gemeinde to congregation. (3) I have assigned a serialized number to each of Fuerbringer's and Guenther's published letters and so my English translations indicate that number in the hyperlink and heading.

      I will be using the following spreadsheet for reference on Walther's Letters in the future and this blog post will be labeled “Old Missouri Resources”. It will join my popular posts for Luther's Works - St. Louis Edition, Der Lutheraner, Lehre und Wehre, Convention Essays, and others. — There are tabs at the bottom of the window for four different sort orders which allows for ease of cross-referencing. Click on each tab to observe the benefit of each: 

The above spreadsheet may be accessed as a web page > here <.

    If the reader should find any errors in the above spreadsheet or have additions to it, please advise by comment below, or better still, send me an email, as I do not get automatic notices of incoming comments. — As with Luther's Letters, may the Lord bless the Biblical, Lutheran counsel that was communicated in Walther's Letters! — In the next Part 3, Walther's letter on when one may leave a church fellowship.

- - - - - - - - - - - -  Table of Contents  - - - - - - - - - - -
Part 1 - Ludwig Fuerbringer's “Forewords” translated into English

Part 2 - This post, a spreadsheet, with translations, of all published letters of C.F.W. Walther

Part 3 - Walther's answer to “When should one leave a church fellowship?” (answer to Paul McCain)

  Excursus: Paul McCain- last comment to BTL; his passing (The Book in his hands)

Part 4 - Walther's 1876 letter to Carl Manthey Zorn: “you have not been ashamed of us”

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(*) Because Prof. Carl S. Meyer's 1969 work is out of print, was published by a disinterested Fortress Press, and is not complete in its translations, I am considering overlooking its copyright and hyperlinking to its material, especially since several of its letters have no public access to their German text.  Meyer used an eclectic group of translators who are largely not known for following the doctrine of the Lutheran Church as taught by Walther. If and when I introduce the links, I will announce it prominently in this blog post.  It will then be up to the copyright holder, Fortress Press, to notify me if they want to pursue their copyright against me.