Les Misérables: Chaste adulterers, honest thieves, truthful liars — LuW 1863

      Lehre und Wehre published a short blurb in 1863 on a subject that surely speaks to our time. The editor could be Walther, but that is not certain. In any case, the story exposes the hidden, or not so hidden, agenda of what passes today for entertainment in the various media forms.  In 1863, the media form was novels. — From LuW vol. 9 (1863), p. 94 [EN]:  

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Novels. As is well known, the novels that are now most widely read, indeed devoured by thousands, are novels of trends, that is, writings that do not want to serve the other general purpose of this literature, namely entertainment, but rather pursue certain special trends in the form of an invented exciting story, namely that of generating hatred and contempt against the existing religious, governmental and social relationships, as the source of all misery, and longing for the realization of the new radical-humanist ideas, as the only salvation of the world. Among these contemporary novels of trends, which are also devoured by the German and English public, is the book Les Misérables (The Wretched). In a public lecture about it, Pastor Kögel from the Hague said: 

“Man alone is guilty of sin. Victor Hugo knows nothing about this in his widely read book Les Misérables, which is also praised as Christian (!) [LuW editor’s mark]. He does not know how to draw a Christian; man, evil, the infinite is a fine trinity. This book is quite capable of increasing ignorance. Who is responsible for the evil? His answer is: the society gave me and I ate, it took away and I spoiled. Sin becomes an accident. The book is a religious book of sentimentality, it is the cult of novels, of chaste adulterers, of honest thieves, of truthful liars. The enlightened Christian can learn from it how very differently the Bible judges than Victor Hugo, but the deluded will learn from it to cast all blame on social and governmental relationships.” 

This novel is apparently a companion to Uncle Tom's Cabin.

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Only until recent years, especially after Susan Boyle made her stunning singing debut, have I become aware of the notoriety of the book Les Misérables by French author Victor Hugo. But these American-German Lutherans were quite aware of the "special trends", the "radical-humanist ideas" in Hugo's book in 1863, the year after its publication. — We note that the book Uncle Tom's Cabin was published just 10 years prior to Hugo's book and so the Lehre und Wehre editor did not miss the connection between these books. The irony of the final editorial comment above is that in 1927, 64 years later, Der Lutheraner ran a Concordia Publishing House advertisement that not only offered Harriet Beecher-Stowe's book for sale, it even promoted it. We can see that even in 1927, the Missouri Synod was beginning to slip away from its former staunch defense of orthodox teaching into what it is today in the LC-MS.