The Story of Lutheran Missions

by Elsie Singmaster

Upon the ministers of the Church the alliance with the State wrought its evil effect. The ambitions of a bishop of Rome led him in 442 to ask the weak Emperor that he be made the head of western Christendom. Henceforth the See of Rome grew more and more powerful. The Church lost entirely the democratic quality of its early life. Pope Gregory claimed toward the end of the Eleventh Century that he had power not only over the souls of men but over all rulers. The lives of great prelates grew evil, the administration of ecclesiastical affairs venal, the pure Gospel was obscured. A mistaken emphasis was put upon good works as a means of winning that forgiveness of sin which God had promised for Christ’s sake. Before the missionary stream could flow for the blessing and healing of mankind, a clear passage must be opened to its Source.

|Boniface.| Among the missionaries who had set out full of zeal from the English Church in the Eighth Century was Boniface, a man of extraordinary energy and power. Among the fields in which he worked was that of Thuringia in Germany. Here, among the dark forests, encouraged and supported by the Pope and by the ruler, Charles Martel, he preached the Gospel, converting thousands and binding them to Rome. With the Gospel he gave them a new sort of superstition, an idolatrous reverence for Rome and a deep awe of the sacred relics which he brought with him. He established monasteries, synods, schools, and required not only faith but knowledge of the forms of the Church, such as the Lord’s Prayer and the Creed. When an old man, he went to visit the country of Friesland which had rejected his early preaching and there with his companions was murdered.

|The Church of Germany.| His Church, however, continued. Closely bound to the great Roman See, it reproduced all the evils of that powerful organization. Here were the great celibate orders, here collections of relics, here a constant demand for money to build magnificent churches and to support an idle and ignorant priesthood. Here, especially, was a tremendous traffic in indulgences by which in exchange for money the sinner could secure not only release from penance on earth and pain in purgatory, but, to the minds of the ignorant, actual pardon for sin. The essential truths of Christ’s teaching were forgotten while men busied themselves with a thousand non-essentials and found no peace for their souls.

Now, as in other times of dire need God provided a man should point to the true way of salvation.

|Martin Luther.| In Germany, as well as in all other parts of the Church, there were many simple, devout Christians whose superstition was underlaid by a deep and childlike faith. To two such pious souls, Hans and Margaret Luther, there was born in 1483, seven hundred years after Boniface had died, a son, Martin. Hans Luther was a poor miner who had moved before Martin’s birth from Möhra to the village of Eisleben. For this son Hans and Margaret were ambitious. They wished him to possess first of all a good character and to that end trained him strictly. His mother taught him simple prayers and hymns and that God for Christ’s sake forgives sin. They wished in the second place that the lad should rise above their humble estate and for that reason sent him to school, first to Mansfield and Magdeburg, then to Eisenach.

|University Days.| When he was eighteen years old Martin entered the University of Erfurt. His father had become more prosperous and continued in his determination that the boy should have every possible opportunity.

Luther was popular among his mates. He won his bachelor’s then his master’s degree and began the study of the law for which his father intended him. Suddenly with crushing disappointment to that ambitious father and to the amazed disapproval of his friends, he abandoned together the study of the law and the world itself and entered a monastery.

|“What Must I Do to be Saved?”| It had not been his studies alone which had occupied the young man during his university course, but meditation upon the needs of his own despairing soul. We have every evidence that he led a pure and godly life, yet the weight of that sin to which all mankind is heir lay heavily upon him. To a man of his time there was but one way of escape--the monastery, in which he might work out his salvation. Vowed to celibacy, to poverty, to obedience, devoting himself to prayer and fasting, he might hope to be saved.

If “Brother Augustine,” as he was called, had any fault as a monk, he erred upon the side of too strict obedience. He followed all the rules of the order, he fasted, he scourged himself cruelly. But still he found no peace. God appeared to him an implacable judge, whose laws it was impossible to keep. He wearied his fellow-priests with confessions and inquiries, but his heart was not at rest.

|The Answer.| Finally, however, he found an answer to his question. Partly by the help of his superiors, chiefly by the aid of the Scriptures, which, contrary to the custom of the time, he studied diligently, he saw a new light. God was a kind Father who required only that his children should throw themselves in faith upon His grace, accepting Christ’s sacrifice for them. Good works were simply the natural expression of a soul already reconciled with God and could have in themselves no merit. If one simply believed, one was justified by his faith. That this doctrine was not that of the Church, Martin did not realize.