In 1893 an attempt was made by liberal elements in the General Synod to remove Dr. Luther Gotwald from Wittenberg Seminary. He was said to be guilty of teaching the Augsburg Confession as, “a correct expression or exhibition of fundamental divine truth”.
The record of the attacks against this conservative Lutheran makes riveting reading and speaks directly to the battles faithful Christians face from within the church.
Book Contents Preface.
“Sweet First Fruits is a delightful story primarily designed to give scope and opportunity for presenting to the Muslim reader the proofs of the Christian faith, the purity and genuineness of our Bible, its attestation by the Koran, and the consequent obligation on Muslims to obey its precepts. The argument is developed, in the dialectic style, between a party of Christian converts and their former companions.
”…The Muslim world has never, since the rise of Islam, had an appeal made to it under more favorable circumstances, nor one more likely to ensure respect, if not force conviction.
“A writer possessing not only a fine literary gift, and a marvelous power of intense emotional realization, but a fresh, strange, and fascinating imaginative outlook. We know of nothing published in recent years which, in lurid impressiveness and relentless veracity of rendering, is to be compared with the realization of the fatally dominant alcoholic craving in the study entitled ‘A Literary Gent.’ ” – “The Daily Chronicle”.
“The terrible truth which rings out in every word leaves one heart-sick, and yet thankful for the story and for the story-teller.
“The excellence of this explanation is, that it attempts no more than to analyze and explain Luther’s Catechism itself. It does not try to find in it the whole scheme of doctrine. It is intended, like Luther’s Catechism, to show a house-father how to teach his household.”
“The father, the children, the household, should use, pray, learn, prize it; and so it will become the cruse of the woman of Sarepta, in which the oil never fails.