It was in 1829, one year before the 300th anniversary of the Augsburg Confession, that Keyl was unexpectedly called to the sacred ministry, having passed his candidate examination not long before. According to one of his old friends, he had hesitated for a long time to register for the candidates' examination, even though his friends had often encouraged him to do so. The reason for this hesitation did not lie in his concern that he would not be able to pass the exam, for he had faithfully and diligently bought out his years of study and had always, even in the years when he had not yet found his Savior, kept away from the wild life and hustle and bustle that was so common among students. He himself said that his natural love and respect for his father, who had devoted so much love and care to him, had protected him from gross sin in his youth and had been a spur to diligent study. So it is easy to see that a young man as gifted as Keyl was, who was particularly gifted with an enormous memory and considerable eloquence, and who had spent his time diligently, had certainly collected a rich treasure of knowledge and science, so that he need not have feared an examination. The reason why he nevertheless hesitated so long was probably solely because he had the means to devote himself to his studies for longer without worrying about food.
Now, as already mentioned, he had barely passed his exams when he was unexpectedly called to the preaching ministry. When we say "quite unexpectedly", this is for the following reasons: firstly, because at that time the number of candidates for the preaching ministry waiting for appointment was so great that some were probably 40 years old, and even older, before a pastorate was found for them; so naturally the young candidate Keyl could not yet hope for an early appointment; secondly, because at that time of the full reign of rationalism it was not easy for a believing candidate to get a pastorate. And why not? Not because Christ and his gospel had become completely unknown to most of the regional church congregations, so no believing preachers were desired and sought by them (and of course, if a congregation had desired one, it would hardly have received one, because they were also deprived of the right to vote); and because there were mostly only enemies of Christ and his gospel in the church rulers, the believing candidates were scornfully passed over and set back by them. Because they were still awakening souls to repentance through their preaching, they were regarded as dangerous people who were driving people crazy. But the Lord of the Church, Christ, knew well how to find his servants and ministers and, despite all the enemies' cunning and mischievousness, how to bring them into office; for he is and remains the arch-shepherd of his Church, who places faithful shepherds and teachers when and where he wills.
The pious candidate Keyl was also able to experience this to strengthen his faith when, against all expectations, he was quickly called to the preaching ministry. This invitation must have been all the more welcome to him as it came from a man who was not only a high-ranking person in the state, but also a resolute Christian and a fearless confessor of his Savior. This was the then living Royal Saxon Privy Cabinet Minister Count Detlev von Einsiedel. This pious count, who also practiced his faith by seeking to fill the congregations of his patronage with living, believing preachers, had also been made aware of the candidate Keyl and sent him an invitation to preach a trial sermon in a vacant congregation at the first opportunity that presented itself. This was the pastorate in Niederfrohna near Penig (located in the Mulde valley, crossed by the Mulde river, in the Erzgebirge district of the Kingdom of Saxony), which had become vacant due to the retirement of the previous elderly pastor, with a branch in Mittelfrohna, a parish with 1340 souls at the time. On the 9th Sunday after Trinity in 1829, he preached his trial sermon there in the presence of Count von Einsiedel on the words of the Savior prescribed to him by the Count: "When you pray, go into your closet and close the door and pray to your Father in secret; and your Father, who sees in secret, will reward you publicly." Immediately afterwards he was ordained, and on the 14th Sunday after Trinity he preached his inaugural sermon there.
One of his first confirmands, a respectable Christian woman who had already been awakened by Keyl in her childhood, recently told us the following about his arrival in Frohna: "When Pastor Keyl arrived in our congregation in Germany, we schoolchildren went out to meet him and greet him. He was deeply moved by this and gave a heartfelt speech to us children, which also moved us deeply. Among other things, he also said: 'Dear children! I am an orphan; I am lonely and alone in the world. My dear mother died 20 years ago (when he was only 5 years old) and my unforgettable father died 10 years ago. Oh, if my dear parents were present here and could see how I am so kindly received and greeted by you, how they would rejoice and be happy with me, their son!"
But no sooner had Keyl taken up his post in Frohna than the news spread like wildfire through the surrounding area: an arch-mystic (i.e. a mystic) and pietist (i.e. a pious man) had come to Frohna. Such names were used in those days for all preachers who were still awakening souls to repentance and who, despite all the mockery and derision of the educated and uneducated mob, were not ashamed of the despised Jesus and his Gospel. So our dear Keyl had to bear the reproach of Christ in abundance from the very beginning of his preaching ministry, and the hardest thing for him was that it was inflicted on him partly by his own parishioners. A very special tool of the devil was Keyl's school teacher in Niederfrohna, who, filled with hatred and anger against Christ, did not rest from blaspheming Keyl, writing pasquilles against him and secretly accusing him falsely to the church authorities; and an equally malicious enemy was Keyl's superintendent, who tried to make his life sour and difficult in every way. Keyl was considered to be a dangerous man who could make it impossible for people who came into close contact with him to get away from him. It was said that anyone who went to church with him even once would be so enchanted by him that he would become a mucker and a head-hanger from that very hour, consider the most innocent pleasures of the world to be sinful and now lead a constricted and dismal life. The most gruesome stories were invented about rapturous events that were supposed to have occurred as a result of the mystical treatment of the soul, and they were reported as truth in public newspapers.
It is true that strange and peculiar things were going on in Keyl's church, reminiscent of the times of the visitations of grace of the first church; Christ was on the scene there and therefore the devil did not celebrate. Satan sought in all sorts of ways to hinder the gospel of Christ, for he was well aware that in that place his kingdom was to be destroyed and many souls caught in its bonds were to be saved from it. He was not unaware that in the pious, zealous young preacher in Niederfrohna a stronger one, Christ, had come upon him, who wanted to take away his armor; but he wanted to defend himself against this with poisonous blasphemies, and therefore he had Christ's instrument thrown at him with the dung of slander. Of course, this was nothing new, but it only confirmed the experience made at all times, namely that Satan's main weapon against Christ's servant is slander. After all, our Savior himself had to be called a sorcerer because he converted people from the devil's service to God's kingdom and put a stop to Satan's work. However, such fabricated slander does not harm the kingdom of Christ, but must rather serve to further it according to God's wise counsel.
Our blessed Keyl also had this experience in his first congregation in Niederfrohna. The blameless slander had to be a spur and motivation for him to cast the net of the Gospel all the more diligently, the more Satan tried to prevent it, and to lay the sickle all the more eagerly on the ripe harvest, the more Satan threatened to destroy it. The excessive blasphemies of the unbelievers must also have served to make his name known far and wide, and consequently to extend his effectiveness far beyond the boundaries of his parish; for the rumor spread about him led many people, curious and eager for salvation, believers and unbelievers, mockers and worshippers of Christ, from far away to him in the church. If at that time the churches were empty almost everywhere on Sundays, so that the miserable rationalists had to recite their spiritless and spirit-killing sermon before the sexton and an old woman, but otherwise before empty pews: Keyl, on the other hand, had a crowded church at all services, and the people crowded to him to hear the word of God; and so it happened that the more Satan sought to blaspheme the work of the Lord, the more the kingdom of God spread.
It cannot be denied that the great humiliation which the young preacher Keyl had to endure there in Muldenthal contributed not a little to the fact that during his nine years of preaching in Niederfrohna, and especially in the first years of his ministry, he developed such a powerful and blessed ministry in preaching and pastoral care that even today the mouths of his former and here (in Perry County, Missouri) still living confessors are full of it. We have before us a letter dated 1871, addressed to the blessed Keyl, which was written by one of his former confessors, a pious old man now almost eighty years old, and concludes with the following words:
"Well, dear Pastor, I still often remember the beautiful time when I and others walked from Burgstädt to Niederfrohna to the house of God. There you were the instrument in the hand of God to put the first spark of true Christian knowledge into our hearts according to the order of salvation. For at that time, although we had been awakened by God's grace from the sleep of sin, we had a very deficient knowledge of the way of salvation, and had taken many enthusiastic things into our hearts: but through you we were led on the right path; for you led us into the catechism and the symbolic books; there we also got to know our mother, the dear Lutheran Church. Oh, that was of indescribable benefit to me and many others. Where would we have ended up if God had not led us to you and through you guided us out of many an aberration onto the right path? Perhaps we would have drifted around in our conventicles for a while and then, one by one, we would have fallen back into the world. Therefore, even today, after forty years, I must praise it as a great and unspeakable good deed, and I confess that I owe you an indelible debt of gratitude."
When we say that Keyl's work in Niederfrohna in Saxony was so blessed that hundreds soon came to a true life of faith through his faithful ministry, we are not saying too much. Because, as has already been mentioned, through the blasphemies of the unbelievers his name became known far and wide as that of one who was not ashamed of the Gospel; so it happened that from all sides whole crowds of souls eager for salvation from congregations where miserable rationalists held the pulpits flocked to Frohna church to quench the thirst of their souls in the genuinely evangelical sermons of the much-maligned young preacher.
There were not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty and noble, but foolish, weak, ignoble and despised people in the eyes of the world; They were mostly poor linen weavers and hosiery workers who, after working day after day throughout the week until the night fell, like a draught animal under its yoke, at their workstations in order to eke out a miserable existence, set off early on Sunday morning to enjoy and gather the bread of life in Frohna, miles away, and to strengthen their souls in God. And oh! how cheerfully they traveled along their road, holding Godly conversations, singing lovely spiritual songs, without paying attention, much less complaining that their feet were getting tired, as if they were being carried on eagles' wings!
And because of this godly zeal they were not praised, but were showered with ridicule and scorn, partly by their family members, partly by other acquaintances; indeed, in some places, because they withdrew and had to withdraw from their anti-Christian preachers for the sake of conscience, they were sued as separatists and involved in costly lawsuits. But all these tribulations were not able to deter the dear people from making a pilgrimage to their soul shepherd in Frohna, but only made them all the more zealous. The devil tried in vain to dampen the work, partly through the godless world, partly through the rationalistic preachers, partly through the hostile church regime, and even through the secular authorities; a fire had been kindled which all the united hostile powers, however hard they tried, tried in vain to extinguish; for it had been kindled by the Lord, therefore they were unable to dampen it. The words of the Psalm were fulfilled: "Why do the nations rage and the people speak in vain?" For the more they raged against it, the more it spread, and the more souls were seized and inflamed by it.
Even a whole crowd of awakened students made a pilgrimage from time to time from Leipzig to the Muldenthal in Niederfrohna to hear the richly blessed preacher Keyl and to see with their own eyes the image of real Christian pastoral care and a larger, living, believing community. Dr. Walther, who gave a short biography of the blessed Keyl in the 1871 edition of the "Lutheraner", says there: "The writer of this still remembers vividly that when he, a young student who had recently come to a better understanding, heard Keyl preach and bless the confirmands for the first time in 1830, it seemed as if the whole packed church was swimming in tears, and he himself experienced such a deep impression from the lectures as no sermon had ever made on him before."
We can't help but share a few more things about Keyl's work in Niederfrohna from a letter written by Pastor Bürger. He says: "About half a year after I had become assistant preacher to my father, Keyl was called to Niederfrohna, about three and a half German miles from where I lived, so that I could observe his work. I visited him often, and his company, his words and the good books in his rich library were of great use to me. As often as I visited him, I returned home strengthened, encouraged and refreshed. His sermons and his work brought about a great movement in his mother and daughter parish, and even in other parishes. Souls eager for salvation flocked to his sermons on Sundays from more distant places, who were served poison and empty straw instead of the word of God by their ventriloquist and rationalist preachers. In addition to the Sunday services, our Keyl also held edification classes during the week, which were diligently attended; which was something quite strange and offensive in the eyes of the unbelieving, safe, dead children of the world and preachers, so that mockery and nicknames were not long in coming. Keyl's work was a thorn in the devil's side. Hatred, ridicule and persecution came upon him in abundance. He was repeatedly sued, especially because of his evening services, which were called conventicles and which people did not want to suffer. For example, he was accused of depicting hell in his evening services. A witty old man who had diligently attended the evening services was once summoned to court to testify about them. Asked whether it was true that Pastor Keyl held conventicles, he replied with the counter-question: 'How? Perpenticles? And with an equally comical answer he is said to have rejected the accusation of a pictorial representation of hell. But although nothing improper could be proven against dear Keyl, he still had to pay fines, just as if he had been found guilty. Although his salary in Niederfrohna was very low, as he had to hand over the greater part of his income to his predecessor in emeritus status, he had inherited a considerable fortune from his father, so that despite all the unjust fines he had to pay, he suffered no shortage, but was able to have a well-furnished household, which an old matron managed for several years as long as he was unmarried."
From what has been said so far, it is clear enough that the blessed Keyl worked during his ministry in Germany with such great blessings as are rarely bestowed on a preacher. This was, of course, God's work, to whom alone glory and honor are due; but insofar as men are considered to be God's instruments, we must also say that it was the fruit of Keyl's untiring and quite astonishing ministry. In particular, however, his work has been of such great and lasting blessing because he himself, with his teaching, his faith and his confession, stood on the foundation and ground of the orthodox Evangelical Lutheran Church and remained unshaken, and sought to lead all his listeners and confessors only to this ground and to secure them on it. Keyl educated his penitents to a genuinely biblical Christianity that was thoroughly sound in its innermost core, as preached by the orthodox Lutheran Church. He took no new human measures to bring about revivals; but he remained simple and faithful to the old proven means of grace, introduced his listeners to the small catechism and through it to the Holy Scriptures, and above all sought to promote and strengthen them in every way in the knowledge of salvation and in pure doctrine; and this has been the reason for the lasting blessing of his work.
It is known from history that in the first half of this century great spiritual revivals occurred here and there, for example in Würtemberg, Prussia and Hanover; but what has finally become of them? They petered out, as one is wont to say, so that hardly a trace of them remained, or finally degenerated into enthusiasm. This was because they did not spring from the soil of the orthodox church, or because the revivalists were not nourished and nurtured by the spiritual breasts of the orthodox church. Just compare, for example, the revival in the Muldenthal, in Saxony, which was brought about by Keyl's activity, and the revival in the Wupperthal, in Prussia, especially in the cities of Elberfeld and Barmen, and you will easily see the enormous difference. And even the revival brought about by Ludwig Harms in Hanover cannot be compared with that in Saxony, because it did not spring from and was not founded on the sound foundation of the Lutheran Church. But what a blessing the revival in Muldenthal brought to the Lutheran Church! Through what struggles did not the Saxon Lutherans also have to go through, and were found to have stood the test and remained faithful and true! This made them stand on the firm confessional foundation of the Lutheran Church.
Keyl spared no effort in establishing it ever more firmly on this basis; for it was not only on Sundays that he was tirelessly busy from morning till late in the evening with preaching, catechizing, repeating sermons, interpreting the Bible, pastoral discussions, etc.; but also on weekdays, when he held hours of edification in addition to his many official duties, he was much taken up by souls seeking advice and consolation, who often came from far away. It was a time of a visitation of grace and revival in the Muldenthal, and it was our Keyl's privilege to collect the blessings that came from it.
He was not the only one holding up the banner of the Gospel in Muldenthal at that time. A little later, he was also supported by his brothers-in-law Otto Hermann and C. F. W. Walther, who worked with him in the same spirit and were also a great blessing, but were just as hated by the unbelieving church regime. Not long after Keyl took office in Frohna, his friend Kühn, through whose ministry, as we have already heard, he had been converted, was also called to work near him in Lunzenau. Kühn also caused a great movement in his congregation and the surrounding area. But he had barely administered his office faithfully for a year when he laid down his pastoral baton and died suddenly. There was a widespread belief among the people that he had been poisoned by his enemies. When Keyl heard of his death, he wept and said: "Alas, the heroes of Israel have fallen." Yes, all the Christians in Muldenthal were very shocked and deeply saddened by the early death of Kühn, in whom they loved and honored a chosen instrument of God. Our pastor, Mr. Bürger, who also preached Christ, was appointed as Kühn's successor. In addition, the pastors Pöschke and Kranichfeld and Dr. Rudelbach also preached the gospel in Muldenthal; but none of these men were given such a richly blessed ministry as our blessed Keyl. Nor did any of them have to endure so much shame and persecution for the sake of the Gospel as Keyl. But also in none of them dwelt such a deep knowledge of Christ, such a lively life of faith, such a burning zeal to snatch souls from the kingdom of Satan and introduce them into Christ's kingdom, such fearless witnessing courage, such willingness to bear Christ's shame, such divine power to awaken souls to repentance, such self-denial and sacrifice in the service of the Lord as in Keyl. In short, he was a highly pardoned servant of the Lord, and therefore the devil's wrath against him was great. He was able to say with the apostle: "A great door has been opened to me, which bears much fruit, and there are many adversaries." 1 Cor 16:9.
Unfortunately, however, we must also mention here that his so richly blessed - because genuinely evangelical - activity was later noticeably hindered by the fact that - as a result of his closer connection with Pastor Stephan in Dresden and his almost slavish dependence on him - he became more and more - especially in private pastoral care legalistic and (although unconsciously) priestly nature; as a result, the blessing that had flowed so richly so far (but which only the Gospel ever works) was inhibited. We will hear more about this from Keyl's own pen in the next chapter; we will hear how much he had gone astray through his carnal attachment to Stephen and through his almost blind trust in his advice and example; but we will also hear how deeply he humbled himself before God and man as a result. Far be it therefore from us to want to judge him unkindly! It is true that he erred through his own fault, but in ignorance and good opinion, and he did not know about Stephen's evil cause. As a still young and inexperienced preacher, Keyl was looking for a father in Christ, a pillar on which he could lean, and Pastor Stephan in Dresden seemed to be such a man and was taken for one by many others.
For a number of years Stephen had freely and publicly confessed Christ with a determination that was almost unprecedented at the time, and had not only testified with great zeal against the unbelief that boldly lifted up his head, but also against every falsification and confusion of faith. Many, perhaps hundreds, even thousands confessed that through him they had been saved from perdition and had come to believe in their Savior, and at the same time to recognize that the Evangelical Lutheran Church was the Church of the pure Word and the unadulterated sacraments. As a result, over time more and more people became aware of Stephan, and not only awakened laymen, but also young preachers and candidates joined him and made him their counselor of conscience. In this way, our blessed Keyl also came into contact with Stephan in his time, but this cost him dearly. We will hear more about this in the next chapter.