# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1850 10 01_S17
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Der Lutheraner.

"God's Word and Luther's doctrine pure shall to eternity endure." (Rev. of John, ch. 14, v. 6, 7.)

Published by the German Ev. Lutheran Synod of Missouri, Ohio, and other States.

Edited by C. F. W. Walther.

Year 7.  St. Louis, Mo., October 1, 1850.  No. 3.

Terms: Der Lutheraner appears once every two weeks, at the yearly subscription price of One Dollar for subscribers living at a distance, who are to pay the same in advance and bear the postage.—In St. Louis each single number is sold for 5 Cents.

Only those letters which contain communications for the paper are to be sent to the editor; all others, which contain business matters, orders, cancellations, money, etc., are to be sent hither under the address Mr. F. W. Barthel, care of C. F. W. Walther, St. Louis, Mo.

(Contributed by Pastor Keyl.)

The Old, Tried Measures of the Lutheran Church for the Abundant Exercise of the Word of God.

(Continuation.)

If in the first section we have contemplated with joyful admiration the original order of instruction in our Church, a deep sadness will seize us now when we must see how all this has become so entirely different.

"It cannot be denied," says Dr. Kliefoth, "that the germ of it lies in the time of the Reformation and in an essential defect of those ordinances themselves"; whereupon he points out that in them instruction in in biblical history is scarcely mentioned even in passing; for it was supposed that the knowledge of it was already present among the people, and it was thought that it had been sufficiently provided for, partly by the German translation of the Bible, partly by the expository preaching of the historical books; but after both had been neglected more and more, biblical history had been confined almost solely to the sermon on the ordinary Gospels; and as for the traditional material of church history, it had indeed been purified by the removal of the unclean stories of the legends of the saints, but had not been preserved for the future and faithfully used. To this I would reply the following: Dr. Luther, already at the beginning of the Reformation, in his Betbüchlein recorded the biblical histories of the Old and New Testaments which were especially to be taught, and in the preface he expressed himself in very laudatory terms about the pictorial representations of such biblical histories. He himself gave excellent models for the treatment of biblical histories in his sermons on the first and second Books of Moses, and in his sermons on the Gospels and Epistles he not only frequently interwove biblical histories of the Old and New Testaments, but also narratives from church history, yes, even preached whole sermons on them, for example on the Sunday Invocavit in the year 1537. Mathesius, Cyriacus Spangenberg, and others did the like. Dr. Luther also saw to it that the old book, held in great esteem, "Leben der Altväter," was purged of many harmful additions and published anew by G. Major. Several church orders recommend to the pastors the use of the Exempelbuch of Huberinus, but above all the study of the writings of Dr. Luther and of the Symbolical Books; the former, especially the controversial writings, for example those on Churches and Councils, contain a great store of observations on church history, such as are likewise found in the Symbolical Books; and finally the literary history of that time contains many proofs that the treatment of biblical and church history also was not neglected.

If it must now be granted that, especially soon after the time of the Reformation, the whole manner of preaching and of the exercise of the Catechism became different, yet the reason for this is to be sought not so much in the incompleteness of the old church and school ordinances, and still less in a certain one-sidedness of the Reformation's procedure; for there were, after all, excellent models enough at hand, and the fault lay with those who did not follow this example. A method of teaching arose which more resembled the cumbersome armor of Saul than the light but sure sling of David; the whole plan of sermons became artificial and was forced into certain school rules; the historical foundation was forgotten, and in its place came a dry handing down of the articles of doctrine; over the necessary strife against all sorts of false doctrine the edification in the right doctrine was neglected; men sought to forestall the growing weariness of the simple Word of God by all sorts of little stories and other additions; the language also became more halting and ever less like the powerful, peculiar church language of Luther.

The influence which J. Arnd's tendency had upon the treatment of the sermon and of the Catechism, and which is to be dated already from the year 1605, in which the first book of his True Christianity appeared.—This influence is