# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1850 10 15_S26
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

26

origin was demonstrably historical, which had perhaps already arisen among the pre-Christian Jews, or perhaps had first been rightly grasped by Athanasius and Augustine? Why this ballast and these substrata, if indeed everyone, teacher of religion and hearer alike, carried about with him always in his reason the tablet on which that which is necessary to salvation was at least also written? Finally, the old Church had well known that she preached the offense of the Jews and that which is foolish before the world; but she had also known that it is the foolishness of God, that this divine foolishness is wiser than men, that it therefore also befits the wisest of the wise, and that one can be rich and ripe in this foolishness of God and yet needs only the more, every day, the spiritual feeding. Therefore she had indeed known, for the treatment, but not for the content of the sermon, distinctions in the congregation between the educated and the uneducated, between those of age and the common people, but had preached the one Word of repentance and forgiveness in the name of God to the whole congregation, to the whole people. And in this objective bearing, as of an office appointed by God, the people had honored not the persons, but the office. When the sermon was no longer a communication of the Word of God, but instruction in the general truths of reason, could it then desire to wish to teach even those who could think for themselves, that is, the educated? Could he who scrupled to ascribe a specific dignity to his Lord and Savior demand any honor for his preaching office? Must not the preaching office content itself to become a teacher of religion for those who could not yet think, for the children and the immature people, until they, perhaps, ran away from school too? Thus simplification, narrowing, reduction on all sides was the necessary consequence."

How sharply all this has developed in actual fact has depended in many ways upon outward circumstances. Rationalism has gained in one place more, in another less, influence upon church government and church legislation; also its effects at its earlier appearance, in the second half of the last century, were still far more ruinous than later. Nevertheless a series of transformations of the old system of instruction and of the old order of teaching can be demonstrated which have become wholly or almost universal. The Bible lessons have long since vanished entirely, for people were told that the Old Testament in particular has only a historical value for us and properly belongs only to the Jews; moreover the newfangled spirit is a lofty spirit, of which such simple reading aloud and listening, without opportunity to make speeches and to hear them, could not be expected; the sermon expounding the Bible has gone the same way, and for the same reasons the sermons on the apostles' days have for the most part vanished as allegedly Catholic. Of sermons on the Gospels there can be so much the less talk in this period, since on the one hand the longing of Rationalism for a free choice of texts or for variety between Gospels and Epistles has been satisfied in whole territorial churches, and since on the other hand the whole method of preaching consisted in this, that from the Gospel a doctrinal proposition, usually a moral theme, was drawn according to one's own view, and such a manner of treatment was carried through with more or less, often also without any, eloquence, and in such manner proceeded in all divine services.

The Catechism, says Dr. Kliefoth aptly, formerly the layman's creed, taught to the young, recited to the people, preached to the old and those of age, has become a schoolbook; and well for the Christian who has still learned it, because he had the good fortune to meet a teacher not yet afflicted with the general modern aversion to memorizing! How wretched and poor it has stood in most places, particularly with the catechism or children's instruction in the church, there is no need of further proofs. Naturally, under such circumstances the catechism sermons also have been lost; for, since men relied upon the self-made crutches of the doctrine of faith and morals, they thought they needed no connected explanation of the Catechism.

It was also natural that the divine services on Sundays and week days, which were originally appointed for Bible exposition or the Catechism, were attended less and less; for nothing suited to this purpose was offered in them, but only that which was found at the ordinary chief service; therefore the congregation preferred to come at these convenient hours rather than at those inconvenient ones, also because in this way the worship for the whole week could be dispatched in somewhat more than an hour, and so at last most of those extraordinary services have been discontinued, and with them the places for the forms of instruction attached to them have been lost.

Thus far we have directed our attention only to the course of the various tendencies in the Church, as well as to the influence which they have had upon the transformation of the individual forms of instruction. But finally we must still cast a glance at what has become of the congregations under the influence of these tendencies. If we regard the Lutheran Church as a whole and set aside individual exceptions, there has been in it, since the middle of the 17th century, no handing down of biblical history, and since the middle of the 18th no firm and unabridged communication of doctrine. As to the former, no one will be able to deny that the knowledge of biblical history and of the history of Christianity has quite died out in the congregations, with the sole exception of the not yet considerable amount which in some places in the most recent time has been planted through school instruction; even with regard to the New Testament histories, which are still the better known, there will not be very many members of congregations who know exactly and in detail even the chief ones, for example the Christmas and Easter histories. This deficiency, however, is of the gravest consequences; one finds little or nothing of biblical material to build upon further in the sermon, and then this general ignorance of the Bible, and particularly of its historical content, has more and more drawn after it the disuse of the Bible itself, which is shown in Kliefoth's essay in the following words well worthy of heed: "Everyone who has concerned himself more deeply with this matter knows that of Holy Scripture only a very scanty use is made in all classes of the congregations, that even the living Christians of our day would rather read other writings than the Bible, and that to exhortations thereto they object as with one mouth: The Bible is to them too remote, strange, and unintelligible, and they would rather hold to other books of edification, which convey to them the content of Scripture and bring it nearer. This has the quite simple ground that, not having become acquainted with biblical history in youth, whenever they open the Bible the historical situations appear strange and the language difficult, while other books of edification furnish them the matter more to their taste. But to this is joined also that unhappy reading of all sorts together, of old and new, churchly and Methodistic, Pietistic and mystical, prosaic and poetic books of edification, from which mixed nourishment then, with that lack of firm ground in Scripture and in doctrine, there results that spiritual craving for indulgence, that snatching after the piquant and overwrought, and that susceptibility to every sentimental fanaticism, by which in our days so many a Christian germ dies away or at least degenerates repulsively.

That the knowledge of the doctrine itself stands still far worse, experience, alas, teaches; for supposing that some still know the text of the Catechism, and perhaps also the explanation, as well as a number of Scripture passages, yet this knowledge is a dough which is so leavened through by a mass of leaven of all kinds of false or falsified doctrine that one can hardly find a few sound morsels in it, of which everyone will be convinced who will once make exact inquiry, for example, concerning the doctrine of Baptism and the Lord's Supper, confession and absolution.

Finally, the masses of all kinds of prejudices are also not to be overlooked, which so often have been instilled into the poor Christian people from childhood against biblical history and doctrine. There many a one has heard only of single detached pieces of the Bible, accompanied with a stale blasphemous jest, as that the Israelites stole the vessels of the Egyptians, that Balaam's ass spoke, that the sun stood still at Joshua's word, and the like; if one now asks such people to read for once these histories and the Bible in their connection, then they get