# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1851 02 04_S90
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

90

Word, but from the want of it; and therefore it is not silence, but the offering, and indeed the ever more abundant offering, of the whole treasure of the wholesome doctrine that will heal the hurts. This is the more needful the more meagre already are the forms of instruction which Rationalism has handed down to us, and which usually consist in nothing further than the catechization of the young and the sermon of the chief service. The question now is how the church's teaching is, in the present, to be most fittingly ordered after the pattern of the past.

Retaining now the earlier order of the various forms of instruction, we begin with the sermon on the Gospels. That these texts, and indeed exclusively, are to be retained for the chief services, for this we have more than one reason; first, namely, they contain for the festival half of the church year, that is, from Advent to Trinity Sunday, the historical foundations of the chief articles of our Christian faith, which for the most part cannot be replaced by any other portions of Scripture, and in the other half of the church year, that is, in the series of the Sundays after Trinity, they offer in the miracles and sermons of the LORD Christ the richest material for instruction.

In the second place, these evangelical portions are with most hearers the last remnant of what may still have remained in memory from the Bible. If we are willing to let this last remainder lie unused, we shall thereby lose the last means of any further connection. Should not the wise conduct of Dr. Luther and his co-workers be a pattern for us also in this, who on the ground of this last remainder of biblical knowledge began and carried forward the further upbuilding and development of the wholesome doctrine? The Gospels were to the people, as also to Dr. Luther himself for a time, the whole Bible, and he used these single texts to lead the people by their hand back again to the whole Bible. In this the twofold reading of the Gospels, namely after the so-called chief hymn and at the beginning of the sermon, as was customary from of old, is by no means a mere tiresome repetition, but belongs to the whole of the order of service. In places where individual festivals are no longer celebrated on their special days, it would be advisable to explain the Gospels of the same at least in the next Sunday afternoon service.

Finally, there lies in the prescribed Gospels a great protection for the preacher, for then it is said: This text the day prescribes to me, and when I expound the text, I say what I must say. This gives the preacher a joyful courage to speak the truth in the name of God, and the congregation recognizes therein a humble subordination under the Word of God, which the Church prescribes to her servants. Where free choice of text takes place, there is, if the preacher speaks any word that gives displeasure, far less protection against all manner of accusations of intentional reference to certain persons and events.

These three advantages of the evangelical pericopes here set forth ought to be of more weight with us than all the censure pronounced against them; for to those who seem to put them away only because they are old, one may answer with the certainly free-minded Melanchthon: "It is a plague and a ruin of the Church that men love novelty also in the doctrine which is peculiar to the Church, as Hieronymus Schurff rightly judges: he believes that this is the cause, or at least has given the first occasion, for the falsification of the doctrine of the Church, that the teachers strove to teach new things, and the people, feeling loathing toward what had been handed down, wished to hear something new."

By this craving for something new, which rules so many preachers and congregations, the pressing necessity is quite forgotten of preaching ever anew the old, dear chief truths which the evangelical texts present, and this craving has, to the immeasurable harm of the Church, seduced many teachers to cast the oft-recurring matters ever into new forms, that they might again gain new charm, quite contrary to the mind of St. Paul, who says: To write the same things to you, to me indeed is not grievous, but for you it is safe. Phil. 3, 1. Therefore Dr. Kl. says aptly: "Do we not see in Luther that, although he was spiritual in spite of us, he yet drives home the right great chief matters again and again and most frequently with almost the same words, yea, that he does not shrink from delivering, upon the same pericopes after a year's time, sermons of the same content;" Why will men not follow him in this? I know a preacher who for nine years has done it with ever more favorable success. In every year he has preached upon the whole Gospel, that is, has explained the whole text and given the whole pattern of the doctrine contained therein. In the first year he put together the sum of both from the Postils of Dr. Luther, in the following years he treated one part of the sermon more at length, and the others more briefly, and after four to five years he has returned again to the setting forth of the sum, but everything with strict adherence to the doctrine and manner of teaching as he found it in Dr. Luther's sermons, although, as is a matter of course, with constant regard to the special needs of his hearers. He and others who followed a similar manner have taken ever surer steps, in the choice, arrangement and treatment of the material, by the hand of Dr. Luther; in particular they almost never fell into embarrassment from want of material, but often indeed from too great abundance of it.

As to the second matter, the reading aloud of the Holy Scriptures, or the so-called Bible lessons, these would, on account of the great want of knowledge of the Bible, as also on account of the frequent neglect of connected Bible reading in the homes, be urgently to be recommended, especially if the use of Dietrich's Summaries were joined with it. But it is not to be seen how one could find time for it in this country; yet if one should find it, especially in cities at the evening services, it would in most cases be more advisable to employ them for the exposition of single books of the Bible. But it would be much to be desired that the Bible lessons with Summaries might become ever more general in schools and homes; in the schools, namely, they would form a suitable transition from the single biblical histories to the connected survey and overview of the same; in the homes, however, they would serve the young for repetition and preparation, the grown for making up what has been neglected and for a more complete knowledge of the Bible. To be sure, one would then have to be concerned for a new and cheap edition of those masterly Summaries, in which not only those that are lacking would be supplied, but also on the margin the references to the several parts of the Catechism would be added. Of the great usefulness of these Summaries I have for a number of years been convinced by manifold experience.

Finally we ought to apply all diligence to bring again into practice also the continuous exposition of whole books of the Bible. In the country this will indeed be more difficult than in cities, where an evening service for this purpose can more readily be introduced. The participation in it will never be the concern of all, but only of individuals, who feel a desire for a richer understanding of the Holy Scripture, as once the chamberlain of Queen Candace, when he read in the prophet Esaias [Acts 8, 26 - 39]; and surely an upright servant of Christ will gladly still such a desire, as Philip did there; and though there be but few, yet just these few are usually the right core of the congregation, on whose care therefore infinitely much depends. Of the most fitting manner of these expositions mention has already been made above in the first section. If in doing so there is alternation with Old and New Testament books, and especially with the Epistles of the Apostles, they offer at the same time a substitute for the proper Epistle sermons, if the latter fall away on account of the Sunday catechism exercise. Only it is to be advised that one content himself with the explanation of the most difficult and most important parts, and also in this be brief, in order, if possible, to be able to explain in every sermon one chapter, and in the historical books of the Old Testament perhaps several.

We come now to the answering of the