# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1855 07 31_S193
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Der Lutheraner.
"God's Word and Luther's doctrine pass away now and nevermore."
Rev. John, chap. 14, vv. 6, 7.
Published by the German Ev. Luth. Synod of Missouri, Ohio and other States.
Edited by C. F. W. Walther.
Year 11.  St. Louis, Mo., July 31, 1855.  No. 25.
Terms: Der Lutheraner appears once every two weeks at the yearly subscription price of One Dollar for out-of-town subscribers, who pay for it 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, however, 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.

Some Accounts of the Manner in Which, in the Years 1655 and 1755, the Memory of the Religious Peace of Augsburg, Concluded on September 25 in the Year 1555, Was Celebrated Festively and Solemnly.

Continuation.

II. How the Festival Was Announced.

In the year 1655 the Jubilee festival was announced from the pulpits in Saxony, two Sundays before the celebration, in the following manner:

Beloved and elect in the LORD! What is written of the man after the heart of the LORD, King David, that for every work he gave thanks to the Holy One, the Most High, with a beautiful song, that he sang with his whole heart and loved Him who had made him: that very thing the most serene, highborn Prince and Lord, Lord John George, our gracious Lord on all sides, as a nursing-father and nurse of the Christian Church, being highly enlightened, has at all times observed. For after His Electoral Highness, out of Christian zeal and love toward God and His Word that alone makes blessed, called to mind what high and unspeakable grace the inexhaustible goodness and mercy of God would bestow upon His Christian Church on the coming 25th of September, a hundred years ago, when through war and the unchristian Interim everything in spiritual and temporal estate had been brought to ruin, He not only awakened the heroic spirit of the most serene Prince and Lord, Lord Maurice, Duke of Saxony, so that in the year 1552 he made with His Imperial Majesty the Treaty of Passau between the so-called Catholics and the adherents of the Augsburg Confession, as a beginning toward a salutary religious peace, to the effect that no party should be burdensome to the other for the sake of religion; but God the LORD afterward, under the reign of Elector Augustus in the year 1555, let His fatherly, heavenly goodness be yet more richly perceived and mightily seen, so that in the general Diet, in the very place where twenty-five years before our Confession of faith, the Augsburg Confession, had been publicly presented and read, the much-contested religious peace was established and concluded in the most effectual and binding manner by the adherents of both religions, by virtue of which peace, which was confirmed anew also in the Osnabrück peace treaties of 1648, the Roman Empire has found itself in quiet, and the true doctrine of the Augsburg Confession, which alone makes blessed, spreading far and wide, has been gloriously built up: therefore They have deemed it Their duty to thank Their holy God with the whole heart especially also for this great benefit and to sing Him a beautiful praise for it, to which end They have formed the Electoral resolve to proclaim and so to hold, in Their whole Electorate, to the honor of God the LORD and in most bounden gratitude, a Jubilee, that is, a public festival of thanksgiving, on the said 25th of September ...*) Your Christian love is therefore hereby earnestly admonished and reminded, in the name of God, above all things to prepare its heart by sincere repentance, that it may bring to God the most bounden sacrifice of thanks and praise and pray with acceptance; and when it shall hear the festival rung in with all the bells at one o'clock on the aforesaid eve, that it then diligently present itself at Vespers and, those who hunger spiritually, at Confession and gracious Absolution, and on the day following at the hearing of the divine Word, both forenoon and afternoon, as on the high festival days, and appear before God with a penitent, contrite and broken heart, offer Him with hearty devotion the calves of their lips, and pray in house and in church to the highly praised Trinity for further grace and preservation of the Word of God, as also for the general civil and religious peace, and let nothing worldly keep it from the devout and solemn observance of this festival ... Thus there is no doubt, if we show ourselves Christian and godly, that God in heaven will be well pleased with it, that He will hear our prayer, will further remain our God and Father for the sake of the bloody merit of JESUS Christ, will preserve the holy Gospel among us, and will at last take us to Himself into the everlasting habitations. To this may God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Ghost, praised forever, help us. Amen."

*) We omit those words in which the ceremonies to be arranged are specified, since they were already described in the previous number.

III. On Which Texts Sermons Were Preached.

A. In the Year 1655.

In the year 1655 in Electoral Saxony the 147th Psalm was, for the Vespers of preparation, as fore-