# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1849 04 02_S121
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Der Lutheraner.
“God's Word and Luther's doctrine pure shall now and evermore endure.”
Published by the German Evangelical Lutheran Synod of Missouri, Ohio, and Other States.
Edited by C. F. W. Walther.
Volume 5.  St. Louis, Mo., April 2, 1849  No. 16.
Terms: Der Lutheraner appears once every two weeks at the yearly subscription price of One Dollar for out-of-town subscribers, who are to 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 addressed to the Editor; all others, which contain business matters, orders, cancellations, moneys, etc., are to be sent here under the address: Mr. F. W. Barthel, care of C. F. W. Walther, St. Louis, Mo.

(Submitted by Pastor Keyl.)

The Original Order of Divine Service in the German Churches of the Lutheran Confession.

Under this title Dr. Kliefoth, Superintendent at Schwerin, published two years ago a very instructive work, in the composition of which, besides other aids, no fewer than ninety-five different church orders were used. This work has probably come before the eyes of but very few readers of this paper, yet it deserves with full right to be made known to all Lutheran pastors and congregations. I have therefore resolved to communicate as brief an extract as possible from this work, yet with many alterations and additions from Dr. Luther's works, which shall serve especially to this end, that the readers above all may recognize the more clearly how the restoration of the right order of divine service was a chief blessing of the Reformation and is inseparably bound up with the restoration of the pure doctrine; that they may recognize how many and great merits the highly enlightened man of God, Dr. Martin Luther, had in this matter, and how faithfully his fellow-laborers built so many an excellent church order upon the foundation which he, as a wise master-builder, had laid; that they may learn to prize the better “the beautiful services of the LORD,” as they were held in the whole Lutheran Church of Germany, from the Reformation onward, for almost 200 years, but then, particularly from the year 1750 down to the most recent times, were more and more corrupted. — This extract shall further give occasion for a searching comparison of the present with the past, in order to be convinced that the Lutheran divine service in its original manner is almost nowhere any longer held, at least not here; that not only the new American so-called Lutheran Agenda of the year 1842 is plainly anti-Lutheran, but that besides this much in the divine service also is given out and held to be Lutheran which yet is not so, at least not in historical connection with the pattern of the oldest Lutheran church orders.

Finally, these communications are to awaken in pastors and congregations ever more the desire for a greater uniformity in the ceremonies, and indeed, so far as this is ever practicable, on the basis of the original Lutheran order of divine service. To help prepare for the carrying out of this desire, let pastors and congregations take what follows as recommended to them for further consideration and discussion.

1) The General Principles of the Lutheran Church Concerning the Arrangement of the Divine Service.

These principles were first, and most concisely, pronounced by the dear man of God, Dr. Martin Luther, in his writing “Von Ordnung des Gottesdienstes in der Gemeinde” of the year 1523, which begins with the following words: “The divine service which now is going on everywhere has a Christian and fine origin, just as the office of preaching also. But just as the office of preaching also has been corrupted by the spiritual tyrants, so also the divine service has been corrupted by the hypocrites. As we do not abolish the office of preaching, but desire to bring it again into its right estate, so it is also not our meaning to abolish the divine service, but to bring it again into right vogue. — Three great abuses have fallen into the divine service: the first, that God's Word has been kept silent, and only read and sung in the churches. That is the worst abuse. The second: Since God's Word was kept silent, there have crept in besides so many unchristian fables and lies, both in legends, hymns, and sermons, that it is horrible to see. The third: That such divine service has been done as a work, whereby to obtain God's grace and salvation. There faith has perished, and everyone has given to churches and foundations, and wanted to become priests, monks, and nuns!” (Walch X, 262 ff.)

It is threefold, therefore, that Dr. Luther sets forth concerning the divine service then existing, namely its Christian origin, its great corruption, in which he names three abuses, and its restoration. Consequently the standard by which he judged each single particle in the immense mass of liturgical usages, in order either to retain it, or to purify it, or to put it away, was not merely, as with the Reformed church, a definite biblical command, or the earliest church antiquity, but it was the pattern of the whole wholesome doctrine. This standard showed how, in the whole divine service, what God does to us through the preaching and His Word is as far distinguished from what we do before God through praying and giving thanks, vow and confession, as heaven from earth, and how yet both, namely preaching and prayer, must be joined in every divine service. With this standard Dr. Luther and his fellow-laborers could go into the transmitted orders of divine service and ceremonies firmly and clearly, prove all things and hold fast that which is good, supplement what was half, straighten what was crooked, reject what was false, and so the Lutheran Church obtained its purified divine service, by which, as by the purified doctrine, it preserved its connection with the ancient, yes, with the whole Christian Church of former times, which the Reformed church tempestuously rent asunder.

But although the Lutheran divine service retained the good old from the Roman Catholic Church, yet it also took up again something new, which under the papacy had been more and more crowded out, and this is, besides the more general reintroduction of preaching, the participation of the congregation in the divine service, especially through manifold responsive singing and through the singing of church hymns. To attain this purpose, provision had to be made that now in the German language the Word of God could be read aloud, preached, the sacraments administered, prayer made and singing done, and since until then often in one