# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1849 05 01_S139
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

139

through the heart and enlightens man with its indwelling divine light. Therefore David says, Psalm 19, 9: "The commandment of the LORD is pure, enlightening the eyes," and Psalm 119, 105: "Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path"; and Solomon in the Proverbs 6, 23: "For the commandment is a lamp; and the law is light." Therefore a venerable old Church Father also compared the Word of God to a brook through which a lamb can wade and an elephant swim, that is, it is for the very simplest not too deep for him to drink from it the saving truth, and again for the most learned too deep for him to reach the bottom.

But let us again suppose that the Bible is, as the papistical priests pretend, "an old book, written in long extinct languages, existing only in many differing copies and translations"; then one may well wonder why the Catholic Kirchen-Zeitung praises this old book so highly. How can this book, which is supposed to exist only in many differing copies and translations, how can it be the most excellent book of instruction and edification for men? how can it be the most faithful and sympathetic book of comfort and warning? how can the fighting Christian take from it armor and weapons? Is it not downright nonsense to assert this of a book which, according to the assertion of the Papists, is so little intelligible and probably not even reliable?

But if we ask further: Who then are the few who know how to grasp and expound the Word of Scripture aright, the answer is: the papistical priests, the Pope at their head. Well, we will leave quite undiscussed for this time whence they can prove that they have the right understanding of the Bible, and moreover that they alone have it; but we will grant this also for the present; but then we ask you, dear priests: why are you not so compassionate as to prepare a translation of this book which everybody can understand? You could accompany the dark passages with explanations. Why do you not prepare a correct, faithful, intelligible translation? then the matter would be helped at once; for if you are the infallible interpreters of Holy Scripture, you must surely be able also to translate it correctly and intelligibly, especially if the Pope would help you, whose office it is much more properly to promote the knowledge of the Word of God than to let his slipper be kissed. — If you then had such a translation, there would surely be nothing more in the way of your holy zeal for the salvation of men's souls, that you should not give at least in part your great riches, which are now consumed by idlers in the cloisters, to have Bibles printed and brought among the people? But I will tell thee, dear reader, where the knots still lie. If the Papists did as has just been stated, and a correct, intelligible Bible actually came from them out among their own people, then it would be at an end with their priestly dominion, then they could no longer play the shell game, then the cats could no longer mouse in the dark. Therefore that will not do. — But if a Bible were to come out from them which did not faithfully render the real sense of the Word of God, but were obscure and falsified, men would soon rap them over the knuckles and prove to them their rascal tricks, so that they would have nothing but shame and disgrace from their work. Therefore that again will not do, and so it will not do at all in any case that the papistical priests should take care for the circulation of the Bible, but they must rather also take the field against those who, without asking the Pope and his whole priestly tail, circulate the Bible of their own accord to the best of their power; for danger may arise to them from it for their priestly dominion, especially if it should succeed in gaining entrance for the Bible among the Catholic people themselves.

Incidentally, let this also be said, that if perhaps some take part in the circulation of the Bible from mere fashion or from other impure motive, these, to be sure, will bear for themselves the harm of their impurity, but the blessing of the circulation of the Bible remains for that reason undiminished, and here the word of the Apostle Paul finds application, Phil. 1, 18: "Notwithstanding, every way, whether in pretence, or in truth, Christ is preached; and I therein do rejoice, yea, and will rejoice."

(Submitted by Pastor Keyl.)

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

(Continuation.)

3) The Individual Services and Liturgical Acts.

The Chief Service. In the Lutheran Church a service became the chief service by being connected with the celebration of the Holy Supper; in the Reformed Church, on the other hand, one service raised itself above another only by this, that on its day no work was done, while the other services took place on week-days; the celebration of Communion was held, except on the three high Festivals, every three to five weeks, according to the church orders of the Union in cities every month, in villages every two months.

Already in the earliest Christian time the chief service was so held that, amid hymns and prayers, first an Epistle, then a Gospel was read, and after the exposition of the latter the Holy Supper was celebrated. This order almost all Lutheran church orders have therefore retained; they agree also in this with the ancient Church, that a chief service without celebration of the Supper is not complete; therefore, and on the presupposition that in the congregation there is always a hunger and thirst after the Sacrament, all purely Lutheran Agenda arrange the service so that the celebration of Communion forms a chief part of it, for which reason they also commonly designate the whole chief service by its old name, "Mass"; but they make no law of it that the celebration of Communion must unconditionally take place, but they give provisions also for the case when no communicants are present; to this belongs the rule that the pastor at the close of the sermon should read to the congregation an admonition concerning neglected participation in the Sacrament, concerning the grave reasons, as well as concerning the threatening dangers of this neglect, wherein the Church, as the forms still extant show, proceeded so cautiously that she awakened the slothful and yet did not frighten back the weak in faith.

Although now the Lutheran Church ordained the celebration of the Supper only in the chief service on Sundays and festivals and before the assembled congregation, yet she permitted also that to individuals who had an especially urgent desire for the Sacrament it might be administered in one of the week-day services, yet always publicly, that is, at the altar and with singing; only to the sick and the weak did she allow Communion in the house.

Matins were held on Sundays and festivals early before the chief service, and indeed in cities with lessons from the Bible and sermons upon them, in the country, however, instead of the sermons, with readings from Biblical summaries.

Vespers on Sundays and festivals, now commonly called the afternoon service after the example of the Reformed and United Church, was appointed in cities for the Epistle sermon, otherwise also, and especially in the country, for the Catechism sermon, with which the catechetical examination was in each case connected.

The Saturday Vespers, in which according to most church orders likewise a sermon and then, as its proper subject, Confession and Absolution took place, stood before the chief service of Sunday, in which Communion was held, as the preparation. All the older Lutheran church orders prescribe the retention of private confession and private absolution, and if some South German ones, with which also the second Pomeranian of the year 1563 agrees, permit the pastors after the usual exhortation to confession to read the general confession, yet there also the absolution, as the chief part for the sake of which confession is made, had to be imparted to each individual with the laying on of hands.

The Week-day Sermons, which were intended chiefly for the exposition of whole books of Holy Scripture, were held on the remaining week-days according to the number of the preachers. There were times in which, e.g., at Nuremberg from Sunday to Saturday 32 sermons, at Magdeburg 50, could be heard; in the