# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1849 05 01_S140
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

140

country at least once a week such a sermon took place.

The Baptismal Rite belongs, according to all Lutheran church orders, in the House of the LORD and may be performed in a private house only for special reasons; for the most part it had its place, in agreement with the whole earlier Church, outside the services named. This holds also of the public confirmation of a baptism administered by a Christian in a case of necessity, for which in many Agenda the form to be used is prescribed.

With regard to the Rite of Confirmation there are found only in a few older Agenda a few and indeed very divergent directions; according to the Pomeranian, originally composed by Dr. Bugenhagen in the year 1535, it was held in cities on a week-day, in the villages on a Sunday. After a preceding sermon and after the singing of the hymn: Komm, Heil'ger Geist, etc., the preacher stepped before the altar and had the confirmands place themselves on both sides of it; thereupon followed a prescribed exhortation to the children, which closed with three questions, to which the former answered unanimously: Yes, Amen. Then the children knelt down at the altar, while an admonition was addressed to the congregation, the holy Lord's Prayer was prayed, and yet another special prayer was offered for the children. Finally the pastor pronounced the blessing of the Church over each single child or, if their number was great, over several together, yet so that the hand had to be laid upon each child. The whole was concluded with the hymn: Allein Gott in der Höh' sei Ehr', or: Es woll' uns Gott genädig sein.

Marriages were commonly held after a threefold publication of the banns, sometimes also, in the case of well-known persons under certain circumstances, before it, but never otherwise than in the church, either on Sunday after Vespers or on a week-day. The wedding sermons, which later became ever more frequent, were delivered from the pulpit, whereupon the marriage was then performed at the altar according to the form.

The Churching of women after childbirth was likewise held, according to some Lutheran church orders, on a Sunday or week-day, after a preceding announcement; for which, as also for the public blessing before the altar, forms are extant.

Funerals were in general held thus: At the grave, during the lowering of the corpse, a hymn was sung, e.g.: Mit Fried und Freud, etc., etc. Thereupon the preacher read a Biblical lesson, e.g., from John 11, 20-27, 1 Cor. 15, 1 Thess. 4, 13-18. To this was joined a short exhortation, and the close was made by a Collect and the Benediction. Special funeral sermons were in the first period of the Lutheran Church for the most part held only at the burials of persons of authority, preachers, etc.

The Ordination of preachers was held, according to most church orders, on a Sunday or week-day before the assembled congregation, and indeed after a preceding sermon on the holy ministry, at the altar, in the presence of several servants of the divine Word, and thereupon the Holy Supper was administered to the ordained.

The Introduction, or installation into office, of the ordained preachers before the assembled congregation was performed in a similar way, with the exception of the Communion; the excellent form for it in the Pomeranian Agenda deserves again to be made more generally known.

4) The Responsive Singing of the Church and the Church Hymn.

It is certain that many single constituent parts of public worship derive from apostolic times, and that in particular all the fundamental forms of it already occur in the earliest Church, e.g., the Litany or the general prayer of the Church, and the like. The Eastern or Greek Church traces the arrangement of its service to the Apostle James. The difference between this and the later arrangement of the service consists namely in this, that in the whole ancient Greek Church only Psalms and Hymns are to be found in the place of the church hymn; nevertheless the congregation is therein in uninterrupted activity, inasmuch as everything, e.g., the Litany, consists in responsive dialogue between it and the servants of the Word. In the ancient Greek Church, furthermore, neither a melody nor figured music, but only a recitative chant resembling the Psalms was in use; and finally the arrangement of the service is almost always one and the same throughout the whole church year.

The Western or Latin Church took over her arrangement of the service from the Greek, developed it in her own manner, and completed it by the introduction of church singing and church music; in particular Ambrose in the 4th century introduced chorales instead of the recitative chant, e.g.: Nun kommt der Heiden Heiland; but especially Gregory the Great in the 6th century earned great merits for the church hymn and church music, yet both were, the nearer to the time of the Reformation, the more corrupted by secularization and artificiality. After these transformations not only was the whole of the service much shorter and more rounded off, but the single forms also received a richer and more compressed wording. Everything that belonged to the servant of the Church, e.g., the Collects and the like, was, since Gregory the Great, no longer read, but sung in the Latin language in recitative form; everything, on the other hand, that belonged to the congregation was cast in chorale form, and this distinction between the collecting chant of the pastor and the chorale singing of the congregation has maintained itself to our own time.

Dr. Luther now found a form of public worship which, besides earlier wholesome usages, contained also many abuses; yet he did not deal with it as the Swiss reformers (?), who without more ado declared themselves against the existing arrangement, but he applied all diligence to examine what was at hand and to retain the good; thus the Lutheran chief service retains all the pure parts of the papal Mass which dated from the ancient Christian time, whereas there is found in it nothing of such parts as were directly contrary to Scripture, e.g., the Offertory or the offering-chant; thus also the Lutheran Church retains many single forms, e.g., of Collects, Prefaces and the like, but has without more ado abolished everything that was defiled with saint-worship and other papal abominations, and although she has always held fast the chief aim of the service, namely, that the congregation be instructed in the Word of God, yet she has retained many a usage which is not contrary to this Word, e.g., the altar, instead of which the Reformed, as is well known, have only a communion-table; the custom that the servant of the Church at the prayers turns toward the altar, the official dress of the preachers, the sign of the cross, crucifix, genuflections, folding of the hands, altar-lights, etc. The better arrangement of the service, however, now required an uncommon labor, for according to its chief aim, to instruct the congregation out of God's Word, everything necessarily had to take place in the German language; therefore the existing pure forms had to be translated from the Latin, the contents of many completed, and the stock thus gained moreover increased, since much of the old had to be thrown away and much that was new, necessary to the right doctrine, was needed.

Since, furthermore, the Lutheran Church wished to make the congregation take an active part, she needed the church hymn, wherein, however, for want of what already existed, she was compelled to put her own hand to the work. Finally it was then still necessary not merely to fit what had thus been produced into the service, but also to practise it with the congregations; the course of these labors we must also still survey in general. — Against the old church singing of the clergy and of the choirs the people still cherished great reverence, and it was therefore not advisable to proceed against it tempestuously, as Carlstadt and then the Reformed Church did. It was rather for good reasons Dr. Luther's concern to let this church singing in the Latin language continue at least so long until provision should be made for corresponding German pieces; to this was added the necessity of composing German church hymns for the congregations, to which Dr. Luther not only urgently encouraged others, but therein also himself proved his mastery.

With regard to the musical part Dr. Luther retained