# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1850 07 09_S182
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

182

brethren, tell me, which seems to you the greater, the Word of God, or the Body of Christ? If you would answer truly, you must needs say that the Word of God is no less than the Body of Christ; and with what great care we take pains, when the Body is distributed to us, that nothing of it fall upon the ground, even so carefully must we give heed to the Word of God which is offered to us, that it be not lost again from our heart while we are either thinking or speaking something else; for he will have no less guilt who hears God's Word carelessly, than he who through carelessness lets the Body of Christ fall upon the ground."

Osiander writes in his exposition of the 20th chapter of the Acts of the Apostles: "God the LORD would show, by the example of the young man who slept under Paul's preaching and fell down from the window to his death, that one should not sleep under the sermon. For one should diligently hearken to God the LORD when He speaks to us through His servants."

Doctor Arnold Mengering writes: "Oh, how many such sleepyheads there are among men and women, whose pattern was Eutychus (Acts 20, 9.), who yet, as the circumstances almost indicate, did not do it of purpose, but had just chosen to sit in such a dangerous place that for fear of the danger he might the better keep himself from sleep."

Hence Walther concludes in his Homilies on Acts 20: "If this befell an Eutychus, whose drowsiness admits of manifold excuses, what will befall those who hear the Word with contempt and, while they seem to hear it, either give themselves to sleep on purpose or, overcome by drunkenness, must sleep? For as such persons neglect their souls' salvation, so they also hold God's majesty in no high esteem. Therefore it cannot be otherwise than that the preaching of the Gospel turns to their death, which serves devout and believing persons unto salvation."

Doctor Martin Geier writes in his exposition of the Gospel for the 10th Sunday after Trinity: "How very much inclined we are to sleep when we are to consider divine things! The good householder sleeps - and finds tares. Eutychus sleeps - and falls. Because Satan lulls us to sleep (as he is always rocking the cradle when we sleep in our devotion), he always takes something good from us, or brings something evil into us, or brings us into danger of a deadly fall. Away with this spiritual drowsiness."

Bernhardus was wont to say that those who sleep are dead before men, and that those who are dead sleep before God: but I say that those who sleep in church are dead before God; so we preach to them rather their funeral sermons than admonitions. And as he used to say that he lost no time more than that in which he slept, so I may well add that no loss of time is so desperate as the loss of holy time. Think that Christ says to you in every sermon, as He says to Peter: "Sleepest thou, Peter? Couldest thou not watch with me one hour?"

Another theologian, in the tract "von dem zerfallenen Christenthum," writes thus: "We snuff at it and say, as those in the prophet Malachi, Chap. 1, 13.: 'Behold, what a weariness is it.' To the letter, the Word of the LORD seems to many in truth a weariness, who sleep over it like weary persons, yea, better than at home, because the pastor must, as it were, sing them to it. In truth, all this appears so strange that if an unbelieving heathen or another were to come into our church and see that one sleeps, another chatters, a third laughs, a fourth gapes this way and that, and the fewest of all pray, he would say that we were out of our senses. Alas, when will the church get back her old name, that men may call her a house of prayer! One might well give her other names according to the present state of things, since the least part of it is divine worship."

The Fourth Chapter.

Of Some Excuses which the Church-Sleepers Are Wont to Offer.

There is nothing so evil and sinful that man, who is by nature corrupt to the very ground, does not know how in some measure to gloss it over and excuse it. Church-sleeping, although, as has been demonstrably shown, it is in itself evil, sinful, harmful and offensive, nevertheless will be excused by the church-sleepers. First it is alleged that sleep is natural and therefore in no wise to be accounted sinful. To this the answer: although sleep is natural, it does not follow that it is also permissible in the assembly of the church, where one comes together at God's command to hear the Word from His servant, the preacher, and to be edified thereby in godliness. Eating and drinking are also natural, but not in church, under the preaching of the divine Word; and so it is also with sleep. To everything there is a season, a time to wake and a time to sleep. Next it is to be known that not all sleep in church is to be held natural. The blessed Arnd writes in his exposition of the Gospel for Sexagesima Sunday: "The devil also can make a sleep with his hellish opium and vapors of sleep; for certainly not all sleep in church is natural, but such a sleep as the spiritual night and hellish darkness work."

The second excuse is: one cannot ward off sleep; one is unawares overtaken by sleep in the midst of devotion; it happens against one's will, etc. But that this excuse also is invalid shall be proved in the following chapter.

The third excuse, which is almost very common, is to this effect: the preacher makes it far too long in the pulpit, or he preaches far too drowsily, softly, and indistinctly; one has no convenient place in the church, must sit in a corner where one can see neither pulpit nor altar; the afternoon sermons begin straight after the meal has been eaten; if one then sits down so soon, and listens to the sermon in the stillness, sleep comes on naturally, etc. Now these excuses indeed appear to be of such a nature that with many an otherwise pious and diligent hearer they might at times well hold good to such an extent that one must make some allowance for the inborn sinful weakness of the flesh; yet church-sleeping is and remains in itself sinful and inadmissible. That, first, many a preacher spends more than an hour in preaching is indeed not altogether approved by various theologians. Doctor Osiander writes on the 20th chapter of the Acts of the Apostles: "Although the hearers ought not to grow weary of long sermons, yet the preachers also, in places where sermons are often held, ought to take pains for an elegant brevity. For when the hearer grows weary, he no longer pays diligent attention, and hears the greater part with vexation and without profit." But it nevertheless seldom happens that a sermon lasts more than an hour; the drowsy hearer should then think of the words of the Savior quoted above: "Peter, couldest thou not watch with me one hour?" Many a man sleeps seven, eight, nine and more hours at night; why should he not devote one single little hour to the honor of God and the edification of his own soul?

That, second, the preaching of the Word of God sometimes cannot be heard by all the hearers because of the preacher's weak delivery, especially in large and spacious churches, is not to be denied, and it were to be wished that such preachers always appeared as can be heard and understood in the assembled congregation of God.

But it does not therefore follow that the hearers should spend the sermon in sleeping. No, by no means! Surely you will not confess that you came to church for the sake of sleeping! If you cannot understand the preacher at all, then pray, praise and magnify in your heart the benefits of your dear God; have fine Christian thoughts of His almighty power, wisdom, truth, righteousness, goodness and mercy; think of your dearest Savior and Redeemer, JEsus Christ, and meditate devoutly upon His suffering, dying, resurrection and holy merit. That poor woman who by reason of great age was hard of hearing, and could hear neither prayer, nor sermon, nor singing, said: "I