# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juli 1856_S195
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Sermon Preparation from Dr. Luther. 195

...wins one's heart over so completely for it that in a short time one no longer thinks of choosing another.

No disgrace is done to our worthy father in the faith, Dr. Luther, by such a use of his writings. They are by no means thereby turned into crutches for the lazy. Whoever seeks such crutches, whoever out of sheer indolence has no desire for thinking and study, certainly does not flee to Luther's writings, and certainly abhors our manner of using them; for they compel one to think, and however fruitful the written use of them is, just so much labor does it require. Luther himself held the opinion that certain pastors of his time would do better to read his postils aloud than to venture their own sermons. We, however, wish only to let ourselves be led by Dr. Luther into the understanding of the Word of God, and to be trained by him toward a fruitful preaching of that Word. It is surely for just this purpose that his writings exist; this is precisely the right use, through which they are truly not degraded into crutches for the lazy. Perhaps our procedure will seem to some an affront to Luther, insofar as through it the beautiful structure of his sermons is torn apart and out of the ruins the destroyer's own patchwork is pieced together. But that is neither the sense nor the fruit of our procedure. To be sure, we do put together two sermons that present the two parts of a text, when it is our purpose to present the whole text in a single sermon — for example, the two sermons on the Feast of the Presentation of Christ in the Temple. Conversely, we may be led to take one main portion of a sermon by itself and treat it as a separate sermon, as, among other instances, can hardly be avoided given the extraordinarily rich treatment that Luther accords the Epiphany Gospel. It can also happen that we bring over thoughts from one sermon into the arrangement of another. Finally, we do not consider it impermissible to state expressly the main proposition under which the individual parts of a sermon of Luther's are gathered together, even where this was not done in our model. But all these individual measures are neither a dismembering nor a self-devised piecing-together of dismembered members. We retain Luther's arrangement just as it presents itself in a single sermon, or in several, or even in a particular part of his sermons, and we assure our readers that, if they will only work through Luther's sermons pen in hand, they will perceive his arrangements quite of themselves and without much calculation. Indeed, this whole task goes almost as if by itself, and for now only one thing is needed: that readers once take it up. That a scientific term for it is on the whole still lacking to us is no evidence against it.

Just as little as upon Luther do we bring any disgrace upon ourselves with this sermon preparation. We confess, indeed, thereby that we wish to go to school with that worthy father in the faith of ours, that we thus desire instruction both in the doctrine itself and in the wholesome form of it