# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_August 1856_S235
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Sermon Preparation from Dr. Luther. 235

can expect only an arbitrary handling of the Word of God, and advance to the form which does not master the Gospel, but lets itself be mastered by the Gospel. This is the manner of arrangement that Luther follows. He traces, humbly and lovingly, the course of the evangelical thoughts in the text before him, arranges them into main parts and these under one main proposition where they of themselves fall into such an order, brings out the chief points that present themselves as such, does not ask whether the arrangement is itself new or perhaps has already been used a year before or on some other occasion, but looks only to whether it fulfills its office of depicting the text according to its various aspects — as it were, letting the strings of the text, tuned as they are by the Holy Spirit himself, sound forth — so that the congregation may see the ground of its salvation and hear the sweet evangelical tone, pure, bright, and clear, undisturbed and unclouded. It is true, it looks simple when on festival days one first preaches the history in question, and then the use and power of that history; it sounds almost clumsy to set forth the Gospel for the second Sunday after Epiphany in such a way that one first brings out the comfort that married persons have, by reason of their estate, from this history, and then the example of faith and love in Christ and his mother; it seems to fit so ill with our fondness for pathetic expression when Luther treats the Gospel for Jubilate Sunday under the headings of Text, Gloss, and Example — yet, apart from these last-named foreign terms, to which we are of course not bound, such arrangements suit our congregations admirably, as anyone can easily discover. Through them the text comes before the eyes and hearts of the people in the fullest liveliness, so that individual members of the congregation, and in their conversations with one another, easily find their way in it, and are also thereby moved to speak with one another about the sermon they have heard. I have purposely cited above divisions in which Luther's obedience to the written Word comes forth very strongly: the diligent student of Luther soon discovers how naturally, and arising out of the text itself, all of Luther's arrangements in his sermons are; he will soon become familiar with this, and, following them himself, will discover in the eyes of his hearers the rapt attention and heartfelt joy with which they walk at his side through the green and blossoming meadows of the Gospel.

Of general agreement I am certain when I finally hold up to us as a model also the linguistic form of Luther's sermons. To describe the power, the euphony, and the noble popular character of his speech is quite superfluous, since one need only open the Bible to see it in its full glory; it is a language formed by the powerful, euphonious, and clear Word of God itself. Exercising our own language upon it, through the reading of Luther's writings described above, we too shall attain to a manner of speech suited to the precious Gospel of our God, intelligible to all people, attractive to the ordinary