# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Januar 1857_S25
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Something About the Lutheran Church at Frankfurt am Main. 25

-wished to, an extract of the "Most Necessary" was arranged, which likewise is now no longer available in sufficient number, and which helped bring it about that the remaining content of this liturgy fell almost entirely into oblivion. All attempts of the consistory and the ministerium of preachers to "improve" the old liturgy failed, and all the commissions that were appointed — as recently as that of 1821 — were unable to accomplish anything, and it remained the case that in 1833 the consistory, pending the working out of a Frankfurt liturgy, recommended in the meantime the Württemberg liturgy of 1808, especially for weddings. But even since then all attempts have remained without success. And the longer it goes on, the less possible it has become, since the ministerium of preachers itself, wholly estranged from the faith of the fathers, does not have, among its 14 ordained members, a single one who stands at all firmly on the Lutheran confession, and presents in itself nothing but a sad picture of every sort of rationalism and private opinion. To meet this need, a small collection of prayers has been published in recent years, meant to be used in the worship service that lacks all form and liturgy, and it is of so watered-down a character that one can hear the like, indeed even better prayers, from any moderately gifted pietistic lay preacher. With the liturgy, all churchly order of worship has also been lost: no Gospel, no common prayer is heard any more, nothing that would even so much as call to mind the connection with the true catholic Church. Of the Lord's beautiful services of worship, the spirit of the age has gnawed away and abolished whatever seemed to it in any way dispensable.

Equally sad is the history of the Frankfurt hymnbook, which likewise had to submit to being dragged from the Spirit into the flesh. As early as 1569 the city received one of the richest collections of sacred hymns of the 16th century, in which the more recent hymnologist Koch counts 200 melodies, and in 1584 another such collection appeared, by M. Eucharius Zinkeisen, pastor at Langen. The old liturgies say: "And particular heed shall be given that no hymn be sung in the church unless it be Christian and grounded in Holy Scripture, and composed by some old, pure teacher of the Augsburg Confession, such as Luther and others." But how far one has drifted, through time and its customs, from this genuine Lutheran churchly foundation! Through various intermediate stages one arrived at last, in 1824, at a new "Hymnbook for the Public Worship of the Evangelical-Protestant Congregations of the Free City of Frankfurt." There, even on the title page, nothing more of the Lutheran Church is to be found! And naturally so; for it was drawn up by a commission on which delegates of the German Reformed congregation also sat, just as it has in fact been introduced in both the Lutheran and the German Reformed congregations alike — a united hymnbook, then, and everyone can now judge for himself how the Lutheran doctrine is represented in it, and how well the jewel of the right faith is preserved in it. It is something piti-