# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_November 1857_S321
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Lehre und Wehre.

Jahrgang III.   November 1857.   No. 11.

(Submitted by the secretary of a district pastoral conference of the eastern district of our synod.)

On the Use of Church History for Preaching.

We have for this a threefold model. First the Bible itself; it exhorts us to keep the history of the people of God in continual remembrance, for example Psalm 78:1ff., and it does this itself, both in this psalm to its end and also in others, for example Psalm 105 and 106. And what is the sermon of Stephen in Acts 7 and the setting forth of the witnesses of faith in Hebrews 11 other than a history of the church in the Old Testament?

How highly, further, the early Christian church held the memory of the martyrs is proved by their birthday festivals, dating from the 2nd century, on which there was preaching concerning what God had done in them.

The Lutheran church, finally, has not only from the same intention retained the observance of the apostles' days and of individual martyrs — for example of St. Laurence — but the sermons of Dr. Luther and of many of his fellow laborers also bear witness how diligently they made use of church history generally. Thus Dr. Luther preached two sermons on the Gospel for the Sunday Invocavit at the assembly in Schmalkalden concerning the temptations which the church of Christ has endured under the persecutions, at the hands of the heretics, and finally under the papacy. And how often does he adduce in his sermons examples out of Eusebius and out of the Tripartita, of which Hedion's Chronicon contains the German translation; likewise out of the Vitae patrum, which G. Major published in Latin and Burk under the title "Leben und Thaten der Väter" in a somewhat altered form in German.

Of the pupils of Dr. Luther I name only Joh. Mathesius in his 17 sermons on Luther's life (the newest edition with the very important preface in the Berlin book society) and Cyriacus Spangenberg in the 18 very full sermons which he preached from 1563 to 1572 in memory of the day of Dr. Luther's birth and of his death.

Finally, the jubilee and memorial festivals from 1600 onward have given manifold occasion to make the history of the Reformation, of the Augsburg

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