# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_M rz 1858_S91
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

The Last Anointing. 91

Answer: Savior of the world, help us.
Kyrie — Eleison.
Christe — Eleison.
Kyrie — Eleison.

to be treated. The pastor believed that, under such circumstances, he
could not deny the sick woman her heart's desire, although he was aware
that in doing so he was doing something unusual among us and therefore
apparently risky. Nevertheless he found in it a good conscience and joy
before God and men. He took several spiritual helpers present there, who
assisted him as deacons, along with the worthy church elders of the
local congregation, who, having been informed beforehand, went to the
work just as joyfully, with mature conviction, as their pastor did, and
performed, in the form given below, under the laying on of hands by all
those named and with their common prayer together with those present,
the solemn rite at the sickbed, whereby the sick woman and all present
felt greatly edified and strengthened. The reasons that moved the pastor
to act in this way were the following: he was aware that in this case he
was only making use of an inalienable right of Christian liberty, and
that in this he had Luther's own statement on his side, which is found
in his confession of faith of 1529, of which one cannot say that it
belongs among those utterances that had to yield to a later, more mature
understanding. He affirms, rather, expressly that he had well considered
every article in it and hoped to remain by it until his death and
thereby to stand before the judgment seat of Christ.

The words read: "The anointing, if one held to it according to the
Gospel, Mark 6:13 and James 5:14, I would let pass, but that a sacrament
should be made of it is nothing [i.e., is groundless]. For just as,
instead of vigils and requiem masses, one might well deliver a sermon on
death and eternal life, and thus pray at the burial and consider our
end (as it seems the ancients did), so it would also indeed be fitting
that one should go to the sick person, pray, and admonish; and if,
besides that, one wished to anoint with oil, that should be free, in
God's name." See Graul, Unterscheidungslehren, p. 8.

The one performing the rite was, moreover, also aware that he was not
only not acting unlutheranly, but rather in closest adherence, in
obedience, to an apostolic ordinance — one of which he cannot convince
himself that it, as most Protestant interpreters hold, belonged merely
to the apostolic age and to as long as the miraculous gifts of healing
the sick lasted, but is antiquated for our time. Such an interpretation,
set against the plain words, which need no interpretation, appears all
too much like an evasion meant to justify the non-observance of the
apostolic ordinance in practice. The whole impression of the passage is
that a lasting arrangement was meant to be made thereby in the
congregation, and that the office prayer, with its blessing, was also to
be commended and set in its proper light as a remedy for bodily need.
And should, then, wondrous answers to prayer be denied to the later
church? One does not see, then, what should prevent making the ordinance
into one generally applicable and lasting. Nor would one see how one
could dare perform this act "in the name of the Lord" if it were not the
Lord's own intention and ordinance that was thereby being carried out,
so as to extend this blessing to the congregation as well. Among those
who would loosen the binding force of this word by casting doubt on the
canonicity of this epistle, there are likely to be only few among
today's orthodox students of Scripture. That by these assertions the
character of a sacrament — in the end even in the sense of the Roman
church — is meant to be given to this rite hardly needs, in earnest, any
serious protest entered against it. Enough has been done if, with
Luther, the church and its members are granted the right and the
liberty to act in accordance with the plain words of the apostle, and as
the apostles and the ancient church acted with one accord. —

The Editors of the Correspondence Sheet.