# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juni 1858_S170
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

170 On Visiting the Sick.

dentine chapter speaks) such an anointing as would be a sacrament for those who are near death, as the description and practice of the papists indicates. And because the Tridentine decree itself refers to the sixth chapter of Mark, it is now proven that the papal anointing has, in that passage, neither its institution, nor a command, nor a promise, nor an example, so that it could be a sacrament of the New Testament, as its description claims.

(To be concluded.)

(Submitted by Pastor Keyl.)

On Visiting the Sick.

Dr. Bugenhagen says in the Pomeranian Church Order: "There belongs to this a peculiar diligence and experience, that the pastor, who is to instruct and comfort others, be himself well instructed, versed in Scripture, and experienced in spiritual trials; to instruct and comfort the sick is a great work, to which great diligence, earnestness, and spirit belong." For this reason the Lutheran Church has provided its ministers abundantly with instruction in this matter too, as the older, unadulterated church orders bear witness. In them are found not merely general instructions — which in some, and particularly in the Pomeranian one, are especially detailed — but they also give definite directions for individual difficult cases, as the Magdeburg Church Order does with regard to how to deal with the melancholic, the despondent, the spiritually afflicted, and the possessed. An orderly compilation of everything pertaining to this from all the Lutheran church orders, with an emphasis on what is common and what is distinctive among them, would offer an effective remedy against the almost universal ignorance and the attendant disregard of such directions, and would provide not merely a welcome contribution, but rather a sure foundation for further building up and expansion.

I would here call attention only to the brief instruction as to what one ought in general to set before the sick, as it is found in several older agendas and also in the St. Louis one. It contains four points: all sickness comes from sin — all help against it comes from the grace of God — sickness and death should drive us to repentance and to faith — the sick should comfort themselves with the grace of God and submit to his will.

Next, besides Holy Scripture, certain devotional writings are recommended for diligent reading, particularly Dr. Luther's — namely his sermon on preparing for death — Urbanus Rhegius's Medicine for the Soul, Hieronymus Weller's letters of comfort, and individual treatises, among which the one on 1 Corinthians 15:54, as well as the aforementioned Medicine for the Soul, are merely a further