# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juni 1858_S174
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

174 On Visiting the Sick.

with too much trust, but likewise not with too strong a mistrust because of earlier impressions and experiences; for in the time of affliction such a change can very easily have come over the sick person that he soon perceives the opposite of what he had pictured to himself. Finally, let him firmly resolve to use, with his sick sheep, more the rod of gentleness than the rod of woe (Zech. 11:7); for those who belong neither among the secure and the frivolous, nor among the hardened and the hypocrites, feel all the more, under the chastening hand of God, their sinfulness and certain particular sins; they are far more terrified there of God's wrath and judgment, they are anxious for comfort, yet they would gladly believe with their whole heart the promises of the Gospel.

As to what is to be said to the sick from God's Word, I have for nearly two decades guided myself by certain churchly models, to which I felt bound to give preference over many similar directions, especially because of their strength and effect, proven over centuries. Thus at the first visit to the gravely ill I have usually let an echo of the comforting sermon on preparing for death resound, and have struck up the following address: Take leave of the world bodily, so that you set your house in order, and spiritually, so that you reconcile yourself with everyone. Then direct your heart to God alone, and prepare yourself for your end with confession and confident receiving of the holy Supper. When the three images of death, sin, and damnation then terrify you, hold up against them the three images of grace, life, and blessedness in Christ. Let none of those images into your heart, or else you are lost; but engrave these, through steadfast faith, into your heart, and you will at last surely obtain the victory, as Gideon did with his three companies against the great host of the Midianites. Therefore look also upon those three enemies, not indeed in the examples of those who have been overcome by them, but only in those who have overcome them;*) but most of all look upon Christ on the cross, who for your comfort also suffered and overcame such temptations. In short: seek yourself not in yourself, but in Christ, and you will find yourself in him forever.

Suppose now that the sick person responds little or nothing to such an address; that is still no sign either of the insufficiency of the Word preached, or of a lack of faith in it — otherwise the same standard would have to hold for its public proclamation. There are found, in the healthy, and still more in the sick, all sorts of reasons why such a response does not come about. We should therefore also act like a farmer, who waits for the abundant fruit of the earth and is pati-

*) Have you shown them a heartfelt delight in such grace of God, then you too, like them, are chosen of God, according to his own promise, Gen. 13:3: I will bless those who bless you.