# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juni 1858_S175
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

On Visiting the Sick. 175

patient about it, until he receives the early rain and the latter rain (James 5:7). We should, however, ask the sick person whether he is willing, in faith in Christ, to die if it should so please God; and if he answers this in the affirmative, we should thank God for such a Christian resolve and admonish the sick person to remain steadfast therein by the help of the Holy Spirit. Then let one pray over him, including the holy Lord's Prayer, and impart to him, under the laying on of hands, the blessing of the church.

To those less dangerously ill I am accustomed to set forth the four points mentioned above, as they are also found in the St. Louis Agenda: All sickness and death comes from sin — all help against it comes from the grace of God — therefore we should let ourselves be moved to repentance and to faith — then we can confidently submit ourselves to God's fatherly will, whether it go toward life or toward death.

Naturally one will, in doing this, come of itself upon the chief parts of the Catechism, and on repeated visits attach further instruction to them. Many a sick person comes to know, only then, from his own experience, the great usefulness of the Small Catechism, and that too is a good fruit of the evil days.

This pastoral treatment becomes still more profitable when the sick person, in answer to the questions put to him, gives an account of various particulars of his life — for example, concerning his family circumstances, his school days and confirmation time, particularly sad or joyful experiences, especially all kinds of help from God in distress, his being led to God's Word, his first impressions of it, his later attitude toward it, etc.

In continued visits to the sick I no longer trouble myself, as formerly, with a laborious selection of some particular Scripture passage; instead I usually repeat one of my most recent sermons, with emphasis on whatever bears particularly on the sick — for example, from the Gospel on Judica Sunday, the verse: Whoever keeps my word, etc. The sick, who long all the more for the public sermon the longer they have had to do without it, listen with especial eagerness to its repetition, not merely because the text and its exposition are already familiar to them from before, but because in doing so they recall to mind many a wholesome impression. In the case of those, however, who out of weariness with God's Word had often neglected the public sermon, the desire for it is not seldom newly awakened by such a repetition.

To those who have recovered I set forth such passages as Psalm 103, Isaiah 38, and others, and admonish them to bring their thank-offering of praise to God also in the presence of his congregation. Their wish that I too should do this together with the congregation I fulfill all the more gladly when they have beforehand asked for the public intercession; both, however, are done with the naming of the name, as Dr. Luther has prescribed for admonishing the people to prayer in the common form.