# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_M rz 1860_S76
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

76 Dr. v. Hofmann's Doctrine of the Fall.

Further, before the banns, engaged couples should be questioned on the topics belonging to Christianity, especially out of the Table of Duties. This so-called bridal examination, or friendly conversation, I too have held for a good while now with great benefit. In it I take as my basis either the biblical lessons from the marriage rite, or, from the first chief part of the catechism exposition, the questions numbered 693 to 706.

Then, too, before baptisms, both the child's father and the godparents should be questioned on the article concerning baptism, and instructed further on it as needed.

For the parish poor, a special catechism sermon with a following examination was ordained in Homburg from 1680 and in Weimar from 1710, and a special catechist was appointed for it.

For the poor children, a free school was established in Dresden in Löscher's time (around 1711), specifically for instruction in the Catechism.

In the Gotha lands, according to a synodical resolution of the year 1645, a kindly and attentive eye was likewise kept on shepherds, herdsmen, charcoal-burners, and similar persons, as well as on beggars, "so that they should not lack this so necessary instruction in Christianity, and might, through the conscientious teachers' care, secure for themselves what is best in life and in death."

Finally it is to be mentioned that the same care was shown also to those found in workhouses and houses of correction, in that they were faithfully instructed in the Catechism, as happened, among other places, in Homburg from 1640.

Thus the work of what is called inner mission was carried on long ago, and, particularly with respect to the pure Lutheran doctrine of the Catechism, was without doubt pursued far more faithfully than it is in many places today.

The close of the fifteenth chapter of Ecclesiasticus, which embraces the practice of the Catechism along with the practice of God's Word, shall also be the close of this essay: "Blessed is he who continually occupies himself with God's Word, and expounds and teaches it, who considers it from the heart and learns to understand it thoroughly, and forever searches further after wisdom, and follows close after her wherever she goes, and peers in at her window and listens at her door, and seeks lodging near her house, and sets up his tent against her wall, and to him it is a good lodging. He brings his children also under her little roof, and abides beneath her arbor. There he will be sheltered from the heat, and to him it is a glorious dwelling."

Dr. v. Hofmann's Doctrine of the Fall.

What follows is a piece of modern theology, held up here to the light of the churchly view. We take it from the "Kirchliche Zeitschrift von Dr. Kliefoth und Dr. Mejer," numbers 10 and 11, 1859:

"In particular, v. Hofmann lays such great weight on the circumstance that sin began with the