# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juni 1862_S164
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Report on the Right Mean of the Lutheran Liturgy. 164

heaven and earth might fill. But when the heart is full, then must also both eyes and ears, mouth and nose, body and soul and all the members be full. For as the heart holds itself, so all the members hold and dispose themselves accordingly, and all and everything becomes pure tongue, full of praising and thanking toward God . . . . . Behold, that is indeed another sound and song than all the singing and sounding on earth; and it sounds indeed faint from without, to the ears; but from within, out of the heart, it sounds so strong that all creation seems to you to ring with the very same sound, and all human singing seems mute and deaf by comparison.

If now you had no other cause nor use in this Sacrament than this remembrance alone, should you not find enough incitement and inducement in it? Should not your heart say to you thus: Well then, even if I otherwise had no benefit from it at all, yet I will go forth to my God's praise and honor, I will help him to uphold his divine honor, and also be party to his being made a true God. If I cannot or may not preach, then I will at least listen; for whoever listens also helps to give thanks and to honor God, since, where there were no listener, there could be no preacher either. If I cannot listen, then I will nevertheless be among the listeners, and will at least, in deed, with body and with my members, be present where God is praised and honored. And even if I could do no more than that, I will receive the Sacrament for this very reason, that by such receiving I may confess and bear witness that I too am one who wishes to praise and thank God, and I will thus receive the Sacrament to my God's honor. And such receiving shall be my remembrance, whereby I think upon his grace and give thanks for it, shown to me in Christ. For it is no small thing that someone gladly is among the throng where God is praised and thanked; which the old fathers desired with deep sighing, as the 42nd Psalm (v. 5) says: "I would gladly go over with the multitude, and go with them to the house of God, in the voice of joy and thanksgiving, among the multitude that keep holyday." And in the beautiful Confitemini (Ps. 118:15): "The voice of rejoicing and salvation is in the tabernacles of the righteous," and much more of the like. For whoever is among the throng (if he is not false) is a partaker of all the honor and thanks that is there rendered to God. Therefore you must indeed be a desperate rascal, if, being able to render to God such service and such great honor, and it costing you neither expense nor effort, but rather being able to accomplish everything by willing listening, or by bodily receiving, and with a thankful heart, you nevertheless will not show this to your God — whereas you ought rather gladly to run to the end of the world, if you knew where to find such a throng, where God is praised and honored.

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