# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juni 1862_S165
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Report on the Right Mean of the Lutheran Liturgy. 165

and thus make yourself a partaker of the fellowship of the saints. How have you formerly run after the graves, garments, and bones of the saints? How have people made pilgrimages to Rome, to Jerusalem, to St. James, only to see stone, bone, wood, and earth, without thinking at all of Christ? And here, in your own city or village, before your very door, Christ himself is present, living, with body and blood, with his remembrance, praise, and honor — and you will not go to him and help to thank and praise him? Surely you are no Christian, not even a human being, but a devil and devil's spawn." (Luther. Collected Works, Erlangen Edition 23, 174-177.)

§3.
The Meaning of the Liturgy.

If worship is so necessary an expression of the life of faith of the Christian fellowship, then its character must also be reflected in its outward form. It is with this latter that the liturgy is concerned, insofar as it sets forth what is said and done, on the one hand in the distribution and reception of the means of grace, and on the other in the offering of the sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving.

Note 1. According to its literal and ecclesiastical meaning, liturgy designates the performance of a service in the fellowship of Christians. Apology on the Word "Mass," Art. 12: "So the Greek word Liturgia properly means an office, in which one serves the congregation. This fits well with our teaching, that the priest there, as a common servant, serves those who wish to commune, and administers the Holy Sacrament."

Note 2. In the first centuries, the Church, in all likelihood, did not fix its liturgy in writing, but handed it down orally, as it did the Symbol [Creed]. Through the written fixation that later became necessary, the liturgical books arose — the rituals, the agendas, etc.

§4.
The Principle of Christian Freedom.

Every form whatsoever of outward worship for Christians must be borne and permeated by the principle of Christian freedom, and this must always assert itself in that even the most beautiful form is not held to be necessary either for salvation or for the true unity of the Christian Church, but is regarded as serving only discipline and good order — and may therefore, at any time the need requires, be changed, diminished, or increased.

Luther, Formula Missae, 1523: "The ordinances of Christians, that is, of the children of the free, ought to be so framed that they keep them willingly and gladly from the heart, yet have the power to change them, as often and however it pleases them. Therefore it comes to nothing when someone in this matter wishes to demand or ordain a form and manner as necessary, as a law, whereby consciences would be entangled and burdened. Hence it is also that we find, among the old fathers and the early Church, no example of a complete form or manner of how the Mass is to be held,