# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juni 1862_S174
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

174    Essay on the Right Mean of the Lutheran Liturgy.

joins in, praising and glorifying, in response to the voice of its called minister and leader — thus corresponding with him in praise and thanksgiving by responding.

1 Cor. 14:16. See above.

Col. 3:16: "Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom. Teach and admonish yourselves with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing to the Lord in your hearts."

Ezra 3:10-11: "And when the builders laid the foundation of the temple of the Lord, the priests stood arrayed, with trumpets, and the Levites, the sons of Asaph, with cymbals, to praise the Lord after the manner ordained by David king of Israel, and they sang responsively (antiphonally, in alternating choirs), praising and giving thanks to the Lord, that he is good, and his mercy endures forever toward Israel. And all the people shouted with a great shout, praising the Lord, because the foundation of the house of the Lord was laid."

Ps. 136 is throughout arranged for antiphonal recitation, as is indeed the case with all the psalms on account of their parallelism.

Ps. 147:7: "Sing responsively to the Lord with thanksgiving, and praise our God with the harp."

Luther, Order of Divine Service in the Congregation: "The singing in the Sunday Masses and Vespers should be allowed to remain, for they are for the most part good and drawn from Scripture, though one may lessen or increase them. But arranging the singing and psalms daily, morning and evening, ought to be the office of the pastor and preacher, so that on each morning they appoint a psalm, a fitting responsory or antiphon, with a collect. In the evening likewise, after the lesson and its exposition, to be read and sung publicly." (Erl. A. 22, 156.)

The same, The Manner of Celebrating a Christian Mass: "Much singing in the Mass has been finely and gloriously made out of thanksgiving and praise, and has remained in use until now."

The same, Preface to the Spiritual Hymnbook, 1524: "That it is good to sing spiritual songs, and pleasing to God, I think is hidden from no Christian, seeing that not only the example of the prophets and kings in the Old Testament — who praised God with singing and playing, with poetry and all manner of stringed instruments — but also this very custom, especially with psalms, has been known to the whole of Christendom from the beginning. Indeed, St. Paul also establishes this, 1 Cor. 14, and commands the Colossians to sing spiritual songs and psalms to the Lord from the heart, so that thereby God's Word and Christian doctrine may be furthered and practiced in every way." (Erl. A. 56, 297.)

3. To this belongs, finally, that the liturgical word have a thoroughly objective character. This holds especially in everything where the officiant is the congregation's spokesman before God — that is, in all kinds of common prayer. The assembled congregation may not be given over to the subjective caprice of the one leading its prayer, through an exclu-