# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juli 1862_S198
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

198 Report on the Right Mean of the Lutheran Liturgy.

recited and read it the way a parrot talks. From this has come a
vast sea full of horae canonicae, the howling and bawling in chapters
and monasteries, where the psalms and lection were sung and
read through with no spirit at all, so that one neither understood nor grasped word, sentence,
or meaning." (E. A. 59, 9. 10.)

If the hierarchical spirit does not let the spiritual priesthood come at all to its
right and its exercise in worship, then the enthusiast (schwärmerisch)
spirit leads away from the right use and into abuse. Uncalled persons
pray and preach alongside the called preachers in one and the same
service; indeed, among the Quakers, where there is neither a public preaching office
nor sacrament, whoever the "Spirit" comes upon preaches and speaks,
though at times no one does, because the Spirit does not come. Not only men,
women too pray in public worship, as for instance among the Methodists.
Especially notable is the low regard for set forms of prayer. Their use is, to the enthusiast spirit, the very
opposite of what he calls "prayer of the heart," and a hindrance to
"living" Christianity. Wherever he is able to, therefore, he wholly proscribes the use
of set prayer forms, as among the Puritans and Methodists — indeed he makes not only, as the latter do, very
rare use of the holy Our Father, but no use of it at all, as with the Darbyites, who out of
hatred for every fixed churchly form will not even pray the prayer of prayers.
And yet it is precisely through such abuse of the spiritual priesthood that the
right use is constrained, in that the enthusiasts, since in their
self-inflation they know themselves so full of the Holy Spirit that the anointed word always stands ready for anyone at any hour, are wholly given over to the subjectivity
of whoever leads their prayer — perhaps even more so than if
the same person, instead of the hymns of the Church, had them sing his own (improvised) poems in
worship. (Zinzendorf.)

Note 1. Pietism, too, regards the use of set prayer forms as a
fetter upon the spirit, and sees in free prayer alone a praying in
spirit and in truth.

Note 2. It is worth noting that in a part of the English sects found here, alongside this abuse, the hearers are once again reduced to complete
passivity, in that the congregation listens not only to the preacher, who
prays before them, but also to the choir, which sings before them.

1 Cor. 14:33-35: "God is not a God of disorder but
of peace, as in all the congregations of the saints. Let your women keep
silent in the congregation; for it is not permitted to them
to speak, but to be subject, as the Law also says. But if they
want to learn something, let them ask their husbands at home. It is unseemly
for women to speak in the congregation."

1 Timothy 2:8, 11, 12: "I will therefore that men pray in
every place, lifting up holy hands without wrath or doubting. Let a woman
learn in all quietness with all submissiveness. But to a woman I permit