# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juli 1862_S200
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

200 Report on the Right Mean of the Lutheran Liturgy.

useful and needful, namely so that one may hold the heart together, so that it
is not scattered and fastens its thoughts on the mere letters, just as
one must hold onto a tree or a wall with one's fist, so that we
do not slip, or flutter too far and go astray with our own thoughts.

This is what our enthusiasts lack, that they suppose,
when they soar off into their lofty spiritual thoughts, that they
have hit the mark; and do not see how, without the Word, they travel
a wrong road, letting themselves be led astray by mere will-o'-the-wisps.
Therefore be warned against such flighty thoughts, and take care only
to deal with God through the spoken Word and prayer; yet in such a way that you
keep the right distinction, that it not be a mere outward praying, where one
seeks nothing further than the deed, and supposes that once so much has been read or
spoken, one has thereby accomplished it — while the heart never once perceives
what the mouth says, or considers what it is doing — but rather that the heart
begins, and thereafter the outward mouth and body, word and gesture, go along with it.
In sum, when it proceeds from the heart, to ask with desire and earnestness, then it is
altogether praiseworthy and good, however one may go about it." (Erl. A. 50, 161-163.)

§ 7.
Ceremonies: Excess or Bareness.

As lies plainly before our eyes, the hierarchical spirit leads to an
excess of ceremonies and gives the whole divine service the character
of the sensuous, whereby the two faculties of the human mind,
feeling and imagination, are chiefly laid under contribution in a questionable way,
and whereby, through spectacle of every sort,
through music that often does not shy even from the most frivolous operatic style, through incense
and the like, the eyes, ears, and all the senses are beclouded, while the understanding
— and through it the heart, by the proclamation of the Word — is
given comparatively far too little regard.

Apology, Art. 13: "We will here pass over in silence the countless
childish ceremonies and foolish forms of worship
with lections, with chants, and the like, which in part might be tolerable
if they had some measure, and were employed for good exercise,
as one uses the lection in school and the sermon for this purpose,
that the hearers may improve themselves through it. If they directed such church services
and ceremonies to this end, that the young and the common man
might be exercised in God's Word, then short and diligent
lections would be far more useful than their bawling in choir, which has
neither measure nor end."

The enthusiast spirit takes the opposite, extreme path. It strips
the church year of its festivals, the church of its adornment, the preachers
of their vestments, the liturgy itself of its beautiful forms; bareness and
excessive austerity are the characteristic mark of the enthusiast
form of worship, in which, alongside a disregard for decorum
(for what is fitting and proper), often the most desolate disorder prevails as well.