# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juli 1862_S201
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Report on the Right Mean of the Lutheran Liturgy. 201

Note. Unfortunately the Puritan form of worship still holds, in many places here in this country, its unquestioned citizenship even in the Lutheran congregations that are not associated with the pseudo-Lutheran General Synod.

III.
The Realization of the Christian Principles in the Model of the Complete Lutheran Liturgy.

§ 1.
The Roman and the Lutheran Liturgy.

As we now proceed to the demonstration that the principles set forth under I. are realized in the complete liturgy of the Lutheran Church, it seems best first to point out what is shared and what is distinctive between the Roman and the Lutheran liturgy.

Since the chief Lutheran service is nothing else, and claims to be nothing else, than the purified, the true Christian Mass (I, § 7), and since Luther's Little Book of Baptism is nothing else than the Roman baptismal formula in a purified, more original shape, there is found in quite a number of particulars a certain similarity in the outward appearance of the Lutheran service to the Roman. This consists

1) in the essential parts of the Mass and of Baptism, as we shall specify them individually hereafter;

2) in the arrangement of the church year;

3) in the ceremonies in the narrower sense, with respect to the symbolic element in worship, to the delivery of the liturgical text, to the arrangement of the church building, the vestments, and the like.

The opponent, like the uninformed among our own people, sees in these points where the Lutheran liturgy coincides with the Roman a good deal of leftover papist leaven; but the unprejudiced and well-informed observer recognizes in them at once the conservative character of the Lutheran Reformation, and thus the realization of the principles set forth in I, §§ 7 and 10. But because, according to I, §§ 2 and 3, the essence and basic character of Christian worship is expressed in the liturgy, and spirit in general creates its own form for itself, and because accordingly the spiritual priesthood of all Christians must, in the order God has willed, find its expression and exercise in worship as well (§ 9) — all the more, and all the more significantly, is what is characteristically distinctive found between the Lutheran and the Roman liturgy. This, besides what has been sifted out of the service as papist leaven, would appear to be the following:

1) the use of the vernacular, formerly predominant and now exclusively prevailing;

2) the participation of the whole congregation in the liturgical responsive singing;