# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juli 1862_S205
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Report on the Right Mean of the Lutheran Liturgy. 205

Unity is the first feature of the composition of the chief service.
It is a whole in its beautiful articulation, which strives, in a graduated ascent,
toward the sacrament as its goal. After the Introit, sung by the choir,
has opened the service and marked the character of the Sunday or
festival day, the congregation first humbles itself in the Kyrie
before God, and then ascends, through the Gloria and the Hymnus
Angelicus ("Alone to God," etc.), in praise of him who out of great love for the world
gave up his Son, upward to petition, to the hearing of the
Word in Epistle and Gospel, with the gradual hymn or the
chief hymn or festival hymn between them, to the joyful and courageous
confession of faith, after whose Amen it sits down with Mary
and rests, in order, for the furtherance of its inward life, to hear in the sermon
the proclamation resembling the faith of the Church, which finally issues
into the public, general confession and absolution that follows,
as an exercise and application of the Law and Gospel that have been heard.
After this point of rest the congregation turns toward the sealing
of the promise of grace given in the Word, that is, toward the administration of the sacrament.
Made rich by the word of the Gospel and filled in particular with comfort and joy
through the absolution, it makes known its petition, in the Church Prayer,
the intercessions asked for, etc., and the holy Our Father, in
prayer and supplication with thanksgiving before God, and, so that
those who remained at home may unite with it in the prayer of prayers, it summons
them to do so at its beginning by the threefold ringing of the prayer-bell.
Thus prepared for union with the Lord and for the sealing
of the grace laid hold of by faith in the Word, one draws near
to the altar, there to offer the Lord, in the Psalmody, in "Create in me,
O God" from Psalm 51, the sacrifice of a penitent heart, as well as that of love, in
a freewill offering for the poor-box. The Preface,
an introduction by name, and by its essential origin nearly
apostolic, is thanksgiving, eucharist, and adoration through the Thrice-
Holy (Sanctus) before him who comes through the sacrament in the name
of the Lord. In the Lord's Prayer — here and there preceded by Luther's
exhortation before the Supper in its shorter form — and in the
words of institution, the consecration is accomplished, and as thereupon,
in the Agnus Dei, the congregation with one accord proclaims the Lord's death,
and in the Peace once more receives the assurance of his grace,
the body and blood of Christ, under the confession of their true presence,
are distributed under the bread and wine, by virtue of the
Lord's institution. Fittingly the Nunc Dimittis ("Lord, now
lettest thou thy servant depart in peace" or: "In peace and joy I
now depart") follows the distribution in many liturgies — for what more can one
ask, in this vale of tears, of the powers of the
world to come, than the enjoyment of the body and blood of
Christ for the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation, and when could