# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_August 1862_S228
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

228 Report on the True Mean of the Lutheran Liturgy.

"And in this our inborn, hereditary, priestly honor and adornment we stand, having (as is depicted in Apocalypse chapter 4) our golden crowns upon our heads, harps in our hands, and golden censers, and we let our parish pastor speak the order of Christ not for himself, as for his own person, but he is the mouth of us all, and we all speak it with him from the heart, and with faith lifted up to the Lamb of God, who is there for us and with us, and who, according to his own institution, feeds us with his body and blood. That is our Mass, and the true Mass which does not fail us."

"For here, in the first place, everything proceeds according to the order and command of Christ, so that it is administered and given to the church in both kinds through the words of Christ: Take and eat, this is my body, etc. Do this in remembrance of me. The parish pastor does not receive it for himself alone, as the papal abomination does; he does not offer it up to God for our sin and every kind of need, as the papal abomination does; he does not distribute it to us, does not sell it to us as a good work to reconcile God, as the papal abomination does and has made of it such a blasphemous market fair — but rather gives it to us for the comfort and strengthening of our faith. Here Christ is proclaimed and preached; here there can be no greed nor idolatry. Here we have the meaning of Christ and of the church for certain; here we need not worry whether the parish pastor speaks the words secretly, or whether he lives rightly, or whether he even believes, for we hear the words of institution publicly, and speak them with him from the heart, and it is the institution of Christ (not our doing, nor any chrism) that changes and gives us the body and blood of Christ. If the pastor does not believe, or doubts, still we believe; if he stumbles over the words, or grows confused and forgets whether he has spoken the words, still we are there, listen, hold fast, and are certain that they have been spoken. Therefore we cannot be deceived. And because the institution and right faith are present, it must be certain that we receive the true body and blood of Christ. And thanks and praise be to God that I have lived to see the true Christian Mass and the pure Christian use of the holy sacrament. I see it with the joy and gladness of my heart, after the horrible, dreadful abuse which I, alas, helped to carry on under the papal abomination for so many years." (Writing on the Private Mass and the Ordination of Priests. 1533. E. A. 31, 370-372.)

b) But whoever is receptive only to the glory of such a service of worship, and nothing more: "Those who out of curiosity and desire for novelty like to gape at it will soon grow altogether weary and tired of it all, just as they have hitherto done in the Latin service, where singing and reading went on daily in the churches, and yet the churches remained deserted and empty, and are already beginning to do the same in the German service. Therefore the best course is that such a service be arranged for the young, and for the simple