# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_August 1862_S229
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Report on the True Mean of the Lutheran Liturgy. 229

for the simple, who happen to come to it. For with the others neither law, nor order, nor exhortation, nor threat will help at all; let them go, so that in the service of worship they may willingly and freely leave undone what they do unwillingly and reluctantly. For forced services do not please God, and are vain and lost." (German Mass, etc. E. A. 22, 243.)

§ 5.
Secondary Services.

1. From the eight canonical hours or hours of prayer of the Roman Church, intended mostly for the priests, the two regular secondary services of the Lutheran Church on Sundays, feast days, and weekdays have arisen: Matins, Mette [Matins/early service] or the early service, and Vespers, or the afternoon or evening service. Their purpose is the exercise of the divine Word and of common prayer, and the daily Mettes and Vespers — at which, instead of a sermon, a summary was often read following the lesson — were held chiefly for the sake of the young, and through their agency.

Luther, Church Postil, epistle sermon on the words: "Be ye therefore sober, and watch unto prayer," 1 Pet. 4:8: "One can still see how the Christians in the early church (since they suffered great persecution) were so diligent in this matter, and indeed almost too willing, so that they came together and prayed with one another almost daily, not only morning and evening but also at certain fixed hours, and often kept watch and spent whole nights in prayer. Some carried this so far that they sometimes ate nothing for up to four days, as St. Augustine says. That is, to be sure, somewhat too tightly drawn, especially since an example and a commandment were later made out of it. But this much is nevertheless to be praised, that they were properly sober evening and morning and at all times; when this ceased among the congregation, there followed the sorry tribe of monks (who pretended to pray on behalf of others), who indeed kept the same hours and times — Mettes, Vespers, and the rest — but did not pray, but only chanted, or muttered and droned." (E. A. 8, 288-289.)

We still retain from this the children's schools, through which the evening and morning prayer is still preserved; but it ought to go likewise in every Christian's house, for every head of a household is obliged to hold his children to it, to pray at the very least in the morning and evening, and to commend to God all the distress of the world, that he would turn away his wrath and not punish us as we deserve.

2. The Lutheran Mette and Vespers follow essentially the form of the Roman Mette and Vespers, and therefore have as common chief parts the hymn, the psalmody, the lection, and the oration (the collect-prayer). The hymn, psalmody, and oration form the exercise of common prayer; the lection with sermon, or catechesis, or summaries, form the exercise in the Word in the narrower sense;