# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_August 1862_S234
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

234 Report on the True Mean of the Lutheran Liturgy.

can say, without boasting, that it is observed among us with greater devotion and earnestness than among the adversaries" — and that not merely among the papistic ones, but also among the enthusiast and pseudo-Lutheran ones.

b. Luther's German baptismal booklet of 1526, which, as a consequence of the congregations' meanwhile more matured understanding, let fall several superfluous ceremonies — ones that scattered devotion rather than gathering it, and overloaded the rite — which the first edition of 1523 had still retained for the sake of the weak, has become the norm for all the remaining Lutheran baptismal rites, which accordingly, with the addition of baptismal exhortations, the obligation of the godparents, and sometimes also a prayer at the close, show, both in their choice and in the sequence of the baptismal parts, a fairly high degree of liturgical uniformity. Only in the placement of the godparents' obligation, and in the manner of it, does considerable variety prevail.

c. The central point, the high point of the whole baptismal liturgy, is the actual act of baptism — the pouring of water in the name of the triune God. Toward this all the preceding parts strive, and stand in closest relation to it; to it, too, the little that follows leads back.

To awaken faith and earnest devotion, there stands first the baptismal exhortation to the godparents and the other persons present, whereupon the church, with the sign of the cross, the symbol of the Christian, extends its hand to the one being baptized and presents him to God, praying for admission into the kingdom of grace and for the faith needed for this — whereby, through the exorcism, where it was and is in use, it confesses, as through a symbol, both the great corruption of human nature and also the wondrous power of baptism. But since, after the church's planting in the world, baptism is mostly performed on those not yet of age, the church has the godparents give surety, before the act of baptism — though in some places also after it — for the Christian upbringing of the one baptized, particularly in case of the parents' death; whereupon, for the biblical grounding of infant baptism, the baptismal Gospel of Mark 10 follows, and the church then, in the Lord's Prayer, hands the child over to the Lord just as those mothers did, that he would "embrace it, bless it, lay his blessed hand upon it, and grant it grace through the Holy Spirit, true faith, and eternal life."

Here, then, the first, the preparatory half of the act of baptism concludes, as is already indicated by the words in the baptismal booklet: "Thereafter let the child be led to baptism, and let the priest say: The Lord guard your going in, etc." Before the one being baptized, together with the godparents, stepped up to the baptistery, he was, according to old custom, accompanied — still upon the threshold, in the house of blessing — by the Davidic blessing-saying from Ps. 121: "The Lord bless you, etc." One must admit that this is the only fitting place where this wish