# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_November 1862_S352
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

352 Church and Contemporary History.

can go, a hair-raising example from the most respected of the local English
daily papers. It reports of a famous Puritan preacher, Dr. Cheever, that before
a very numerous and tense audience he brought onto the pulpit, and subjected
to criticism, the President's latest proclamation on the emancipation of the
slaves in the seceded states — which is by no means radical enough to suit
him — and criticized it. His text was 1 Sam. 15:22, and, in genuine fanatical
fashion, what is said there of and to Saul, because he had not utterly destroyed
the Amalekites, was applied at once to President Lincoln. His proclamation
ought not to have been set for January 1, but should have read that the
slaves of the rebels are "declared free now and forever." He is also opposed
to the proclamation for the reason that it robs the loyal states of the blessing
of emancipation. That is to say — these are, literally, his half-crazed words —
it admits the rebellious states to the joys of heaven and keeps the border
states in the fires of hell. — He also states unreservedly, in a spirit that is
truly devilish, that if the only way for slavery to be abolished in the rebel
states were for them to continue in their rebellion until January 1, then his
prayer would be that they should simply keep on doing so. — Indeed, if God
were to break in with a sudden judgment upon such gamblers and horrible
desecrators of his sanctuary, that would certainly still be great grace and
mercy toward our unfortunate, deluded people. But that he lets them carry on,
that a bewitched crowd applauds them and believes their lying pleas — that is
great and grave wrath from God. When will the misery of our poor country
end? But what am I saying, "end" — when will people even begin to recognize
it rightly at all? — C.

Dr. Nevin on Liturgy. It will certainly please the readers of "Lehre und
Wehre" to hear something of the sound, sober views of this Reformed
theologian on standing liturgical forms. We take the following excursus of his
on this subject from the first October number of the "Lutheran and
Missionary":
"Unliturgical denominations lack the Apostles' Creed as an educative form of
faith and godliness. It is not prayed in their homes, not taught to their
children. Indeed, for the most part they are no longer even able to recite it.
Among the mass of the people it has vanished from memory and become
unknown to them. Let this alone be taken as a powerful illustration of how
poorly equipped such denominations are to provide, in fact, for what we have
seen to be the true idea of an educative religion. — Here, then, is undoubtedly
a very serious deficiency, one which may well be urged against the system of
extemporized prayer, at least as a counterweight to its claim to more life and
greater spirituality, even should one have to grant that this claim has its
justice. But we dispute the claim itself. There may indeed be more of a
semblance of life where the soul is burdened with the task of producing, on
the spur of the moment, both the substance and the form of the prayer, but it
is a mistake to assume at once that this comes from the true spirit of
devotion. To a great extent it must be ascribed merely to the activity of the
understanding put into exercise, an activity which is no indication or
measure whatsoever of the activity of the heart. It might rather appear to be
established that the immediate, natural effect of such a strain of thinking
must be to divert the vital force away from the anointing of feeling. The two
processes are entirely different. The activity of invention is one thing; the
activity of devotion is something quite other. In this regard it is not
unreasonable to say that fixed, long-familiar forms give the spirit of devotion,
on the whole, better stimulus and a more favorable opportunity to express
itself than any extemporized utterances devised for the purpose. Where the
devout heart is lacking, these become mere forms and nothing more, like the
wheels in Ezekiel's vision, which had no motion of their own except through
the power of the living spirit that was in them. But where the devout heart is
lacking, even an extemporized prayer is itself only another kind of
formalism, more offensive, we might say, than that of the Common Prayer
Book — just as the convulsions of a galvanized corpse are more repulsive and
uglier than the features of that same corpse in a state of rest. Still, for a
worship assembly, if it must indeed come to such a pitiful piece of
playacting, the mummery of ritual forms — which are, after all, in themselves
beautifully and well composed — is better than the mummery of prayers
bawled heavenward without form or life. Yet that is not the either-or on which
a proper comparison of the two systems of worship ought to be based. Let the
devout spirit, the inner readiness for worship, be present. Then he will, we
maintain, through the use of liturgical forms — those accustomed and
convenient channels of the devout thoughts of earlier times — as a rule come
far more easily into a calm, vigorous exercise than with the help of any
extemporized promptings whatsoever." C.