# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_April 1863_S118
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

118 The Old Lutheran Teachers on Slavery.

—more display the bones of their frame than nature requires. If, on the other hand, one returned to the preaching manner of the old Church, set the models of the Reformation period up again more for emulation, and brought the text once more to honor analytically and paraphrastically in its loci and articles, the congregation would truly be better served thereby than by the artfully woven-in, oratorical showpieces of our present artificial manner of preaching — a manner unknown in the best periods of the Church, but which celebrated its greatest flowering in the days of Rationalism and Supranaturalism. It goes without saying — and let it be emphasized once more — that in commending the old churchly manner of preaching it is by no means meant that preaching should sink to the level of a Bible class, or the exposition of the text to a marginal gloss, as though study, investigation of the text, application, and above all coherence of thought were not necessary at all; on the contrary: whoever does not work through the text, does not conceive it and, so far as lies in him, present it in the order inherent in every text, sins precisely against his preaching office.

The Old Lutheran Teachers on Slavery.

So further writes Johannes Brenz, so highly honored by Luther:

"Among the Israelites a twofold condition of servants was established. The one was the condition of those who were of the Israelite people themselves and were sold either to other Israelites or to the strangers dwelling among the Israelites. Of these the Law says: If thy brother be waxen poor beside thee and sell himself unto thee, thou shalt not compel him to serve as a bondservant; but as a hired servant and as a sojourner shall he be with thee, and shall serve thee until the year of jubilee. Then shall he go free from thee, he and his children with him, etc. Lev. 25:39–41. Of those Israelites, however, who sold themselves to strangers, it says: One of his brethren may redeem him. V. 48. And shortly after: Thou shalt not let him be ruled with rigor before thine eyes. But if he be not redeemed in this way, he shall go free in the year of jubilee, he and his children with him, etc. V. 53–54. Different was the condition of those servants whom the Hebrews bought from the heathen, or whom they took captive in a foreign war. The condition of these was harsher in the Israelite commonwealth than that of the former sort. These, says the Law, ye shall possess, and your children after you, as property forever; them shall ye have as bondmen forever. V. 46. For these never obtained freedom, not even in the jubilee year, except when they were set free by the favor of their masters, or ransomed with money, or made free on account of the maiming of a limb — concerning which see Exod. 31. One sees, then, that the conditions of servants