# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1848 06 21_S184
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

...Spirit into the straitjacket of a fixed form and manner, and finally a misapprehension of the evangelical fundamental doctrine of original sin, which decidedly maintains that man, for and in his conversion, can and does contribute nothing by the power of his own will, but only need not resist the Holy Spirit.

4. The mourners' bench, together with its accessories, promotes the delusion:

a. that individual pains and struggles of repentance, individual feelings of grace and joys of faith, are already "the breakthrough" to a thorough conversion.

b. that a special terror over the law and a special rapture over the gospel, together with corresponding gestures, is something higher, if not even meritorious.

c. that having been at the mourners' bench (in the sense of a and b) and being converted are the same thing.

d. that not having come forward to such a place of repentance, and not being thoroughly converted, are the same thing.

e. that little or nothing depends upon careful doctrine of salvation and sound knowledge of salvation.

f. that the mourners' bench is more effective and more essential for conversion than holy baptism.

From this, however, it becomes sufficiently clear that,

5. the mourners' bench, through its own fault, tends to arouse and nourish, on the one hand, spiritual pride and vain self-contemplation (see b, c, e, f), and on the other hand, anxiety and despondency (see d), and in the one case hinders thorough repentance, in the other the right faith in Christ, and promotes the work-and-essence of the law, and can consequently harm souls in manifold ways. This is clear and evident. But even granting that it does not harm individual souls, which is not clear and evident, whatever fruit and effect it may have for them — bound up as it is with such great danger for other souls — can also be attained without it. For where the Word of God, law and gospel, is taught purely and clearly, and the holy sacraments are rightly administered, there it cannot and will not fail that individual souls, sooner or later, will repeat the decisive question of the firstfruits of the Christian church at Jerusalem (Acts 2:37) and of the jailer at Philippi (Acts 16:30): "What must I do to be saved?" — without any imagined cooperation or assistance from a fixed place of repentance. And where, as the healthy fruit of the sole means of grace, and through them, as the sole working of the Holy Spirit, this important question arises out of a sincere depth of heart, there, it is to be hoped, the decisive answer will also not be lacking: "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you and your household will be saved" (Acts 16:31); nor will there then be lacking the closer pastoral care and guidance, the right evangelical instructing, counseling, and comforting of the individual soul with God's Word and promise, in order to gain and preserve this righteous and saving faith, even should more than a few hours and days at the mourners' bench be needed for it; and finally, the faithful pastor will surely not fail to care for and watch over this soul earnestly, and to make the right intercession not merely for hours and days, but for weeks, months, and years. And indeed, for this often years-long hoping and waiting, bearing and enduring, asking and interceding, until at last this or that one of these individual souls who have been savingly struck becomes the true poor sinner in Adam and the true righteous one in Christ, and is placed in a firm state of grace — for that, more illumination of the Holy Spirit is needed, more patience and warmth of the love of Christ, than the straw-fire and flash-heat of the heaven-storming mourners'-bench people can supply. Where, then, those above-named means of grace of the Holy Spirit are faithfully and honestly administered, together with all their lawful accompaniments, there in every case the compulsory and coercive instrument of the mourners' bench, together with all its trappings, will be entirely useless and superfluous; but where these means of grace are falsified and unfaithfully administered, there the mourners' bench will accomplish nothing for them but manifest lying and hypocrisy. — In the best case, therefore, it is wholly dispensable; in the worst, wholly ruinous.

Philip. What do you say, then, to the free heart-prayers and the constant kneeling prayers of the Methodists?

Martin. I would say little or nothing about it, if they did not also here express themselves so contemptuously and disparagingly about written and read prayers, and about the standing prayers in worship. But since they do this quite generally, it follows here too that they make out of their manner a kind of merit and cooperating work of the law, and lay an undue value and emphasis on their form. But if we look a little more closely at this form and manner of theirs, we find in it a good many misgivings and drawbacks; and these are as follows:

1. It leads to an indifference toward the holy Our Father, this prayer of all prayers, which we too originally possess only in written form, and likewise toward the Psalms and other prayers set down in Holy Scripture; and out of this indifference there soon arises a laxity in the churchly and domestic use of these model prayers, and this lies clearly in evidence, since the Lord's Prayer is prayed very sparingly in Methodist worship. Now it is of course true, as Luther says, that the holy Our Father is a great martyr on earth and is chattered and prattled through beyond measure in thoughtlessness and unbelief. But this takes nothing away from its imperishable youth and glory, just as the sun remains the sun even when evildoers rob and murder by its light; the unbelieving misuse does not abolish the believing use. Or is all the free prayer of the heart of true Christians — indeed even of a Moses, a Samuel, and a Daniel — among the Methodists anything other than an unfolding of the holy Our Father? Or have, say, the most experienced and most believing Christians, and the most fervent of those who pray, already learned the third petition by heart, and grasped it sufficiently in knowledge, and fully done or endured it in will? Likewise, gather together the mightiest heart-prayers of the Methodists in one crowd, and all of them together will not produce a single psalm of repentance and thanksgiving such as we possess so abundantly written in the Word of God.

2. It leads to a contempt for printed and read, churchly consecrated prayers in church and domestic use. From the flourishing age of our church, for example, come those short, powerful, and consecrated church prayers which, in praise and thanksgiving, confession of sin and of faith, petition and intercession, lift up one's own heart, as well as that of all others, unanimously in the true Christian faith to the triune God; and in that same spirit and sense many little prayer-books from olden times are also composed, in which every sincere and simple Christian who seeks no artifice finds again himself and his own innermost heart, with all its needs and all its concerns; indeed, not only that, but he even finds these little prayers to be like his own language and expression. If, then, the heart stands sincerely before and toward God, while the lips, in church or at home, softly or aloud, pray these consecrated prayers along and after, they will, one hopes, also be free prayers of the heart. Conversely, however, these latter can, in their inner essence, be quite dry and thin, if the heart does not stand so wholly simply and purely before God, that is, if the one leading the prayer makes as it were a profession out of praying, likes to hear himself pray, and places a secret value on, say, the length of his prayer, on the fullness of expression, on particular "oh's" and "ah's," and on other outward gestures. And it is precisely these prayers that offer the most wearisome sameness; for, in the first place, such prayers and prayer-leaders scarcely carry the concerns and needs of the church and of Christendom, as well as of individual souls, so much upon their hearts as those old, much-tried and much-experienced men of God, for example, of our church did; and then, too, precisely here is the danger present, that these leaders of prayer only pray out their own peculiar mood, which perhaps touches little upon the common need.

3. With regard to the constant kneeling prayers, it departs from sound churchly practice. For, to my knowledge, kneeling prayers in the church of the first centuries took place only during the Passion season; but from Easter Day onward, the great day of joy of Christendom, they were, special cases excepted, held standing; and this is also the right order and manner, and corresponds sensibly to this season of the church year.

4. It easily leads to a refined righteousness of works, and can help to strengthen spiritual pride. For that this is present is clear from the standing custom of the Methodists,