# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_November 1864_S325
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

The Doctrine of the Lutheran Church Concerning Sunday. 325

holy or unholy for your sake, according as you do something holy or
unholy with it. How, then, does such hallowing come about? Not in such
a way that one sits behind the stove and does no heavy work, or puts on
a wreath and dresses in one's best clothes, but rather (as has been said)
that one deals with God's Word and exercises oneself in it. And indeed we
Christians should keep such a holy day continually, doing nothing but holy
things, that is, dealing daily with God's Word and carrying it about in
heart and mouth. But since (as has been said) we do not have leisure at
all times, we must use some hours during the week for the young, or at
least one day for the whole crowd, so that one may occupy oneself with it
alone, and drill the Ten Commandments, the Creed, and the Lord's Prayer,
and thus direct our whole life and being according to God's Word.
Whatever time this is kept in practice and use, there a true holy day is
kept; where not, it should not be called a Christian holy day. For
resting and going about idle the non-Christians can do quite well too, just
as the whole swarm of our clergy stand daily in the churches, singing and
ringing, yet keep no holy day at all; for they neither preach nor practice
God's Word, but rather teach and live directly against it."*)
We now turn to the testimonies of our theologians in their private
writings, and begin here, naturally, with Luther.**) He writes thus in his
tract "Against the Heavenly Prophets" of the year 1524: "Well then, let us
get to the real foundation, and say that these teachers of sin and Mosaic
prophets should leave us unentangled with Moses; we will neither see nor
hear Moses. How do you like that, dear rabble-spirits? And say further,
that all such Mosaic teachers pervert the Gospel, drive out Christ, and
abolish the whole New Testament. I am speaking now as a Christian and
for Christians. For Moses was given to the Jewish people alone, and does
not concern us Gentiles and Christians at all. We have our Gospel and
New Testament: if they can prove from that, that images are to be
abolished, we will gladly follow them. But if they want to make Jews of
us by way of Moses, we will not stand for it.
What do you think? What is going to come of this? What will
come of it is that one will see how these rabble-spirits understand nothing
in Scripture, neither Moses nor

*) If one wishes to see how theologians departing from this doctrine, who still
had some conscience regarding the symbols of our church, tried to reconcile the plainly
stated passages cited above with their own opinion, or, as they prefer to put it, to
"vindicate" them, let one read what Löscher writes in the place cited, pp. 211ff. and
294ff. One sees there plainly into what sophistries even otherwise orthodox men,
accurate and honest in doctrine, fall, once they go astray on some particular point.
**) We wish only to have recalled the exposition of the Third Commandment in
the Small Catechism, which, as is well known, does not read: "We should fear and
love God, so that we do not work on Sunday," etc., but rather: "that we do not
despise preaching and his Word, but hold it holy, gladly hear and learn it" — by
which the New Testament content of the Third Commandment is most sharply
indicated, and everything Levitical is set aside.