# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_November 1864_S332
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

332 The Doctrine of the Lutheran Church Concerning Sunday.

proper meaning is that on this day we should teach and hear God's Word,
so that we hallow both the day and ourselves: just as, indeed, ever
afterward down to this very day, Moses and the Prophets have been read
and preached among the Jews on the Sabbath day. But where God's
Word is preached, it follows of itself that, out of necessity, one must at
that very hour or time rest and be still, and, apart from all other
business, speak and listen only to what God says, and what he teaches us
or speaks with us.
Therefore it depends entirely and altogether on this, that one is to
hallow the day, more than on the resting. For God does not say: Thou
shalt rest on the holy day, or make a sabbath (that would happen of
itself anyway), but rather: Thou shalt hallow the holy day or sabbath, so
that far more depends on the hallowing than on the resting. And where
one of the two had to be, or could be, left undone, it would be better that
the resting be left undone than the hallowing; since the commandment
presses above all toward the hallowing, and does not command the
Sabbath for its own sake, but for the sake of the hallowing. The Jews,
however, out of their own addition (which neither God nor Moses does),
rate the resting higher than the hallowing.
That Moses now names the seventh day, and how God created the
world in six days, and that therefore they should do no work, that is the
temporal ornament by which Moses fastens this commandment onto his
people specifically for that time. For one does not find this written
beforehand, neither concerning Abraham nor the times of the old
patriarchs, but it is a temporal addition and ornament set only upon this
people that was led out of Egypt, and it was not meant to remain forever
either, any more than the whole law of Moses. But the hallowing, that is,
teaching and preaching God's Word, which is the true, plain, and sole
meaning of this commandment, has existed from the beginning and
remains forever with all the world.
Therefore the seventh day does not concern us Gentiles at all, nor
does it concern the Jews themselves any longer than until the Messiah;
although nature and necessity compel that, whatever day or hour God's
Word is preached, one must there (as has been said) be still, rest, or
keep sabbath. For God's Word can neither be heard nor learned where
one is meanwhile thinking of something else, or is not still." (Ibid.,
XXXI, 443f.)
Finally, Luther writes in the year 1539, in his work "On the Councils
and the Church": "Therefore it stands, and shall stand, within our
power and freedom, that we keep Easter whenever we wish; and even if
we made Friday into Sunday, and vice versa, it would nonetheless be
right, provided it were done harmoniously by the authorities and the
Christians (as has been said). For Moses is dead and buried through
Christ. And days or times shall not be lords over the Christians; rather
the Chris-