# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juli 1859_S204
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

204                                    On Bible-Sermons.

Psalm 69, verse 10 — to which the disciples' minds turned at the
cleansing of the Temple (John 2:17) — where he says: "Here one
nevertheless sees that among this people Holy Scripture must have been
well known, and that it was diligently practiced in the synagogues and
schools. In particular, the Psalter was set before the people and made
known to them, so that they read, preached on, and put into practice
the Psalms — from which one plainly sees that in every city and town
there were priests and Levites who had their parishes, churches, and
schools (which are called synagogues), where the people gathered to
hear and learn God's Word, and were so well provided for that the
writings of the Prophets and the Psalms were diligently expounded. — —
Thus finely were the churches ordered and arranged among this people,
the Scripture handled daily, so that even the simple had a fair
understanding of what was written in the Psalms and the Prophets, and
could retain it. — — Thus one nevertheless sees what discipline and
admonition toward the divine Word accomplish, when people are
faithfully and diligently instructed, and when people also listen with
diligence."

In the earliest times of the New Testament Church, it was chiefly the
following Fathers who expounded biblical books: among the Greeks,
Origen in the third century, Chrysostom, Cyril of Alexandria, and
Theodoret; among the Latins, Ambrose, Jerome, and Augustine in the
fourth and fifth centuries. Among the later teachers I will mention only
Bede the Venerable in the eighth and Haymo in the ninth century; for the
Scholastics from the twelfth century onward preferred to preach on the
moral philosophy of Aristotle or on the legends of the papal saints — as,
of course, with the growth of the papacy, the preaching of God's Word
naturally had to decline more and more. It is also easily explained why,
throughout this whole period, we find almost no trace of expository
preaching, whether among the individual witnesses of the truth in their
fierce struggles against false doctrine, or among the so-called mystics
in their fondness for the contemplative life.

With the beginning of the salutary Reformation of the Church, the Bible
also began to grow green again, as we read in the Church Postil, on the
Second Sunday in Advent, in the beautiful interpretation: "The parable
of the fig tree strikes me as being Holy Scripture, which has until now
lain under the bench; it now buds forth, has put out leaves — that is,
its Word breaks forth; for in twelve hundred years it has not come out
so far, nor has the language been so well known." In particular, the
highly enlightened man of God, in his treatise on the Order of Divine
Service from the year 1523