# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juli 1859_S206
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

206                                    On Bible-Sermons.

How diligently and powerfully Dr. Luther preached on many biblical
books is attested by his writings. He had already, as early as the year
1523, made a beginning with the first Book of Moses, and taken up the
second in the following year, whereupon he then, as he himself says,
expounded the remaining three in the same manner — although the
sermons on Exodus chapters 21–40, as well as those on the third and
fourth Books of Moses, with the exception of one on the church
blessing, are unfortunately no longer extant. Besides this, he preached
on the Gospels of Matthew and John, as well as on the Epistles of
Peter, and expounded many other biblical books in his public lectures,
thereby rendering the students a twofold service, both for their
calling as Christians and for their calling as preachers. Alongside Dr.
Luther, Brenz, Mathesius, and Cyriacus Spangenberg distinguished
themselves in particular, and among the later ones, Selnecker, as
expository preachers.

What diligence the servants of God likewise devoted to Bible-sermons in
the seventeenth century is shown by a glance into church and literary
history. Thus in Nuremberg, from Sunday to Saturday, 35 sermons were
held, and in Magdeburg 50. Only, these were sometimes overly lengthy.
Thus Welhammer in Nuremberg, on the first eleven chapters of the first
Book of Kings, delivered 90 sermons within three years. Others had a
particular fondness for the apocryphal books — for example, Kerner in
Ulm, who preached 364 sermons on the Book of Tobit. That Pietism, from
the end of the 17th century onward, must have had a very detrimental
influence on the exposition of biblical books, and especially the
historical ones, is evident already from Spener's own verdict: "I am
confident that whatever is found in one whole half of Scripture, or
perhaps three-quarters of it, from which a simple person — whose sort
makes up by far the greatest number of the members of the Church — can
actually be edified in faith and life, could be gathered together into
not very many pages; so that, at the very least, in the remaining half
or quarter of Scripture, such a substitute could be found that such a
person could do without the rest without loss." From this it may be
explained why Spener expounded no book of the Old Testament, and among
the New Testament books only a few apostolic epistles.

While, now, Bible-sermons became ever rarer in the first half of the
18th century — a period in which V. E. Löscher in particular still
distinguished himself, having preached on all the biblical books during
his fifty years in office — Rationalism, in the second half of the 18th
century, completed what Pietism had begun. Of this Kliefoth says:
"Although the two tendencies are, in their essential nature, far
removed from one another, they nevertheless coincide in their
opposition to the salutary form and norm of the Lutheran Church. When,
for example, Spener had taken it upon himself, according to his own
private judgment, to divide the Holy Scripture into four quarters, and,
with the exception of one quarter, to designate the other three as
impractical, when according to his views he