# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_November 1859_S340
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

340	On Advent Sermons.

and unprovable assumption? But the reader's thoughts and feelings undeniably suffer harm from it, when the familiar form of the holy Name, resounding through the whole Church, is destroyed for them. We credit psychology with enough insight to understand this harm; why then, all the same? His translation has, in our eyes, suffered no small loss on this account. So here stand a few samples, Ps. 19:8–10:

The law of Jahawah is honest,   refreshes the soul;
The testimony of Jahawah is sure,   gives wit to the simple;
The statutes of Jahawah are right,   rejoice the heart;
The commandment of Jahawah is pure,   enlightens the eyes;
The reverence of Jahawah is spotless,   endures forever;
The judgments of Jahawah are truth,   righteous altogether.

Let the other sample be the words: if I only have thee, etc., from Ps. 73; D. translates:

Whom have I in the heavens?
And if I have thee, the earth pleases me not!
Let my flesh and my heart fade away —
My heart's rock and my portion is Elohim forever.

I neither can nor will judge the book here; but my longing for a fruitful commentary on the Psalms has not been satisfied by it, and the translation is, for me, unpalatable; when I turn back from it to Luther, I have the feeling of being refreshed.

(Submitted by P. Keyl.)
On Advent Sermons.

Advent is now almost universally described as a season of waiting, and the purpose of its churchly observance is accordingly fixed as follows: that one should therein call to mind the longing of the believers of the Old Testament for the time of the New Testament, after which the Christmas season would then follow as the time of fulfillment. But this would be a regression into the time of the Old Testament, and thus a denial of the time of the New Testament, of which Christ says to his disciples: Blessed are the eyes that see the things that you see, Luke 10:23. Concerning this fulfillment of the prophecies of Christ through his bodily and spiritual coming, Dr. Luther, on the words of Galatians 4:4, "But when the fullness of time was come, etc.," expresses himself aptly as follows: "Just as that same time was fulfilled for the Jews through Christ's bodily coming, so it is still fulfilled daily, when a person is enlightened through faith that his bondage and works of the law have come to an end; for Christ's bodily coming would be of no use if it did not work such a spiritual coming of faith. He has also for this reason come bodily, that he might establish such a spiritual coming; for to all who, before and after, have believed in this his bodily coming, to them he has come. Therefore he has always come to the fathers of old for the sake of such faith, and yet to this day he has not come to the Jews of the present time, on account of their un-