# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_November 1859_S342
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

342	On Advent Sermons.

...mentioned, but which must always be emphasized anew, be preached — how goodness and truth meet one another. Now it does indeed also have its use when, in each sermon, only one prophecy is expounded and its fulfillment shown; but there is a still more suitable way, for which we have a model in the Easter sermon of our Lord Christ, which he delivered to the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, when, beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he expounded to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself, whereupon the disciples confessed: Did not our heart burn within us as he talked with us on the road, while he opened the Scriptures to us? Luke 24:27, 32. These prophecies concerning Christ were expounded at length by the richly gifted Urbanus Regius to his wife Anna in a delightful Easter dialogue, which appeared under the title: Dialogus on the Glorious and Comforting Preaching of Christ, with a preface by Dr. Luther, in several editions — a work to which I owe a great deal. For after I had, in the first thirteen years, treated only one text in each Advent sermon, and specifically one prophecy concerning Christ, I came, through reading this dialogue, upon the thought of distributing the foremost prophecies of the whole Old Testament, from Moses to Malachi, among the individual sermons; but on account of the difficulty of selection this thought, despite several attempts, nevertheless never came to fruition, and I therefore had to content myself, in the nine years that followed, with explaining during each Advent season a few prophecies from one biblical book — for example, from the books of Moses, from the Psalms, or one from each of these. Only for the past eight years have I held the Advent sermons in the following manner. After an introductory sermon on the afternoon of the first Sunday in Advent, I treat in the second sermon the prophecies from Moses, in the third and fourth those from the first and second half of the Psalms, in the fifth those from the major prophets, and in the sixth those from the minor prophets. To each of these sermons I assign a particular text, which I briefly explain, whereupon I then read aloud one prophecy after another from the Bible and, alternating from year to year, expound one or another of them more closely while treating the rest only summarily. In case one of these Advent sermons should have to be omitted, I keep some time in reserve for a substitute sermon.

That this manner — reading aloud several passages of Scripture in one sermon and explaining them briefly — was formerly not unusual in the Lutheran Church can be seen from the provisions of the excellent Pomeranian Church Order, which for each of the six Advent sermons contains a list of the foremost prophecies in the order of the books of the Old Testament, and then adds the following remark: "Sensible, God-fearing pastors will well know how to take these prophecies from the chapters named, read them one after another to the people, and explain them as briefly as possible in summary; or else they shall read such a text alone plainly to the people and give instruction along with it, how Christ, God's Son, from be-