# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1849 05 11_S121
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Edited by C. F. W. Walther.

Der Lutheraner.

"God's Word and Luther's teaching shall never now nor ever pass away."

Published by the German Evangelical Lutheran Synod of Missouri, Ohio, and Other States.

Volume 5.

St. Louis, Mo., April 2, 1849.

No. 16.

...Walther, St. Louis, Mo., to be sent here.

Terms: The Lutheraner appears once every two weeks, at the annual subscription price of one dollar for out-of-town subscribers, who must pay it in advance and bear the postage. — In St. Louis each individual number is sold for 5 cents.

Only letters containing communications for the paper are to be sent to the editor; all others, however, which contain business matters, orders, cancellations, money, etc., are to be sent under the address: Mr. F. W. Barthel, care of C. F. W.

(Submitted by Pastor Keyl.)
The Original Order of Worship in the German Churches of the Lutheran Confession.

Under this title Dr. Kliefoth, Superintendent at Schwerin, published a very instructive work two years ago, in the composition of which, besides other aids, no fewer than ninety-five different church orders were used. This work has probably come to the notice of only very few readers of this paper, but it fully deserves to become known to all Lutheran pastors and congregations. I have therefore resolved to communicate as brief an excerpt as possible from this work, though with various alterations and additions from Dr. Luther's writings, which is meant to serve especially to make readers recognize all the more clearly how the restoration of the right order of worship was a chief benefit of the Reformation and is inseparably bound up with the restoration of the pure doctrine. That they may recognize how great and many were the merits which, above all, the highly enlightened man of God Dr. Martin Luther had in this, and how faithfully his fellow workers built so many excellent church orders upon the foundation which he, as a wise master builder, had laid. That they may learn to value more highly "the beautiful worship services of the Lord," as they were held throughout the whole Lutheran Church of Germany, from the Reformation onward, for almost 200 years, but then, especially from the year 1750 onward down to the most recent times, became ever more corrupted. — This excerpt is further meant to give occasion for a testing comparison of the present with the past, in order to become convinced that Lutheran worship, in its original form, is held almost nowhere any more, at least not here. That not only the new, so-called Lutheran American Agenda of the year 1842 is plainly anti-Lutheran, but that besides this, much is also passed off and observed in worship as Lutheran which nevertheless is not, at least not according to the historical connection with the model of the oldest Lutheran church orders.

Finally, these communications are meant to awaken ever more, in pastors and congregations, the wish for a greater uniformity in ceremonies, and indeed, so far as this is at all possible, on the basis of the original Lutheran order of worship. To help prepare for carrying out this wish, pastors and congregations may be recommended the following for further consideration and discussion.

1) The General Principles of the Lutheran Church Regarding the Ordering of Worship.

These principles were first and most concisely expressed by the dear man of God Dr. Martin Luther in his treatise "On the Order of Worship in the Congregation" of the year 1523, which begins with the following words: "The worship service which now prevails everywhere has a fine Christian origin, just as does the preaching office. But just as the preaching office has been corrupted by spiritual tyrants, so too has worship been corrupted by hypocrites. Now, just as we do not abolish the preaching office but desire to bring it back into its right standing, so also it is not our intention to abolish worship, but to bring it back into right practice. — Three great abuses have crept into worship: the first, that God's Word has been silenced and only read and sung in the churches. That is the worst abuse. The second: since God's Word has been silenced, there have crept in alongside it so many unchristian fables and lies, both in legends, hymns, and sermons, that it is dreadful to behold. The third: that such worship has been performed as a work by which to earn God's grace and salvation. Thereby faith perished, and everyone wanted to give to churches and foundations, to become priest, monk, or nun!" (Walch X, 262 ff.)

It is accordingly three things which Dr. Luther brings out concerning the worship then existing: its Christian origin, its great corruption — in regard to which he names three abuses — and its restoration. Consequently the standard by which he judged each single part within the immense mass of liturgical customs, in order either to retain it, or to purify it, or to do away with it, was not merely, as with the Reformed Church, some definite biblical command, or the earliest church antiquity, but it was the pattern of the whole saving doctrine. This standard showed how, in the whole of worship, what God does to us through the sermon and his Word is as far distinguished from what we do before God through prayer and thanksgiving, vows and confession, as heaven is from earth, and yet how both — namely, sermon and prayer — must be joined together in every service of worship. With this standard, Dr. Luther and his fellow workers could engage firmly and clearly with the traditional orders of worship and ceremonies, test everything and keep what was good, supplement what was incomplete, set right what was askew, reject what was false, and so the Lutheran Church obtained its purified worship, through which — just as through the purified doctrine — it preserved its connection with the ancient, indeed with the whole Christian Church of former times, a connection which the Reformed Church tore apart in tumult.

But although Lutheran worship retained the good old elements from the Roman Catholic Church, it also took up again something new, which under the papacy had been ever more and more crowded out, and this is, alongside the more general reintroduction of preaching, the participation of the congregation in worship, especially through frequent responsive singing and through the singing of hymns. In order to achieve this purpose, it had to be arranged that God's Word could now be read aloud, preached, the sacraments administered, prayed, and sung in the German language, and since up to that time, often in one...