# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1852 02 03_S89
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Der Lutheraner.

"God's Word and Luther's doctrine shall pass away nevermore." (Rev. John, ch. 14, vv. 6, 7.)

Published by the German Ev. Lutheran Synod of Missouri, Ohio and other States.

Edited by C. F. W. Walther.

Vol. 8.  St. Louis, Mo., February 3, 1852.  No. 12.

Terms: Der Lutheraner appears once every two weeks, at the annual subscription price of One Dollar for out-of-town subscribers, who are to pay it in advance and bear the postage. — In St. Louis each single number is sold for 5 cents.

Only the letters which contain 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 hither under the address Mr. F. W. Barthel, care of C. F. W. Walther, St. Louis, Mo.

Letters
to the Lutheran Parents of This Country
on
Christian Child-Training.

No. 1.

Grace and peace in Christ!

Although the writer of this is acquainted face to face with only the fewest of you, yet you are all written in his heart, since he has received with you the same most precious faith, and by the One Lord, through the One Spirit, by means of the One Baptism, and, God willing, in the same faith of the heart, is joined with you as a member to the One Body, of which Christ is the Head. And therefore you will surely not take it unkindly if the love of Christ constrains him to address a few words to you on a most important subject, namely, the Christian upbringing of your children.

But before I proceed to it, let it not grieve you if I first say something in advance concerning the twofold motive of this my writing.

The first of these motives is an outward one, namely, the, on the average, sadly most afflicted and corrupt condition of the training of the young among the native-born Americans of English and German tongue. For, a few honorable exceptions aside, where perhaps a sound Christian mind rules in this or that house, you will surely have seen and heard in many ways, even in your own neighborhood, how sadly it stands with the training of the poor young. There is mostly only a fleshly ape-like fondness and anxious care for the bodies of the children, especially while they are still small, and at the same time a dreadful neglect of the souls of the children who are growing up, who have reached the first year and are beyond it. There is almost no trace of the breaking of self-will and willfulness, of wholesome discipline and habituation to obedience and reverence toward parents, to truthfulness, to industry, to readiness to serve, to modesty, to temperance; there is no nourishing of the young souls, according to their age, with the divine Word, no telling of the most important Bible stories and great deeds of God, perhaps by means of pictures, even on the mother's lap; there is no spiritual atmosphere of life for the little ones in lovely sweet little Christian hymns, no guidance, with anointed little childlike verses of prayer, to seek the face of Him who said: "Suffer the little children to come unto me!" Later there is just as little, neither at home nor in the district or free schools*), instruction in the divine Law and Gospel, a constant picturing before them of Moses and Christ, a powerful awakening of the fear of God, a wholesome sharpening of the 4th Commandment, a heartily fatherly admonition, a moving guidance of the child convicted of sin to seek its Savior in prayer and to fetch forgiveness from Him. In sum, for the children there is lacking almost throughout "the nurture and admonition of the Lord," in the house as in the school, in the school as in the church, where nothing at all is known of a thorough handling of the Catechism as a part of the common public divine service. Most children therefore grow up like the trees in the forest.

*) It is a sad sign of the levity in American church affairs that almost nowhere among the English denominations, the Catholics excepted, are there Christian parochial schools in which the children from youth up would be instructed in God's Word and in Christian doctrine; and whoever has even a little insight into this matter will hardly maintain that the Sunday-schools offer a thorough and sufficient substitute for them.

And this prevailing, monstrous neglect of the poor children in domestic training, among the educated and the uneducated, springs indeed chiefly from the unbelief and fleshly mind of the parents; but in part it is also a natural consequence and a great shadow side of the local constitution of the civil commonwealth; for from its foremost principle, namely that of the plenary power and sovereignty of the people as the totality of those called to the government