# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1852 02 03_S90
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

90

of citizens equal in themselves, must necessarily and almost involuntarily be planted already in the children the spirit of an immature conceit of freedom and the untimely impulse toward self-reliance and independence. —

And what now is the necessary effect of this dreadful neglect, this complete letting loose of the young? — A no less dreadful unruliness and lack of discipline, fleshly longings for liberty, disobedience and contempt of parents and teachers, impudent putting of themselves on a level with the grown, untruthfulness, coarseness of manners, ignorance in God's Word, frivolity, laziness, daintiness of appetite, wild romping and wanton running about in the streets. In sum, godlessness in every shape. And truly, unless God looks in with mercy, the whole people repent, true Christianity take hold more powerfully, and the American preachers in particular earnestly rebuke this national sin and give their congregations guidance toward Christian child-training: so it is much to be feared that the people of the United States, while outwardly it increases in numbers, industry, art and trade, commerce, business and wealth, scientific knowledge and cultivation of the understanding, will nevertheless inwardly, through the neglect and corruption of its youth, hasten irresistibly toward a moral bankruptcy, unless sooner, which indeed is heartily to be desired, the Lord breaks in with His dear last day and puts an end also to this misery. —

The other motive of this my letter to you is an inward one, namely sincere love for you and your children and heartfelt concern lest you, through the manifold examples of corrupt child-training with which you are doubtless surrounded on every side, might become disheartened, or at least slack and sluggish, to withstand this current of corruption, or even in the end let yourselves be seized by it and carried down with it: for it only too easily happens, in general, that one grows accustomed to corrupt conditions of many kinds which one sees daily before one's eyes; and whoever besides has no sharpened Christian conscience, no fighting faith, no thorough fear of God, no chastening and yet at the same time interceding love, is not far from the danger that from the habituation to these and those corruptions round about him there will gradually come indifference, and from this at last even a joining in of the same evil nature from which the corruptions come. So one hears, now and then, this and that parent, having but lately come from Germany and settled in the country or in the towns, complain several times that here in this country the children are so unrestrained and willful and that from the parents almost no wholesome discipline and restraint is exercised toward them — and behold! in a short time these parents do no differently themselves and are more in the power of their children than these are in theirs; and this power of corrupt example one finds not merely among unchristian and ignorant parents, but even among such as have a certain degree of Christian knowledge and know from God's Word, tolerably well, His will concerning the training of children. But if the living faith of the heart in the Lord Christ is lacking, and therefore also the upright reverence before God and His Word and the Christian, educating love toward their children, then that knowledge comes to no power, and the influence of the corrupt surroundings brings it about in a short time that, a few better habits here and there, e.g. to industry, to school attendance, etc., excepted, on the whole it stands no less wretchedly with child-training among them; and instead of serving them as a warning, the local mis-training and neglect of the young serves them rather as a temptation and an example to imitate.

Having now not withheld from you the twofold motive that has driven me to compose these letters to you, let me now go on to set before your eyes, first a little, you who surely all wish to be Christian parents, the divine dignity and glory of your calling, and afterward to set forth what follows from it for the chief points of Christian child-training.

The spiritual greatness of your calling consists first in this, that according to the first article of the holy Christian faith you are, as married people, co-workers and fellow-helpers of God, the almighty Father, in the propagation and preservation of the human race; for God does not call a new generation of the children of men into life and existence directly, but through you, in that with His almightiness He penetrates your powerlessness and in the moment of begetting plants the germ of a new human being, in soul and body. And after the almighty God, through your cooperation, has planted this little germ, He nourishes it in the dark dwelling of the mother's womb, where it leads its mysterious wonder-life before Him, again by the blood of the woman; and after the fruit of the body has borne weal and woe, spiritually and bodily, with its bearer for 9 months, and has ripened for the breaking forth, it at last breaks through the painful labor of birth of the daughter of Eve into the light — a great, incomprehensible wonder of God, of the almighty and all-wise love, which thus counted you worthy of the honor of being, in this new and continued creation, His helpers and co-workers; and as He, the almighty Father, is essentially the Creator of heaven and earth, and all earthly fathers and mothers live, move and have their being in Him alone: so He has nevertheless imparted to the latter His image and honor in this, that He works with them and through them for the preservation of the human race until the last day.

Is not such earthly fatherhood already an excellent dignity and noble renown, compared with which all human art, science, honor and standing is a small thing, since indeed all gifts and powers, all offices and dominions flow forth from such fatherhood? since all great and highly renowned people, all discoverers and inventors, all sages and statesmen, all artists and scholars, yea, all the great prophets, apostles and teachers of the holy Church were, already at the moment of their coming into being in the mother's womb, formed and appointed thereto by God, and He makes use for this of the parents as His instruments?

Afterward, however, God goes on and counts the parents worthy to be His co-workers and nurses of the poor helpless little children of men; for although He, according to His almighty love, prepares the milk in the mother's breast, yet He nourishes the sucklings precisely through it; and also through the loving mother's eye, through the tending mother's hand, He takes care of these His lovely little creatures; and although the guard and watch of His holy angels, according to the sweet and comforting words of our dearest Redeemer, is the real chief weapon against Satan and his evil spirits for the keeping and protecting of the little ones, yet God also transfers a part of this guard and watch to the parents, and especially to the mother; and it is His good, gracious will to honor the parents in this, that in His stead they already tend, wait upon and provide for the children bodily, guard and shield them, so that His Father-image may shine in them, and through the proofs of earthly parental love the heavenly Father-love may be impressed in deed upon the souls of the little ones early, and become near and familiar to them. —

But much more highly does the all-wise and gracious God honor you, dear parents, when you consider the glorious dignity of your parenthood according to the second and third articles of the Christian faith. For what was probably the ultimate aim of the almighty and loving Father in calling through you His and your children into life and existence and in making you His fellow-helpers in the work of propagation, this renewed creation? — Perhaps merely the bodily growth and thriving of your children and the enjoyment of this and that outward good and temporal blessing from His ever open and mild Father-hand? Or perhaps only this, that the boys, with the gradual ripening of their bodily and mental gifts and powers, should later enter, according to talents and training, upon a particular calling, as farmers, mechanics, merchants, lawyers, officials, physicians, artists, scholars, preachers and teachers, and the like, but the girls, after they have become marriageable, become wives and mothers? Far be it! for then, to be sure, it would be a pitiful and wretched thing about the life of all men, which would everywhere be swallowed up by death. Then the newly born little ones would have high cause to enter this world with crying, which would really be nothing else than a nurse and guide to death, which as the all-devouring monster all men