# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1852 06 22_S173
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

173

ten one does well to heed one's deceitful and work-righteous heart, lest it cheat the simple evangelical faith, which lives and moves in the article of justification, and hinder the gracious hearing of God. For it happens not seldom that parents who are legalistically God-fearing expect from God the blessing of God and the success of their discipline as a necessary fruit and reward of their faithful pains and labor, and do not remain mindful that and how here too all blessing is pure grace of God, which a man cannot merit, but may well hinder by his own fine legalistic working. And hence it often comes to pass that the dear God here does not do according to the expectation and desire of the parents, but first lets the hereditary corruption, and sometimes its particular traits, appear sharp and strong in the parents out of the children, in order first to humble the parents wholesomely, to drive out of them their fine pietistic work-mongering, and first to make them truly poor sinners in Adam and thereafter righteous in Christ, and out of partly sickly, self-loving work-saints to make healthy sons and daughters of his Church, who also for and in Christian child-training live and move in justifying faith. And then God's Word will also be their light for it, faith their lantern, and the grace and discipline of the Holy Ghost their teacher and guide, and right praying and intercession will not be wanting either.

Now let me proceed to give you, dear parents, and especially the dear mothers, some hints and directions concerning the discipline and training of the little ones in the first years of life, up to about the fifth or sixth year, when they begin to attend school. — It is now a general experience that especially between the first and second year of the child's life its self-will and stubbornness come forth very strongly and noticeably, and preach the doctrine of original sin powerfully by deed even to unbelieving parents.

What, then, have you to do here? Are you not to check this unruliness, as unbelievers are wont to do, who imagine and say that it arises from the child's want of understanding and that one can do nothing here until the child gets its understanding? — By no means. Rather it must be your earnest concern to meet this unruliness with wisdom and strength, and so indeed that the wholesome sharpness does not degenerate into loveless harshness, nor the forbearing patience into laxity and weakness.

For the subduing, however, of the self-willed and stubborn old Adam in your one- to two-year-old children, and for the training to obedience, both of which naturally hang together most closely, the fitting means are especially prayer and intercession, word and gesture, rod and other punishment.

As to the first, it will certainly do you no harm, if you, especially at stronger outbreaks of the wickedness and self-will of your children, first always humble yourselves thoroughly anew before the LORD, heartily bewail your own and your children's sorrowful fall in Adam, and thereafter, out of the fullness of Christ's merit, believingly lay hold of grace and forgiveness of sins and call anew upon God the Holy Ghost for grace and wisdom, to treat the several sin-injuries in your little ones according to the Lord's Word and will, but not according to your own fleshly heart's conceit and opinion. And then pray also at the same time for your little ones in simplicity of heart, partly in general in the manner already mentioned above, partly in particular, that your discipline by word or rod or other punishment may be rightly blessed upon the little ones in this and that single case.

In the application of the word, now, for the breaking of self-will, it is needful that it be short and decided and spoken with firm, friendly earnestness, neither by way of entreaty nor in an angry tone; and if the word of the mother or the father does not help at once, then the rod, or another punishment suited to the particular self-will, must be added.

If, for example, self-will utters itself joined with peculiar defiance and unruliness of body, then blows are quite properly in place, and that without lengthy talking before and after, and they will not fail of their wholesome effect, if they are given with emphasis and measure together.

Follow not herein, you dear mothers, the perverse example of most of the English, who do not use the rod even in such cases, but follow God's Word, which says: "Bow down his neck while he is yet little," and "he that spareth his rod hateth his son"; for in deed and truth such pernicious letting grow of self-will, out of fleshly softness, in order, as it were, not to hurt one's own flesh, is a hatred against the soul of the child, whose original sin is thereby powerfully strengthened. On the other hand, however, you must watch over yourselves in this and like cases, that you, after you have perhaps spared the rod from sloth or softness, then do not go beyond the measure of wholesome punishment and, during the carrying out of it, in growing anger, give more and heavier blows than the matter required *). A short little sigh to the LORD and an immediate pressing down of the rising anger before the administering of the chastisement will guide you rightly herein.

*) To this belongs also the bad habit of some mothers, in outbursts of vexation and anger, of striking their children, especially when they are already older, with the hand on the head or in the face, which is indeed shameful and disgraceful, since in the countenance even of fallen man the traces of the divine image are still recognizable.

The more decidedly and wisely, now, you begin already between the first and second year of life to break the self-will in your children, the better will you succeed, under God's grace and blessing, in accustoming them at the same time to obedience, so that they at once do what you command, and leave undone what you forbid.

As God, in the economy of the law, threatened the children of Israel with punishments and also, when the threat proved fruitless, actually carried them out whenever his people transgressed again and again, that is, did what God did not will; and as God further promised them also outward rewards and blessings if they walked in the paths of his commandments and did what was well-pleasing to the LORD: — so shall you also do in this training and accustoming of your children to obedience, that you, according to the greatness and kind of the transgression, set punishment upon disobedience, and this and that small reward upon obedience; the former, to deter them by wholesome fear from the more frequent and grosser transgression; the latter, to allure them kindly and fatherly to the doing of what is commanded and the leaving undone of what is forbidden. And it is not to be feared, if both are done wisely and Christianly, that they would fall, through the application of punishment and especially of blows, into mere servile fear, and through this or that small praise and reward into self-righteousness or work-holiness. For if only there, in the dispensing of punishment, the evangelical spirit and the love of Christ prevail, and here the fatherly wholesome earnestness, which in this and that small and rare gift and praise †) gives to recognize not the merited reward but the free favor, then both evils will be warded off; and as to the latter in particular, the daily life and walk of children gives, alas, so much occasion for just and wholesome punishment by word and deed, that a rare and sparing acknowledgment of good conduct, by word or deed, will not be essentially harmful or dangerous to them.

†) It is indeed necessary here also in the expression to use wisdom and caution, that one not praise the child itself, and say, for example, "You are a good child," and the like; but give approval to the obedient conduct, as for example: "That was right, that you did (or left undone) that," and the like.

Now it is indeed impossible to give special counsel and direction for all cases of this training and accustoming of the little ones to obedience. Yet there are some guiding principles of Christian wisdom and love, which are to be carried out and applied in the single cases. These are chiefly the following, which the dear mothers especially have to lay well to heart:

1. See to it that you neither restrain your children too much, nor let them go too free; for through the excess of restraint,—an aberration which indeed is hardly anywhere found here,—the children become partly stiff, awkward, pedantic and machine-like, partly so-