# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1852 06 22_S174
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

174

even, when moody harshness of the parents is added, shy, reserved, inwardly wrathful and hypocritical; and not only is the germ of the peculiar character, which God has already implanted at the moment of conception, miserably crushed and stifled by such excess of restraint, but the child is at the same time in the latter case also morally corrupted, and the hereditary falseness and wickedness thereby powerfully strengthened.

Conversely, on the other hand, through the excess of letting go free,—a wrong way which here in this country is, alas, very common,—the children become wild, unruly, impudent and brazen, so that they have no humility, reverence and obedience, neither toward God nor toward men, and grow up into a lawless and unbridled generation, like Ishmael and his seed and the mass of the loafers and rowdies in the great cities, who are held only with difficulty within the barest bounds by the authorities, which, alas, here and there do not act vigorously and thoroughly enough. If you would be Christian parents, then you have indeed earnestly to watch and to pray that you in the training and accustoming of your children avoid both kinds of wrong ways, but especially the last, which is the custom of the land, and apply the right measure of restraining and letting go free to each of your children from early on. This measure, however, God the Holy Ghost will show you and put into your mind at your asking; for HE alone gives also for this the right wisdom, which, since moreover the personal peculiarity of children is so exceedingly manifold, is hardly to be learned in a human way. This much, however, may indeed be said in general: Children of an energetic but at the same time wrathful disposition of mind and temper, and likewise those of a mobile and at the same time light-minded temperament, need predominantly restraint; on the other hand, children of a contemplative and introverted but at the same time melancholy nature, and others of a more sluggish and dull nature, have more need of being let go free, within which, however, the former are especially to be guided, and the latter to be enlivened.

2. Command and forbid not too much and not too many things; but where you do command and forbid, there hold with untiring perseverance to it, that what is commanded be done at once by your children, and what is forbidden be left undone.

For not a few mothers have the doubly evil and pernicious habit that they sometimes, within half an hour, command and forbid the children many things, and yet do not attend thoroughly to whether their command and and prohibition is complied with. Thereby, however, the children are led rather to disobedience instead of to obedience, and far from obeying thereby gradually becoming to them a wholesome habit, they fall rather into an unsettled, arbitrarily moody way. Also by such perverse treatment the germ of contempt for such weak-willed mothers or fathers is at the same time planted in the souls of the children, which, alas, springs up early enough if the parents do not yet in due time come to their senses and take the right way.

3. In what you command or forbid, lay the emphasis chiefly on that which according to the holy 10 Commandments is right or wrong, even before the children can grasp the actual meaning of these commandments.

Unchristian and seemingly Christian parents, and especially the mothers, here also mostly do the opposite. They care more that their little daughters make no spots in their white and clean dresses and behave themselves outwardly prettily, than that they, among the people, through vanity and conceit, and through wild and wanton behavior at home, defile their souls. Christian-minded parents, on the other hand, ought in fairness not to lay the emphasis upon outward demeanor, on which also here in this country an exaggerated value is laid with girls, but on that which before God and according to his Word is good, true, virtuous and right. If this is chiefly held to in discipline and training, then the children will, under God's blessing, have also in their outward appearance the right manners and ways, without anything foreign and unnatural to their childlike state being taught them and forced upon them from without.

Herein this also is now to be noted, that one by too much forbidding does not restrict too legally the natural cheerfulness and love of play of the children, but only partly withstand the excess, partly the lapse into anger, self-will, passionateness, domineeringness and the like, when and where children happen to play together.

4. Punish your children in the evangelical spirit of the love of Christ, but also at the same time with holy earnestness and zeal, when they do not do what is commanded and do not leave what is forbidden, and the previously given threat of punishment has remained fruitless. Yet direct yourselves herein according to the kind and degree of the transgression and omission, and not according to how far both are personally more or less repugnant to you. Here also God's commands and prohibitions, and not your personal feelings and opinions, must furnish the right standard. For it would be very unjust and unskillful, for example, to punish temperamental faults of the children, merely because they are personally more irksome and troublesome to you, more severely than real sins against love and truth.

Beware herein, you dear mothers, of continual nagging, quarreling and scolding at the faults of the children, whereby they become only dull or even at the same time inwardly repugnant to you. Just as little let the punishment already threatened pass repeatedly unexecuted, until you at last in fleshly anger and vexation punish beyond measure and thereby sin more heavily against the child than it against you.

But be not too hasty with the threatening of punishment, and inflict it rather against disobedience, lies, defiance, in short against moral evil, than against temperamental fault, levity, awkwardness and the like. The appropriate punishment, however, which you have threatened, then carry out also in holy zeal for God's honor and the child's welfare earnestly and emphatically. But direct yourselves herein also according to the kind of the transgression which you punish; for it is hardly wisely done to avenge with blows every one, which one must chiefly direct against actual sins, in order to make the holy earnestness of God against them thoroughly felt upon their own bodies. Other faults, however, punish according to their nature. If, for example, a child is too wild, unruly and unrestrained, set it for a while still and alone in a corner of the room; if it is quarrelsome and wrathful in playing with others, separate it for a time from their company; if it stays away longer than you allowed when visiting other children, let it not go the next time, or set it a still shorter time for going home; if it will not eat this or that dish out of daintiness, which has by no means a particular after-taste and is not at enmity with its nature, then you must indeed not force it to it, but give it also no other and perhaps better dish, which stands on the table at the same time, but direct it to the dry bread; and if it runs without permission into the street or to other children, shut it up just as long as it has been away, although this case, since disobedience is in it, may also be wholesomely treated with blows.

If the children grow up so that they already within the house get a certain understanding of the holy ten commandments, and through narrated Bible history of the feast of Christmas and Easter, as also through short little prayers, hymns and pictures, have a certain knowledge of the LORD Christ, then it is very important and well done, after sterner punishments for grosser transgressions, to sharpen paternally to them the meaning of the commandment concerned, to awaken in them sorrow and grief over their sin, and then, at first through prayers said before them, to allure them to the LORD Christ, to fetch forgiveness from him. And no less must the little ones be accustomed even earlier, after punishment received, also to beg forgiveness of the sin from the parents.

But I see the letter is getting too long; I therefore break off for this time and remain in Christ your willing servant, W. S.

In April, 1852.

How the Jesuits and Their Helpers Cite Luther's Writings.

Had Luther not already been a martyr during his lifetime, he would yet have become one now after his death. The gentlemen Papists, and especially the gentlemen Jesuits and their helpers, do what they can, in order