# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1853 04 26_S116
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

116

(Submitted.)

Dear Brother!

Grace and peace in Christ Jesus, our Lord and Savior. Amen.

Your dear letter, in which you communicate to me the joyful news that you have now established a Christian school also in your congregation, I have read with hearty joy and sympathy. The best thing about it is now, to be sure, as you rightly remark, that the dear God has given you also a teacher who knows and loves the Lord Jesus; who holds God's Word high above all things as the sole rule and standard of our faith and life, in sum: who is a Christian, and therefore also feeds the lambs entrusted to him, dearly purchased with Christ's blood, with the sound, pure milk of the divine Word, that they may as little plants of salvation and little trees of righteousness in God's garden duly grow green, blossom and thrive, and at last be gathered as good wheat into the heavenly barns of peace. Yes, dear brother! it is the truth, what that teacher says in a little rhyme: "The beginning of all good schools is: a schoolmaster who is a friend of children and a Christian." The word Christian I have underlined with good reason. For a friend of children can also be a teacher who is no Christian, just as unchristian parents love their children through the natural love implanted in them, and as even among unbelieving men a kind of friendship can and does take place. But a true friend of children can be only that teacher who is a right disciple of the great Friend of children, who says in His Word: "Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God." A true friend of children has therefore this mark, that he points and brings the little ones entrusted to him for tending and care to the Lord Jesus, that they may learn to know and love Him and let themselves be embraced and blessed by Him. For this reason also the blessed Johann Hübner compares with those mothers who once brought their little children to the Savior that He should bless them, all Christian parents who to this very day send their children to the school, where Christ has His servants, who receive the children in His name. — From this you can then, dear brother, already gather in what the essence of a Christian school actually consists, namely — to say it briefly — in this: that the children learn to believe aright, to live as Christians, and at last to die blessed. — The false friends of children have now quite another mark. With them and in their schools Christ and His Word are, even if not wholly removed, yet placed deep in the background, as when one makes a manifold lattice before a light, so that only a few rays can penetrate; whereas in a right school Christ and His Word are the center, the kernel and star, around which everything turns and moves, from which everything proceeds and toward which everything aims. The false friends of children make side matters, which concern only this temporal, civil life, such as geography, world history, arithmetic and the like, the main thing; whereas the true friends of children are above all concerned that their children, with Mary, learn to know and choose the best part, the one thing needful. By this I do not, however, wish to reject the aforementioned sciences, or to have said that nothing at all of them should be taught in the school; but it is the overfilled and exaggerated measure that I blame; that such things, for which of course the children have more desire and zeal than for that which can make their souls blessed, are made the main thing and regarded as it were as the soul of the school, as that, as you know and have yourself experienced, alas! is the case in so many schools, especially in the old fatherland. The evil fruits of such perversion have, I think, already shown themselves sufficiently, so that one might well be made wise by them. But how many take note of it?! One has even now still to complain with Jeremiah: "Thou hast stricken them, but they have not grieved; thou hast consumed them, but they have refused to receive correction" (Jerem. 5, 3). — What will such teachers answer one day, when they shall give account at Christ's judgment seat of their stewardship? For then the Lord Christ will certainly not ask them: How far have you advanced your scholars in geography, in world history, in writing and arithmetic? But He will ask: How have you nourished and fed the souls of my dearly redeemed little lambs with the pure milk of my saving Word; how have you pictured me to them as the Lamb of God, which hath borne the sin of the world; how have you instructed them in the right ways of the Lord, in which the just walk and the transgressors fall therein? — And woe then to those who must be struck dumb at this! — From this, to be sure, many parents might conclude and think, if they send their children to school, they have no more need to teach them at home and to instruct them in the Word of God; and if the teachers had to give account for it, the Lord would not require it of them. But that is a dangerous and perverse conclusion. For the teachers in the schools are only, for God's sake, the parents' helpers; and though the parents send their children never so diligently — as indeed they ought — to school, yet the command stands immovably fast for them: "Bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord" (Ephes. 6, 4), and they also must one day give account of their children, when the Lord will not ask: You parents, what pains and costs have you spent on your children to have them instructed in the arts and sciences of this temporal life? How many houses and fields, how much money and goods have you acquired for them? How have you provided for them in temporal things? (which, to be sure, may and in part ought also to be done, though according to God's Word in a deeply subordinate manner.) But He will ask: How have you obeyed the command which I caused to be prescribed to you through my servant Paul, Ephes. 6, 5? Have you not only diligently sent your little ones, whom I gave you first of all for training for heaven, to school and church, but also faithfully instructed them at home in my Word and in the fear of God? Have you been above all concerned that they should obtain treasures in heaven, which are not eaten by rust and moths and after which the thieves do not dig, but which abide forever? — And woe also then to the parents who must be struck dumb at this! Dear brother! I tremble when I consider that one day perhaps many! many parents and teachers must stand on the left on account of the spiritual neglect of their children! — From all this you can now already recognize sufficiently what the relation between home and school really ought to be, namely, that both go rightly hand in hand, and thus in true fidelity the little building-stones for the spiritual house of the Lord be jointly prepared. So it should be, I say, and if it were so throughout, the great blessing of it would surely be noticeably felt. The school alone cannot accomplish it either, even with the greatest fidelity and care, if what is built in the school is often torn down again at home, if not always in deed, yet only by neglect of the further building upon the foundation laid. Admittedly both parts must never forget that with all their labor and pains nothing at all is accomplished if the LORD does not in grace give His blessing and prosperity to it, for which there is then need on both sides of diligent prayer. —

You see then, dear brother! what duties still rest upon you as father of the household in regard to your children, although you have a good school. This you also do not fail to recognize, in that you ask me for counsel how you might best arrange it to bring up your children in a truly blessed way in the nurture and admonition of the LORD, to which I must first answer you that no man of himself understands or is able to do right child-training; but that there belongs to it heavenly wisdom, which must be prayed for. For the rest I advise you that you also diligently practice God's Word and the Catechism at home, for example, that you have your children recite from the Catechism each day one chief part with the explanation, and not perhaps only those who still go to school, but also those who are already confirmed; for these, alas! as experience teaches, grow out of the Catechism rather than into it, especially if they do not diligently practice it also after confirmation, and for this the parents are certainly much to blame, if they at home about the Cate-