# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1854 04 25_S141
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

141

into a treasury of incalculable worth, for which the English language offers them not the poorest substitute. But over the German, the English language also should not be neglected. This is, for one thing, the language of the country which we have made our fatherland; it is the language of business and of the courts, indispensable to advancement in civil life, and without speaking and writing it fluently and readily a German can hardly win for himself that respect in civil society which is a not-to-be-despised addition to earthly happiness and the indispensable condition of fulfilling his duties as a citizen adequately and conscientiously. German children should therefore learn to speak and write the English language just as thoroughly, readily and fluently as their mother tongue. This ought not to be left to mere chance association; the school ought to see to it. But the training for earthly civil life is only the smaller half of the task of a common school. Children are created and called to eternal life; they are baptized, not that educated citizens, skilful merchants, capable tradesmen, but that citizens of the kingdom of God should come of them. Therefore Christian religious instruction can and may not be lacking in a good common school; rather it must be the chief matter and the foundation of all instruction and of all education. What Christian fathers and mothers have begun, the school shall carry on; what they have left incomplete, the school shall fill out; the same spirit that governs a Christian household shall also rule in the school, which is nothing else than the helper and deputy of a Christian father or a Christian mother. Therefore Christian religious instruction must stand first among all the branches of study, Christian principles must quicken and oversee all the other branches, and discipline must be exercised in a Christian spirit. If we apply this standard to the American common-school system here, we shall not find it to hold the test. It is true, the public schools here are in their way so excellently arranged that they leave hardly anything to be desired. But one chief thing is lacking in them all, sound Christian religious instruction. On principle it is banished from all public common schools, as in a population so mixed as the one here cannot be otherwise. As with the political life here, so the necessary evil of religious indifferentism clings also to the school. Hence there come forth from these common schools young people who in the best case have never heard anything of the way of salvation and do not know who created and redeemed them, or who in the worse case have drunk in from the mostly deistic school-books and readers such ideas and principles as are fitted to make enemies of the Christian faith out of them later. For both cases I could cite examples in plenty. I cannot in truth comprehend how one can make so much boast of the common-school system here without at the same time being ashamed of what it lacks, or how parents who wish to be Christian can content themselves with these wretched publie shools (for I call wretched every school, even the best, in which the Christian element is lacking), or how whole church bodies can suppose themselves relieved by the public schools of the obligation to maintain Christian parish schools of their own. I am assured of your undivided assent, you parents, when I declare that Christian parents cannot, without grave injury to conscience, without committing a great unfaithfulness toward their children, send their children to the English common schools. If they do it, God will one day require a strict account of them. I know well in what manner many parents quiet their consciences: I send my children to the Sunday school, there they are to learn religion. But I ask such parents: what kind of Sunday schools are they to which you send your children? Perhaps a Methodist or an Anabaptist one, etc., and there they are to learn religion? And supposing it is a Lutheran Sunday school, what a poor substitute it is, after all, for a regular weekday school! I will not despise Sunday schools, if they are conducted in the right spirit, and for the sake of poor, neglected children who are not sent by their unchristian parents to any regular weekday school, I could wish that every Lutheran church might maintain a Sunday school; but when parents who belong to Lutheran congregations withdraw from their children the daily bread of the weekday school and mean to put them off with a meagre crumb of Sunday school, they must in truth be hard-hearted, cruel parents. I have also already heard others say: I send my child to the Sunday catechization which our pastor holds; there what the English schools lack is richly made up. But do you really think that half an hour of catechization on Sunday takes the place of regular religious instruction? The catechization is an excellent institution for children and adults. But if the daily catechism instruction in the school does not go before it, then the Sunday catechization too will accomplish about as much as nothing. Finally, there have also come to me people who were shameless enough to demand of me that I should trim their children, who had grown up to their twelfth, thirteenth year in English schools and could neither read German nor recite one article of the Christian faith, into shape for confirmation in a couple of weeks and confirm them forthwith. I keep silence about what I answered such people.

What now must Christian parents and Christian congregations do? They must establish and maintain Christian parish schools out of their own means. Three hundred years ago Dr. Luther pricked the conscience of the Christian councillors and magistrates and exhorted them to establish Christian schools. In this land all Christian congregations must take this exhortation to themselves. Councillors and magistrates here do nothing and can do nothing for Christian schools; so Christian congregations must provide for them out of their own means, that their children may not grow up without the knowledge of God. No congregation should suffer its members to send their children to English common schools, passing by the parish school, and to let them become spiritually neglected and run wild in them.

Let me now commend to you also the blessing which Christian schools bring. Great is the blessing which Christian parents enjoy from them. Pious children, well instructed besides in all manner of needful knowledge, are their parents' joy and crown, their help and support in their old age. On the other hand, neglected children will, the longer the more, become their parents' vexation, heartache and shame. Great is the blessing which the children themselves enjoy from the Christian school. What children have learned of good and useful things in school redounds to their good in their whole life. How many a diligent little scholar has laid in school the first cornerstone of his future happiness in life and has become a great man. Would he have become that if he had neglected school, or been lazy and slovenly in school? Never. But what a pious child learns in school out of God's Word redounds to his good in eternal life. Because thou hast known the holy Scriptures from a child, they are able to make thee wise unto salvation. God's Word is a holy seed which, if it is not wilfully choked, bears blessed fruit; and supposing a child should be so unhappy as to forsake the good way, then often after many years the seed that lay like dead in the heart springs up under God's blessing, and the Holy Ghost reminds him of the word which he had learned in school. Many examples are known to me of those who, under the gracious work of remembrance of the Holy Ghost, owe their later conversion to what had been planted in their heart in school. Finally, great is the blessing which overflows from the Christian school upon the whole Church. The school is the orchard from which the Church receives her perpetual increase. Children are from their baptism the noblest part of the Church; schools are the nurses and attendants who help to guard this noble possession of the Church. Much, much would I still add, to make the Christian school truly dear, valuable and important to you. But time bids me close. Only two requests permit me still to utter, one to you, dear parents. The faithful God has given us a fine school, Christian faithful teachers labor in it, do not let this school stand empty. Do not look upon it as a burden, but as a bene-