# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1855 07 17_S190
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

190

and to prevent it: is it not so? The first remedy against it is prayer, diligent, fervent prayer, that the Lord would send laborers into His harvest and therefore turn the hearts of many young Christians to entering our preparatory schools, and also move many parents to let their children be trained for the ministry and the teaching office.

The other means for a more abundant supply of the congregations and Christians here with preachers and teachers is work: what kind? This, that you send your own children to Fort Wayne or St. Louis to the high school. "Ah," cry many fathers and mothers, "who can wish to see his children in the ministry or the teaching office in this country! The duties of calling in these offices are too toilsome and bound up with too much grief and vexation!" Let me add at once, the same sad experience holds back many a candidate for the ministry and the teaching office in Germany, who otherwise would gladly work here for the love of Christ. "Pshaw," cries this or that Christian indignantly, "unbelief, the lazy flesh, the flight from the cross hinders those parents and these candidates; such faint-hearted people we could not use at all, even if they came in the end." — Gently, friends, I reply, for a man to undertake an office full of thorns and crosses, he must be very, yes entirely certain of his call; otherwise he might tempt God. But granting even that many are held back from the ministry and the teaching office by unbelief and faint-heartedness, you at least are not appointed to judge them; you rather are to work to this end, that you, so far as lies in you, do not make the ministry and the teaching office an office of toil and heartache. "Aha," one cries out to me, "you come back again to the admonition which you gave a while ago especially with regard to the professors, namely, that we should give the preachers and teachers fine salaries; it is money that is aimed at." I answer confidently that this admonition belongs here also. You know, the bodily poverty which is bound up with the ministry and teaching office here frightens many away from it; many parents also, in view of this bodily poverty, do not venture to give their children for that calling. But this ought not to drive our congregations to take offense at those faint-hearted ones, but to deal with their preachers and teachers in obedience to the Word of God, 1 Tim. 5, 18; Gal. 6, 6 and 7; 1 Cor. 9, 14. Yet bodily poverty is not the only toil of these offices, nor the heaviest. A large salary, paid with ill-humor and visible compulsion, causes just as much grief as when at every payment one lets the preacher or teacher perceive the opinion, as though one maintained him actually only out of grace and mercy, which truly is not the case. Also the fact that in our synodical fellowship both offices, the ministry and the school, are in many cases laid upon one and the same person, does not by far constitute the greatest toil that is connected with these offices. To be sure, only real necessity, lack of teachers or poverty of the congregation, not avarice and ill-will of the members of the congregation, should be the occasion for burdening the preacher also with the actual school-work, reading, writing, arithmetic etc., and thereby robbing him of time and strength for study; also the congregations should never demand it of him as a right, but only as a kindness, and therefore judge his work in the school with indulgence, making no high demands upon it; but where real necessity demands it of him, there he will be willing to do it even without special request of the congregation, and will only expect that the congregation seek to lighten for him the actual school-work and to take it off his hands as soon as possible. The ministry and the teaching office become toilsome and full of grief by this, that the members of the congregation refuse to be obedient to the whole Word of God in the particular matters mentioned as in general and in every respect. Instead of the members of the congregation making right use of their precious privilege to test all doctrine by the Holy Scripture, and so really proving the preaching of their pastors and teachers by the Holy Scripture, and, if it agrees therewith, doing it without refusal, they only too gladly test it by the opinions and thoughts of their own heart, and, because the pure preaching of the Word of God certainly does not agree therewith, they strive against it, seduce weak fellow-Christians to make a party with them, heap anguish, affliction, troubles of conscience upon the poor preacher, who in such cases is seldom supported strongly enough by the faithful members of the congregation — what heartache arises everywhere from disobedience to God's Word is not to be counted up nor told. Your preachers and teachers are prepared for such sad experiences, certainly — but to bring affliction upon them, that they may not perhaps become slothful and wanton, that let no one presume, no member of a congregation, no congregation, for that would be to meddle with God the Lord's office. Let every Christian, every congregation choose the good part, to hear and to do the word of Jesus, which the Lord preaches through His servants, that is the one and only thing needful, in order that the present lack of preachers and teachers may be removed; with the general obedience toward God's Word, the particular will then also come, which Heb. 13, 17; 1 Thess. 5, 12 and 13; 1 Tim. 5, 18; Gal. 6, 6 and 7. demand. Hard work, poverty, trial enough will even then remain to the shepherds in church and school, but they will bear this tribulation together with the congregations and the congregations with them; then there is a hearty fellowship, a joyful working, a sweet suffering, by which Christian parents and young Christians in general will at least not be frightened away, rather, I think, be enticed to fill our high schools and seminaries. Let the congregations only do what is in their power, to take from the ministry and the teaching office among them the repellent exterior, and whatever might then still frighten back from these offices, that God will help to overcome, at your prayer, in all whom He endows for these holy offices.

A preacher herewith admonishes you to prepare for the ministry and the teaching office in your midst a friendly place; he does it because such admonition also, which reproves some, is the duty of the ministry, Titus 1, 9. To Christians, that is, such people as desire to be obedient to the whole Word of God, he addresses this admonition; Christians will test it by the Word of God and, since it agrees with the same, follow it. Unbelievers, mouth-Christians, scoffers, when they read this, will indeed point at me with fingers, think or cry: "There, there, see what these preachers and teachers, who boast of their disinterestedness and love toward you, seek of you, how they covet your hard-earned property, in order to live well themselves and have good days . . .!" From unbelievers I expect nothing but such scorn and mockery; for them I have not written that admonition; to them I can only address the admonition to repent and be converted; so long as they do not do that, all other admonition of the Word of God remains to them a foolishness.

Once more let me return to these inestimable gifts of God, our Synod's dowry and jewel, the higher schools in Fort Wayne and St. Louis. If God has given your children the gift for higher education in general and you the means — much means is not required for it, since the tuition at those institutions is set exceedingly cheap — send your children thither, even if they should follow other callings than just the ministry and the teaching office. Whatever in the culture of an age, as for instance of our time, in science, art and so forth is noble, chaste, lovely, of good report, all that Christianity always appropriates and uses to the honor of God and the welfare of men; all that the Christian congregation must not thrust from itself and keep away, but rather must cherish, promote, and seek to impart to its members, so far as they have the gift for it. Did not Luther wish to preserve some Latin choir-songs in the divine service, in order that the choir-scholars, boys who were by no means destined for the ministry, might be kept in practice in the Latin language? So far as the culture of our time is good, let each appropriate it according to gift and calling, and let him have his children educated for it according to their gift. Never yet have Christians and Christian congregations despised and scorned good and right culture and the means thereto without being punished. To speak further about this for the present is not within the purpose of this whole admonition, but, God giving grace, it shall not be neglected. God grant grace that we all together, preachers, teachers, congregations, in unconditional obedience toward God's Word, in unity of faith, in fervent love one toward another and toward every man, in joyful patience and devotion, may build to the name of our God houses, earthly and spiritual, churches and schools; may He prosper the work of our hands among us, yea, the work of our hands may He prosper.