# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1850 03 05_S108
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

108

Christian instruction the knowledge of God may be planted in them, their own will broken, and they directed to good discipline and order.

Consider, 2) that God has bound the souls of the children upon your souls, and that He will require an account for it on that day, if you have either let them run idly about outside of school and grow shamefully wild, or have kept them only to earthly labor and have not troubled yourselves about their souls. If through your fault they are lost in their ignorance and wickedness, God will require their blood at your hands.

Consider, 3) that it is the earnest command of God that you should bring up your children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, Eph. 6:4. But since your toilsome calling hinders you from devoting sufficient time to the instruction and admonition of your children, you are bound thankfully to use the good opportunity which God gives you for this through public schools, so that through the service of Christian schoolteachers the children may be brought up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.

Consider, 4) how ill it pleases yourselves, when you were neglected in your childhood, and how often you lament it when you cannot read and write; on the other hand, how you thank your parents even under the earth, when they kept you diligently at school. Well then, show this mercy to your children, that they may not, when you have long since decayed, have to complain and sigh over your lack of love.

Consider, 5) how gladly many parents would send their children to an evangelical school, if only they were allowed, and how the good Salzburgers would have praised God for it, if they had had Christian and evangelical schools in their land. Ah! be not ungrateful toward God, who through the care of the high authorities*) grants you this inestimable benefit, so that you can have them almost in all your villages and hamlets at your very door.

*) The blessed Rambach is here speaking with parents who once lived in Germany under an authority which took care for the establishment of truly evangelical schools. Here, where the authorities will do nothing for Christianity, the parents themselves must take care of it. Parents who here content themselves with their children attending the English public schools established by our authorities show thereby not only that they are no Christians, but also that they are themselves not worthy to bear the name of a German. The Editor.

Consider, 6) that God will deal with you just as you deal with your children, and that He will either lay His curse upon your labor and sustenance, if you will spare the school money, or that He will bless you richly, if you apply a part of your property to have your children well brought up.

Consider, 7) that your children will thank you for it yet in heaven, if you have spared nothing in making upright Christians of them; but that they will also cry out eternally in hell woe and alas over you, and curse you unceasingly, if you have let them grow up in ignorance and wickedness to their eternal destruction.

These reasons, beloved parents, ought justly to move you, not only at home to keep your children to singing and reading, to accustom them to prayer at rising and lying down, before and after meals, and to exhort them that they often think of God, thank Him for everything, and apply themselves to decency and virtue, but also to send them diligently and daily to school, that these young plants may be tended and watered daily.

Say you, 1), "It is too hard for us to raise the school money, especially as we have more children"; Luther will teach you in the aforesaid little book that no money can be better spent than this, which you spend upon the dearly bought souls of your children. God will bless you the more richly again in your sustenance, if you let your dear children share in a part of what He has bestowed upon you. Rather cut something off from other unnecessary and sinful expenses, which God will not let pass in your account on that day in any case. Besides this, there are in many places free schools, which cost the congregation little or nothing. It would also be a work well pleasing to God, if in one place and another well-to-do people, who either have no children, or leave enough to their own, would bequeath something to it at their death, from which a capital might be gradually gathered and safely invested, from the interest of which a schoolmaster of the same place might enjoy a supplement, without burdening the congregation.*) But for those parents who are quite poor and cannot pay school fees, the pastors of each place will gladly seek to come to their help with a contribution from the church chest, if it is able.

*) To pay interest on a capital which has this purpose is no support of usury, which it would otherwise be, but a work of mercy, like the paying of interest to widows and orphans. The Editor.

Say you, 2) "You need your children for your housework and fieldwork; they must stay all spring, summer and autumn out in the field with the cattle"; then consider how badly you advise and provide for your poor children, in that over your farming you let their minds lie waste and run wild, and over your cattle-raising let them themselves become beastly. What will God say to this? Will He not send the curse upon your labor? You may well keep your children at work outside school hours; but that you keep them from school for this reason, in order to make meanwhile an earthly gain by them, this God will surely punish with poverty, want and sickness, and what you gain in such a way He will let melt away again.

Say you, 3) "My child learns nothing at school; yes, it brings home more evil than good"; then the fault lies perhaps in its own laziness, or in this, that you do not have it repeat at home what it has learned at school, so that everything is forgotten again at once. Perhaps also it can learn nothing just because it is sent so irregularly to school. Moreover, to be sure, among a great crowd of children there are always some scabby sheep, which can infect others. But you must admonish your children at home the more diligently, that they do not follow the evil example of others, but live according to God's Word, and have God before their eyes. But if you have anything else to remark on account of bad discipline in the school, report it to your pastor, that it may be amended, and do not on that account keep your children out of school.

Say you, 4) "My child cannot drag itself along so long with the Catechism; it is enough that it can pray a little and read, and recite a few little texts. I too got no further in my youth, and hope nevertheless to be saved. God will not require so much of us poor people. We will remain in our simplicity," etc. etc. — then know that true Christian simplicity is no stupidity and ignorance. And since God assigns you public schools for your children, and lets the high authorities command that you should send your children up to the fourteenth year, He will also require an account of you, how you and your children have used this good opportunity. The less a Christian knows of God's Word, the more doubts and temptations he is subject to*): therefore the Apostles press so earnestly that we should grow in the knowledge of our LORD JESUS Christ, 2 Pet. 3:18. If you were neglected in your youth, it is no shame to you at all if your children, by diligent attendance at school, attain further in the knowledge of Christianity than you have been able to attain.

*) Of what sad consequences it is in this respect that so many Germans in their old fatherland have not enjoyed good and complete instruction in the pure Christian doctrine, one sees among other things from this, that here, alas! so many fall away at once and forsake the religion and church of their pious forefathers, if they are led into temptation only a little by the preachers of the fanatical sects of this country. Many a father grieves heartily that his child has become a Methodist, Baptist and the like, but he does not consider that perhaps he himself bears the guilt of it, in that he did not have his child well grounded in the true doctrine in an orthodox school. The Editor.

Now see, beloved friends, that all your excuses which you bring forward, why you do not keep your children more diligently at school, do not suffice to excuse your negligence. Therefore go on no longer, through disobedience to the command of God and of the high authorities, to load a heavy responsibility upon yourselves. Pray God that He may for Christ's sake for-