# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juli 1858_S211
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

On the Advancement of Pastors. 211

hymns, as well as an index of the psalms according to the tunes in which they are
sung. What the congregation is to sing is set in four parts for the organ. The
melodies and harmonies are the original ones. The volume comprises XIV and 84 pages.

On the Advancement of Pastors.

(From Joh. Ludw. Hartmann's *) Pastorale Evangelicum, Nuremberg, 1697, translated
by Conr. G. Schid.)

When the question is asked whether a minister of the Word may, with a good
conscience, leave his office and the congregation to which he first devoted his
labor, in the case of a regular call, and go over to another; it must first be
remembered that two extremes are carefully to be avoided.

For there are those who sin through excess, in that they change their position
at once and eagerly seek a new nest. After the manner of speculators they treat
their parishes like horses; every office they seize eagerly in the hope of profit
and earthly gain, as vultures seize carcasses. Against these Mathesius speaks
with earnestness in the ninth sermon on the life of Christ: "There are many
hirelings, fortune-hunters, and hucksters in the world, but few faithful
shepherds, for the greater part seek their own, and little of what is Christ's.
. . . A pastor, however, who often changes and shifts from parish to parish,
does not know his own punishment."

Therefore many desire it either out of ambition for higher offices, or they
strive out of greed and for the sake of shameful gain after fatter benefices, or
they seek new positions out of a misguided tenderness toward their wives, or
they wish, out of inconstant frivolity, to change their place as often as they
can. Others, out of concern for themselves and their affairs, when abuses become
too dangerously prevalent, or the ill will of the people grows too fierce,
become weary of their office and think of a change.

On the other side there are those who sin through too little, and who hold it
altogether unlawful that a servant of the church should be transferred from one
place to another. Hence one hears opposing opinions whenever changes of this
kind occur. For some, in good conscience, insist on the first regular call;
others maintain that it is known to God alone where, from the seed of the
sermon, a richer harvest and edification is to be hoped for.

Indeed, for the most part the new, newly called preacher himself does not know
how to conduct himself, so that he falls into manifold pitfalls of anxious
care, by which he is easily so hemmed in that he sees no way out. For soon he
thinks

*) Doctor of Theology and Superintendent at Rotenburg in Württemberg, who
studied at Wittenberg and Strasbourg, born 1640, died 1684.