# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_April 1860_S98
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

98    On the Zeal of Preachers.

By no means, however, may we hold the opinion that in occupying ourselves with controversies we should rest content; rather, one must join the practical to the scholarly studies: the one works into the other's hands. Whoever does not apply himself to both will not be equal to the holy office. The former illuminate and strengthen understanding and make a pastor strong; the latter nourish and exercise godliness. With the former we stop the mouths of heretics; with the latter we build up the people of God unto salvation. Both are incumbent upon the pastor, that he drive away the wolves and feed the sheep. The scholarly studies serve the one task, the practical the other. Through the former a pastor becomes more learned, through the latter more godly. The heretics make the study of controversies necessary for us, but God makes the study of godliness necessary as the one thing indispensable.

If those who neglect the fundamental doctrines and almost everything practical as ordinary, easy, and commonplace, while meanwhile toiling over more subtle questions and more tangled controversies, afterward come to preaching, they certainly please themselves only too well, but among all sensible people they tend to arouse either laughter or pity: laughter, namely, when on the slightest occasion they make more words than necessary over some point of controversy that does not even properly belong there; pity, on the other hand, when they wish to speak of practical matters and, as if transported into another world, become dry and tedious. —

Next, a pastor is to be admonished not to bury himself so deeply in books that he neglects the other means by which he might otherwise instruct himself. For, first, each man's own heart is a book from which he can learn how he ought to treat others. As in water one face corresponds to another, so does one man's disposition to another's: one can see another's heart in his own as in a mirror. All bear the same body of sin, whence in one as well as in the other are found cunning, tricks, and crooked ways which, even if not identical, are still of the same kind. Whoever knows himself thoroughly will far more easily penetrate the hearts of others. Hence that pagan saying was so often impressed upon men: know thyself! He must therefore spend some time on the examination of his own heart, so that, once he has truly seen through it, he may also be able to show others what deceit, what cunning, what countless evils lie hidden within it. — Second, every person we encounter is a book, from which and about which something is to be learned. From them one is to learn how both sin and grace may be recognized. For according as a man is born again or not, he testifies to his ungodliness or his godliness both in words and in deeds. Neither ungodliness nor godliness can be observed more vividly than when they betray themselves in action. Solomon learned much through attentive observation of the ways of men, as he shows in Ecclesiastes. Further, something is to be learned about people as to whether they are yielding or stubborn, whether they are superficial or deep-going, whether they are nettles or