# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_December 1862_S358
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

358 On the Evangelical Conduct of a Christian-minded Parish Schoolteacher, Etc.

as the prevailing manner, then it will hardly fail that he, on the whole,
awakens in the children just as much a reverent awe as a heartfelt
trust, or, put more briefly, both fear and love at once. And so it should
be; for just as grown Christians — and so too fathers and teachers —
relate to God in such a way that they fear and love him at the same
time, so their children and pupils should relate to them in a similar, if
not an identical, way, so that fear and love reign in them toward these
at the same time.

Second, the love of Christ shows itself in the teacher's fatherly
teaching and upbringing of his pupils in this, that all his teaching —
whatever the subject matter may be — is, in its individual expressions,
at the same time an upbringing and forming of the whole little human
being. And if that fruit of love already mentioned, namely, as even-
tempered and friendly a seriousness as possible, is present as the
prevailing bearing, then this other fruit of love is achieved all the more
easily.

In any case, the narration and questioning-over of biblical history is,
for instance, as to its subject matter, very different from the children's
exercises in penmanship. And if that narration, freely and orally
conducted, flows out of the teacher's fresh and living apprehension of
faith, then there is indeed no other teaching material that so powerfully
seizes the whole human being according to the heart, memory,
understanding, and will of the pupil. For when the great deeds of God,
whether in goodness or in severity, come home to his soul, it is
powerfully moved, even without any piecemeal application — which,
unfortunately, often only crumbles or paralyzes the total impact of the
history — and, according to the content, is stirred to repentance, or to
faith, or to obedience. Nevertheless, even in the children's exercises,
for instance in penmanship, the aim and intent of a Christian-minded
and capable teacher will be directed toward this, that the children, by
such exercises, not only increase in formal skill in penmanship, but that
at the same time their sense for the beautiful and the pleasing, for
cleanliness and precision, and above all the perseverance of their will
to attain ever more fully what is prefigured in the model — in short,
their character — is trained and strengthened. And this same manner,
at once teaching and educating, and therefore truly formative, is what
such a teacher will seek to maintain everywhere, whatever the teaching
material may be, and indeed all this under the supreme rule of the
Fourth Commandment. For it is precisely this constant relation to it,
nearer or more remote, that distinguishes a Christian-minded teacher
from one equally gifted and otherwise capable of teaching, but, say,
rationalistically minded.

For such a one will either content himself with advancing, through
his instruction, the children's acquisition of this or that knowledge and
skill, or his simultaneous influence upon the children's disposition and
will is not directed toward making it vivid and impressive to them, again
and again, how all the exertion of their will for all sorts of knowledge