# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_December 1862_S363
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

On the Evangelical Conduct Proper to a Christian-Minded Congregational Schoolteacher, etc. 363

of carnal reason they step back, inconspicuous and scarcely noticed, far
behind the idols of the children of unbelief — such as: worldly-minded but
mightily gifted, victorious conquerors, famous discoverers, great orators,
clever statesmen, admired inventors, philosophers, poets, artists, scholars,
and so forth. But before God, and according to the judgment of his Word,
they are, not merely as believers and true Christians, his beloved children,
but at the same time, as believing and Christian schoolteachers, held high
and dear, because, as God's helpers and fellow-workers, with and through
his Word, in teaching and discipline, they help the beloved young toward
repentance before God, toward faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, toward a
godly walk in the holy Ten Commandments, and finally toward eternal
blessedness and glory. Nor is there any lack of lovely and comforting
examples of how the seeds of Christian doctrine, sown early by faithful
schoolteachers into young hearts, have at last, after years and decades of
falling away and running wild, broken through by the grace of the Holy
Spirit after all, and a genuine conversion has followed.

Yet despite such honor and dignity as faithful and capable schoolteachers
have before God, it is just as certain that they at the same time find
themselves continually in the school of the cross of their heavenly Teacher
and Educator; for they must forever struggle, partly with the vice of their
own flesh, now sluggish, now proud, now frivolous, now irascible, now
melancholy, partly with all manner of outbreaks of corrupted nature in
their schoolchildren, partly with the negligence or irascibility, or the proud
interference, of this or that parent of their schoolchildren, partly with the
cunning assaults and fiery darts of Satan, who bears the greatest grudge
against those servants of Christ who, through the right guidance of the
divine Word toward old or young, do him the most harm. Finally, such
schoolteachers, if they are married and have children of their own, will
also not lack the dear cross at home in their own house.

Here, then, it holds that, as disciples of the cross of their Lord and
Savior who was crucified for them, they fight the good fight of faith, and
diligently wield the sword of the Spirit, God's Word, as both weapon of
offense and of defense, and earnestly practice and pursue prayer and
intercession. For only thus can it happen that they attend to their great
and glorious calling with a whole, undivided heart, and keep steadily and
firmly in view God's honor, their own sanctification, and the benefit and
profit of their schoolchildren in carrying it out. Only thus can it happen
that, amid good progress and the blessed advance of their school, they do
not fall into the notorious conceit and pride of the schoolmaster, while
amid all manner of hindrance and difficulty, and even amid the prevailing
ingratitude of most parents, they do not fall into despondency or
melancholy or ill humor, but again and again lift up, by God's Word and
promise, their drooping hands and weary knees.

Only thus can it happen that they fall into no half-hearted, lukewarm and listless