# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Januar 1863_S12
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

12 On the evangelical conduct of a Christian-minded parish schoolteacher, etc.

and, when their mind does not prevail, appear irritated and offended. But if the pastor also resists them, and has perhaps already, though sadly without wholesome fruit, admonished and reproved them pastorally in private, they occasionally have no small inclination, first secretly, to stir up among the aforementioned malcontents and dissatisfied a kind of party against the pastor, and, where possible, to draw the schoolteacher too into it, once they have sounded him out and found him corruptible.

There it is incumbent on the teacher everywhere, but especially in this last case, that he be wise as a serpent yet without guile, as a dove, and reprove the first and third class with manly earnestness and wholesome severity according to God's Word, but, as for the second, provided he is himself sound in Christian and churchly terms, seek in all patience and teaching to help them out of their morbid pietism, and to correct their mistaken judgment.

There would now remain the third part of our consideration, namely how a Christian-minded schoolteacher ought to conduct himself toward his pastor.

To this the summary answer is again: in heartfelt reverence and brotherly love, and these two elements ought properly to permeate each other mutually under all circumstances. As for the first, which the evangelical-minded pastor will indeed not claim in a legalistic manner, this lies in the nature of the matter, since, first, the parish schoolteacher is also an assistant of the pastor in the administering of the divine Word to the children for instruction and discipline, and, second, this pastor accordingly must, as a matter of course, exercise oversight as to how this his assistant attends to the doctrine in content and form, and exercises discipline toward the children. Thirdly, the pastor, as Christ's servant and steward over God's mysteries, is, toward him as toward all members of the congregation, the mouth and the hand of Christ toward his schoolteacher, so that in this life, and according to the outward form of the kingdom of grace or the church of Christ, there is in this respect no equal standing of the two, but rather a subordination of the schoolteacher to his pastor, which is meant to serve both as a school in humility; for it is right that the shepherd of the congregation, too, in the feeding of Christ's lambs, according to the general direction of the Holy Spirit through St. Paul, show his assistant precedence in reverence; it is right that he also recognize and honor in him the gifts of the Spirit; it is right that he not withhold from him the due recognition of his faithfulness and competence in the application of these gifts, that he stand by him in his manifold trials, and through comforting counsel with God's Word help to lighten for him his manifold burden of school-cares.

Again, the schoolteacher ought, in keeping with humility and for the reasons indicated above, acknowledge his pastor as his superior, and not let himself be troubled by this, that in this or that formal knowledge and skill, as sometimes happens among us here in this country,