# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Januar 1863_S14
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

14 On the Evangelical Conduct of a Christian-minded Parish Schoolteacher, etc.

there will be, on the pastor's part, no domineering presumption, and on the schoolteacher's part, no servile fear, with inward anger and hatred. Then neither will seek to erect or extend legal barriers against the other, and mistrust and jealousy toward one another will be far from both.

But a Christian-minded schoolteacher will conduct himself toward his pastor not only in cordial deference but also in brotherly love, and it is through this that his deference does not turn into a timid reticence. For as Christians they are both children of the same heavenly Father in Christ, and therefore brothers in the Lord. Indeed, neither one has more or less in and through Christ than the other. Indeed, both have essentially the same noble and glorious calling, namely, to bring great and small to salvation in Christ as their final goal. How, then, should the most intimate brotherly love not already bind them together in the very striving toward this goal!

Now to the love which the schoolteacher, as a brother in Christ, rightly owes to his pastor, there belong chiefly two things: reproving and comforting.

As for the first, deference must by no means here take the place of love. It is, after all, quite natural that, for example, in a still younger and moreover remote, isolated congregation, no one stands as close to the preacher as his schoolteacher does; and it is often to him that it first becomes apparent where and how the pastor — even if not erring publicly in doctrine — nevertheless stumbles otherwise in his conduct, for instance in congregational meetings, letting himself now and then be carried away by impatience and irritability into rash words. And unfortunately it may become necessary there too that he needs brotherly reproof, for which the schoolteacher likewise has the calling of love. It could also be that the pastor himself, in school matters, amid all sorts of difficulties, passes overly hasty and unfair judgments. There, too, and indeed quite properly here, he needs the reproving love of the schoolteacher.

For comforting love, however, the teacher will find opportunity enough in the congregation of a pastor who stands especially alone; for in the heart, house, and congregation of a faithful servant of the Lord there is usually no lack of the dear cross and of tribulation in Christ. It is then indeed a lovely thing when he has, in his brother and friend and fellow-worker in the Lord's work, an affectionate comforter who helps him bear his burden, just as he in turn also helps carry the teacher's own cross of school troubles, and helps and improves matters as he is able.

This, then, so far as I presently perceive it, would be the most important thing in the evangelical conduct of a Christian-minded schoolteacher, both toward his schoolchildren and toward the congregation and its pastor.