# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_April 1859_S111
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

On the Care Most Necessary for a Preacher in His Conduct. 111

It is self-evident with what anxious care, indeed with what fear and trembling, a preacher must watch over his conduct and his whole life, and we therefore do not fear that any of our brothers in office will consider our brotherly admonition unwarranted or superfluous, even though we may be able to tell him nothing new, or nothing that he does not already know well enough.

Is there any of us who does not still keep in fresh memory that dreadful scandal which a man brought about just twenty years ago now — a man who in his time was regarded as a pillar of the Lutheran church, a man who, during the period of the general falling-away from the faith, standing immovably firm at his post, had faithfully testified to the right way to salvation and had surely pointed many toward righteousness? And behold, he suffered a fall from which two continents resounded. That man's fall would be a psychological riddle to us, did we not know from the divine Word that falling away from Christ has countless invisible, secret, more remote and nearer beginnings, preparations, and stages, in which it is conceived, born, and completed. From one who neglects watchfulness there comes one who is presumptuous; from one who is presumptuous, a slothful Christian; from a slothful one, a hypocrite; from a hypocrite, a heretic and open enemy of the truth. That case would be a riddle to us, did we not know how the devil especially lies in wait for preachers, to bring them to a fall; for when he fells one preacher, he often fells thousands with him. And would to God that unhappy man were a solitary example held up for warning! But alas, a whole series of such persons could be named who, in these last twenty years, have become manifest as blots upon the Christian name and the preaching office — and our own synod, too, has supplied its proportionate share to that number. Whether all of them, as we have every reason to assume in the case of that man already mentioned, had been converted to Christ and had been vessels of the Holy Ghost, and so had fallen in the true sense, we do not know and leave undetermined; but this much is beyond doubt, that, because they gave the reins to the lusts of the flesh, they became slaves of corruption. Oh let us, beloved brothers, in the sight of such sorrowful cases, watch over ourselves, and by no means give room to the presumptuous thought that we stand so firm that we could not commit similar falls. The presumptuous man is nearest to falling. Pray, oh pray daily, that God lead us not into temptation; pray also for all our brothers in the ministry who, scattered here and there throughout the world, are the devil's target, that they may not be overreached by him.

Yet I do not have in view merely such gross, glaring scandals; there hovers before me, rather, a multitude of hidden, less conspicuous sins, which nevertheless stand in the way, hindering the ministry of the Gospel, diminishing its effectiveness, obstructing in many ways — indeed endangering — the welfare of Christian congregations, if they are not brought under the discipline of the Spirit at the proper time.