# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_April 1859_S113
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

On the Caution Most Necessary to a Preacher in His Walk. 113

...would have abhorred heresies. Thus pride becomes the mother of all
heresies.

How great a caution is needed, that this harmful vice of ambition may not
gradually and imperceptibly gain the mastery in the preacher's heart —
a mastery which threatens the Gospel with the greatest harm and makes him
contemptible in the eyes of the world.

The besetting sin of a third temperament is unbelief, together with the
earthly-mindedness and cares for sustenance bound up with it. Next to
ambition, no vice is more hindering to the preaching office than avarice,
which opens the mouth to please men, or shuts the mouth silent where
speaking freely threatens harm. Yet here we think less of the harm that
avarice does than of the disgrace it brings upon the Gospel. The world can
well enough tolerate avarice in other persons — striving after riches
passes in the world for an honest trade; but in preachers it cannot endure
it, and for its sake gladly reviles, on that account, not only their person
but the whole office, indeed the Gospel, whose bearers the preachers are.
If a preacher loves his office, let him avoid even the remotest appearance
of the love of money, so that no one can bring against him the least
reproach that he administers his office for the sake of money and bread.
Wherever possible, let him not fix the amount of his own salary, but let it
be fixed by those who called him — unless they weigh it out to him with
such stinginess that he cannot maintain himself as an honest man; toward
debtors let him be generous and forbearing, so far as the state of his
household allows; let him demand no fees, but accept what the good will of
the people offers. By nothing can he set himself in greater esteem and
favor than by a liberal, unselfish, noble bearing; nothing makes him more
unpopular, more contemptible, indeed more hated, than a stingy, miserly
disposition. As forbearing as a preacher ought to be toward the
unpunctuality of those who owe him, so punctual should he be in the paying
of his own debts. We know of instances where preachers, through careless
borrowing and tardy paying, have lost all credit, indeed have given cause
for the most serious disruptions in their congregations.

It goes without saying that we do not wish to stop the mouths of poor
preachers, oppressed by stingy congregations and groaning under bitter
poverty, from voicing complaint over their distress. A congregation that
pays its preacher so meagerly that he lacks the most indispensable
necessities of life is worthy of no preacher at all, and one so shameless
as to offer its preacher a starvation stipend should never obtain one. Not
only the avarice of preachers, but also that of congregations, redounds to
the hindrance and disgrace of the Gospel.

We must ask our dear brethren, especially the younger ones, to allow us
one boldness more. Since we have once resolved to recommend to them
carefulness in their walk, we may not remain silent about that —