# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_April 1859_S115
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

On the Caution Most Necessary to a Preacher in His Walk. 115

...beneficial to the Gospel, or prepares any favorable or unfavorable
prejudice toward my preaching. To wear a Kossuth hat, however comfortable
it may be, or to let a long beard grow, however much it may please me, is
— so long as it is not a generally established fashion and not merely the
badge of certain [party] characters — certainly just as little to be
recommended as it would be advisable, in our time, to wear a queue and a
wig. To drink a glass of beer in a tavern — who would make that a sin for
me? And yet that Pauline caution bids one abstain from it, lest Satan
spread an evil rumor out of an innocent walk and defame the Gospel. Who
may govern my conscience and dictate to me which person I am to choose as
my life's companion, and which not, so long as she is otherwise
blameless? And yet I would be a very unworthy disciple of the Apostle
Paul, who would rather never eat meat again than offend his brother, if
in my choice I took no account whatever of my office and its
effectiveness. Many a young preacher began his office under great
blessing; all hearts turned to him and a wide door stood open to him;
then, behold, he took a rash, hasty step, and at once his reputation and
the trust placed in him were gone — which he will scarcely ever again
attain to the same degree.

In closing, permit us a word of admonition concerning the careful conduct
of pastors' wives. We would indeed assign them a wholly false position if
we were to make them, as not infrequently happens, active pastoresses,
assistants to the pastor, female pastors of souls. Godly and sober-minded
pastors' wives will themselves never lay claim to such a position.
Nonetheless their calling is an important and responsible one. For, not
to mention that a godly pastor's wife, through a living trust in God,
comforting counsel, and intercession, is an inestimable support to her
husband, her humble, loving, quiet, modest, gentle conduct serves the
edification of all the women of the congregation, and in that respect she
is in truth a very loud and active preacher and helper to her husband;
and blessed be such a noble pearl, wherever her quiet sphere of influence
may lie, in the city or in the solitary countryside. But woe to the
preacher who has a haughty, fashion-mad, quarrelsome, gossiping,
tale-bearing wife! Her husband must be ashamed of her, and when it is
cast up against him, it grieves him in his heart, says the wise man
Sirach. A pastor's wife who loves her husband and honors his office will
also make it her daily task to be her husband's crown and honor, and
would rather suffer and forgo everything than bring an evil report upon
her husband. But among all the good qualities of a pastor's wife, none
seems more indispensable and useful than that she be deaf and dumb — deaf
to whisperers and tale-bearers, dumb in that she knows how to keep her own
tongue in check. The wise Sirach says: A wife who can keep silence is a
gift of God.