# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juni 1859_S181
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

How Should a Pastor Conduct Himself at the Sickbed of His Parishioners? 181

vindicate its genuinely Lutheran and Reformation character. So it will,
like a pure river of living water, clear as crystal, Revelation 22:1, flowing
forth from the Word of God, fertilize the fields of the Church, in that it
furthers knowledge, strengthens faith, and grounds the sound, vigorous,
and blessed life that is of God. But may the Lord fulfill his promise and
lead us ever more into all truth. H. Fick.

(Contributed.)
How Should a Pastor Conduct Himself at the Sickbed
of His Parishioners?

(Conclusion.)

Just as a pastor must, with secure and self-righteous sick persons, make
use of the Law, and thereby plow the hard soil of the heart and prepare it
to receive the good seed, namely the Gospel — so, with sick persons under
spiritual trial, he must chiefly take in hand the Gospel, with its sweet,
heart-refreshing comfort, in order to raise up again the exhausted, weary,
and terrified consciences, to revive them, and to make them joyful and of
good cheer in God. For one under spiritual trial needs not punishment, but
comfort; he is under trial precisely because the power of sin, that is, the
Law, has become alive in his heart.

However various, now, the trials with which God's children may be
afflicted — as, for example, that they are assailed over the greatness and
multitude of their sins, or with sorrow, or with fear of death, or over
eternal reprobation, or whatever else it may be — all these trials, since
their center, from which they proceed, is sin, are overcome only through
the comfort of the Gospel, which sets before us a gracious God, reconciled
through Christ. For the fact that God has thoughts of peace toward us, and
not of harm, as the Gospel tells and assures us so manifoldly, is
victorious against trials however diverse they may be.

But it is most necessary for a pastor, at the sickbed of a confessing
member under spiritual trial, to know the origin and kind of his trial, and
for that reason he will take the opportunity, in a friendly manner, to
inquire into it, so as to be put in a position to hold before the sick person,
for the raising up of his afflicted faith, the fitting sayings or also the
narratives from God's Word. I cannot forbear here to call particular
attention to a passage in the essay "How are truly Lutheran congregations
founded and raised up?" in "Lehre und Wehre," first volume, November
number, pages 331–335, and I take the liberty of setting down its
conclusion here: "It is especially important in this matter for the pastor
that he point the one in need of comfort away from all his own opinion,
supposing, and feeling, in which he imagines himself punished, indeed
cast off, by God, to the