“Now I have preached and written a great deal urging that good schools should be established in the cities in order that we might produce educated men and women, whence good Christian pastors and preachers might come forth so that the word of God might continue to flourish richly. But people take such an indifferent attitude toward the matter, pretending that it might cost them their whole livelihood and temporal possessions, that I fear the time will come when schoolmasters, pastors, and preachers alike will have to quit, let the word go, and turn to a trade or some other means of stilling the pangs of hunger; just as the Levites had to abandon the worship of God to till the fields, as Nehemiah writes [Neh. 13:10].” Martin Luther, “Exposition of Psalm 127, for the Christians at Riga in Livonia,” Luther’s Works, vol. 45, p. 318.
