# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_M rz 1856_S85
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

A Free Conference. 85

it perhaps will not be realized before the Last Day, neither in Germany nor in America, still I am most vividly convinced of its most glorious and salutary consequences.

As for the actual carrying out of this idea, allow me to suggest the following points of view and make a few unpretentious proposals:

1. the conference must be a public one, just as its proceedings must also be published;

2. participation in the conference must be conditioned on unreserved assent to the Book of Concord of 1580, or to what it states — namely, to the unaltered Augsburg Confession, understood and construed in the sense of the remaining confessional writings, from the Apology on to the Formula of Concord;

3. participants may, under the above condition, be: learned and unlearned, preachers and hearers, speakers of English or German; they may at present stand outwardly in connection with some synod calling itself Lutheran, or not;

4. the conference should be repeated annually, until it itself considers a continuation no longer necessary;

5. its tendency should be, not in the remotest degree, one that dissolves and destroys the existing Lutheran synods, but rather one that purifies them, penetrating them with the leaven of pure doctrine and a practice corresponding to it;

6. all members of the conference must keep vividly before their eyes that the goal is not division but unity; accordingly they must make the beginning with a mutual testimony of what they agree on, before they proceed to discussions of points of difference;

7. let the Leipzig Conference serve us as a model, which about fifteen years ago made a small beginning and gradually attained a powerful influence extending over the whole of Germany, indeed beyond Germany. From it let one learn patience and perseverance; from its missteps let one learn the caution to avoid similar ones;

8. in order to avoid loss of time and confusion, it would be expedient if theses were prepared even before the conference convenes, which, in wise regard for what is essential, most necessary, and most salutary, would offer the conference material for its deliberations; and I request all who take a lively interest in the proposal to draft such theses and to publish them beforehand;

9. as the most suitable meeting place I propose Pittsburgh.

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Postscript by the editors. Since it is only since a not very long time that the whole of the symbolical books of our Church has again become accessible and known here, it should not, in our conviction, as our