# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1849_S74
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

— 74 —

...false doctrine, nor by any abusive manner of conduct, nor did anything
crooked or foreign arise between any of us individually, nor did this or
that heart become estranged, even indirectly, from our common holy cause.

On the contrary, we hope all of us share the joyful confidence that,
over the course of the year just past, the hearts and minds of us all have
more and more been absorbed in the one great holy work — as
co-workers and helpers of the Holy Spirit, building the Lord's church
through the pure Word and Sacrament, in particular breaking hard
hearts through the Law and binding up broken hearts through the
Gospel, and, following the example of the chief Shepherd and Bishop of
our souls, gathering the lambs into our arms and gently leading the ewes.
In pursuing this one great holy work of shepherding and tending the
flock that the Son of God purchased so dearly with his holy blood, we
hope that in the synodical year just past all stirrings of selfish nature —
self-love, arrogance, fear of man, worldly care, wrath, and so forth — have
increasingly died out in all of us; and that the Holy Spirit has surely
kindled in all of us all the more a holy zeal to carry forward this noble
and precious work with strengthened faith and renewed love, whatever
may befall us in the process as God wills, and whatever we may have to
suffer as it pleases God.

Secondly, we also rightly owe thanks to the Lord our God for not
having diminished our number, and for not having taken any of us away
from his work, but rather for having sent new like-minded laborers into
his harvest, so that our number at present already comes to 60.

Yet we should not rejoice over this increase alone, but rather over the
fact that our dear newly entered brothers in office are, as noted, of the
same mind as we are — carried, as we firmly hope, by the same faith,
moved by the same love, proceeding from the same foundation, and
striving in the same way toward the same holy goal: to preserve and
increase for the Lord and Head of the Church his congregation on earth.
And although almost all of our younger brothers, like us, have in the
still short time of their ministry already passed through various
struggles and tribulations of greater or lesser difficulty for the sake of
their firm, confessionally faithful, churchly conduct — especially on
account of the reckless mixing of faiths and churches so common in our
day — yet, to our knowledge, none has grown soft under such
tribulations, nor has any, out of fear of man or desire to please man,
violated his churchly conscience and knowingly sinned against God's
Word and the precious confession of our Church founded upon it; rather,
all have likewise striven together with us in this respect to preserve, in
divine sincerity, an unblemished conscience both toward God and toward
men.

Thirdly, we also owe the Lord our God heartfelt thanksgiving that our
labor this year has, almost without exception, not been in vain even in
the eyes of men, in the Lord — as is evident from the following facts.

In the first place, our honest, faithfully churchly disposition and
conduct have found ever more recognition, despite considerable slander
and suspicion from ignorant or malicious people; for not a few little
flocks of Lutheran Christians have also, this year,