# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1852_S207
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

— 207 —

toward both sides, and oppose both the presumption of mob rule and the
encroachments of a false hierarchy within the Church. Truth is on our
side, and with it the victory before God and all God's children.
    If our opponents lie that we are venal servants of men who lead
God's congregations into fleshly freedom and contempt for the holy
office, then let them see to it how they will answer for it before the
Lord, who will not let His servants be slandered unavenged. It troubles
us little; we have the testimony of a good conscience, and not only that,
but the congregations we serve likewise bear witness that we have
rightly grasped our task — the stubbornly resistant ones by this, that,
precisely because we will not let ourselves be enslaved, they drive us
from them with hatred and scorn; those won by the Word of God by
this, that they love and honor us as their teachers, shepherds, and
fathers appointed by Christ, trust us from the heart, obey us willingly,
and, instead of jealously guarding their rights against us with suspicion,
rather defend and protect with zeal the rights of the office and the
respect due the preacher against anyone who would dare to touch the
one or withhold the other — knowing, as they do, that we watch jealously
over their rights and will not suffer the high standing and freedom
granted the congregations by God to be violated.
    Therefore, so long as the word remains a word of God — "Right must
still remain right, and to it all pious hearts will fall" — we shall and will
indeed ask the Lord to heal the sorrowful rift that has arisen over this
doctrine between brothers who, by holding fast to the confession of the
fathers, ought otherwise to be, and would be, united; but we will not do
the Lord the disgrace of taking the outcome into our own hands, or of
letting ourselves be made to waver.
    May the Lord our God prevent that. Amen.


    Thereafter the president read the following annual report, submitted
by him for the present sessions:

Annual Report.

    As is my duty, I hereby render to the venerable synod the annual
report required by our constitution.
    I. The painful loss we suffered through the, as we surely hope,
blessed passing of our dear brother, the Rev. Pastor Joh. Friedr. Reissner,
has already been mentioned. He died of dysentery at Staunton, Macoupin
County, Ill., on October 6, 1851.
    II. Ordained, and bound to and, respectively, examined on all the
symbolical books of our Church, were the following pastors, duly called
by congregations:
    1. Mr. Georg Link, called by the Lutheran congregation at
Neu-Bielefeld, St. Louis County, Mo. (formerly served by the Rev.
Pastor Schwan), ordained in the midst of his congregation by the Rev.
Dr. Sihler, with the assistance of the Rev. Pastor Fick, on the Thursday
after the Tenth Sunday after Trinity, 1851.