# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1872_S26
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

— 26 —

-consin, and the Norwegian Lutheran [Synods]," under the name "Evangelical
Lutheran Synodical Conference" [Evangelisch-lutherische Synodalconferenz],
together with a union on a proposal concerning the educational
institutions [Lehranstalten]; as both of these have already been reported
in detail in the "Lutheraner," vol. XXVII, No. 11. Now although the
District Synods could not finally decide this matter — even apart from
its extraordinary importance — simply because it involves entering into
an ecclesiastical compact, indeed an organic union with other
ecclesiastical bodies, which by our constitution is reserved to the
General Synod, I nevertheless considered it expedient to lay the matter
provisionally before all our District Synods already at the occasion of
their sessions last year, and to submit for their judgment, in
particular, the draft of a constitution for the intended union of
orthodox synods into a larger collective body. Now that this has been
done, and the drafted constitution, in accordance with the wishes voiced
thereupon in the various synods, has been revised at a private assembly
of members of the synods concerned held at Fort Wayne on November 14 to
16 of last year, and given its final form, as communicated in the latest
number of our "Lutheraner," I hereby lay this matter — whose importance
for the future of our Synod can indeed hardly be rated too highly —
before the General Synod for final decision. May the LORD himself grant
us his Holy Spirit in rich measure, that in this matter we may recognize
and do his gracious will; for there is no doubt that our Synod, through
the invitation it has at last received to enter into a larger church
body, comes — after having, during the first 25 years of its existence,
had to stand alone for the pure confession, and having in that been
abundantly blessed — into an essentially new position, in which it will
either be strengthened in what God has granted it, or will now give up
its crown. Oh, may the LORD, as he once, after an Augsburg Confession,
granted the church of our fathers a Formula of Concord, now also grant to
us, her weak children, here in this distant Western land, after our
church's lovely springtime and time of blossom, a summer season of ripe
and rich fruits! May our Synod, should it pass through another 25 years,
be able at the end of them likewise to celebrate, with joyful thanks for
God's preservation and blessings, its second jubilee, then together with
great multitudes within and beyond it!

As for the Venerable Synod of Illinois and Other States as well, our
Synod, at its last assembly in 1869 at Fort Wayne, had not yet finally
adopted the planned agreement with it, but had instead declared, as "the
sole correct path toward establishing a right relationship and full
mutual confidence between the two synods, the