# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1872_S30
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

— 30 —

[continued: since Pastor Ruhland, already last year, received a regular
call into the] pastorate of the Lutheran congregations in Dresden and
Planitz in the Kingdom of Saxony, who felt themselves compelled in
conscience to separate from the Saxon state church [sächsische
Landeskirche], after the latter, through its highest representative
bodies, had confirmed the intruded unionistic practice as lawfully
established, abolished the old religious oath, and introduced a new
unionistic obligation upon the church's confessions — and since the
Reverend Pastor Ruhland came to the conviction that this call was a
divine one, and accordingly followed it with the consent of his former
congregation, and had already, on March 16 of this year, set out on his
journey to the old fatherland — it was thus not only impossible for him
to continue and complete the memorial he had begun, but, given the
shortness of time, no other person could be found capable of bringing the
work he had started to a conclusion. — Allow me to remark on this
occasion that, while I indeed believed I could not refuse our dear Saxon
brothers in the faith the mediation they requested of me toward obtaining
a preacher from our midst — after consultation with the St. Louis
District Pastoral Conference — I did not, in this matter, act in any way,
as the newspapers on both sides have reported, as General President in
the name of the Synod, which had after all given me no authorization to
do so, but rather as a private person, simply as a brother to brothers so
dear to me in the old fatherland; leaving it now to the Venerable Synod
whether it is willing to express itself on this admittedly extremely
important matter, and, God willing, to strengthen through its testimony
the brothers across the sea, who stand with us in full unity of faith and
confession, in their most difficult, hard-pressed situation bound up with
great responsibility, or perhaps also to come brotherly to their aid
through some, even if modest, material support.

As the Venerable Synod has seen from the latest number of the
"Lutheraner," a series of guiding theses has been laid before it for its
present deliberations, on the question: "What task must we solve, so
that the blessing which God has poured out upon us in the last 25 years
may not be squandered by us, but bequeathed to our descendants?" These
theses were drafted, at my request, by the vice-president of the General
Synod, the Reverend Pastor Brohm, and may the Venerable Synod now decide
whether they should be made the basis, as the principal subject, of this
year's discussions. Besides the matters already named, we shall further
have to occupy ourselves with several submissions from the Synodical
Executive Committee, which, in accordance with the directive of our
Synod, has been assembled here in recent days. Here allow me to bring
just two further proposals before the Venerable Synod. Since the cause of
the school is of such incalculable influence on the cause of the church,
and