# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1872_S31
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

— 31 —

[continued: since the cause of the school is of such incalculable
influence on the cause of the church, and] particularly in this land of
gathering and founding, in the midst of fanatical sects that despise the
young, our own fellowship too stands in danger of failing to recognize
and neglecting its high duty in this matter, I therefore propose, as a
means of furthering this most sacred cause, that alongside the pastoral
sermons, school sermons also be held, as often as our Synod or its
districts assemble. Secondly, however, I feel compelled to recommend to
the Venerable Synod also this: that it commission a person suited to the
task to prepare a kind of "Synodical Handbook," in which all
still-valid synodical resolutions, all instructions for its officers, all
constitutions of its institutions, and the like, should be gathered and
clearly compiled, together with an accurate and complete alphabetical
index. Such a "Synodical Handbook" would meet a need that is by no means
merely imagined, all the more so since, unfortunately, a number of good
provisions made by our Synod, ones that have proven their worth through
experience, have — without doubt often from simple ignorance — been
disregarded in part by synodical officers as well as by synodical
congregations and individual synodical members, and in part have become
a dead letter. As sad as is the state of an ecclesiastical fellowship
that seeks to govern its members by human ordinances, however good,
instead of by the Gospel, it is likewise neither in accordance with the
Word of God nor with the practice of the true Church of all ages to
reject, in reliance on the evangelical spirit living and freely active
within an ecclesiastical fellowship, every external order as
unnecessary — indeed even as unevangelical and harmful.

Both the Middle and the Eastern District charged me with inviting, in
writing, the Reverend Pastors Harms of Hermannsburg and Brunn of Steeden,
and asking them to grant us the great joy of their presence at our
assembly this year, while at the same time all those who voted for this
obligated themselves to see to it that those men, so highly deserving of
our Synod, would be reimbursed for their travel costs. I have indeed
carried out this charge with great joy; both revered men, however,
unfortunately believed they had to decline the invitation. The Reverend
Pastor Harms explained, in a few friendly lines addressed to me, that his
twofold office as preacher and director of the mission institute simply
did not permit him to undertake a journey requiring so much time. Pastor
Brunn, however, writes, among other things, as follows: "If I have this
time let three weeks pass before answering your letter, that is a sign
from which you may infer the great struggle that has been raging within
me, the outcome of which I first had to await before I could write to
you. It has cost me a truly deep struggle, like the struggle over an
important question of life, to decide on your invitation to come to the
Synod and Jubilee celebration in St. Louis. Had I not wished at all the
so deep, heartfelt bonds of love and—