# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1872_S32
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

— 32 —

[continued: Had I not wished at all the so deep, heartfelt] bonds of love
and friendship that bind us to one another to be taken into account, I
may well say that the highest, holiest relationships of my whole life and
being bind me entirely as one with the Missouri Synod; in it I see my
true communion of faith and spirit on earth, which I must value all the
more highly, the more lonely and forsaken we "Missourians" must feel
ourselves to be here in Germany. Add to this that fully half of my
life's calling — my work for my institute here — serves the Missouri
Synod alone. For years, therefore, I have regarded it as an ideal of my
wishes and hopes to be allowed, before my end, to come once more to
America and to see my dear brothers, my many former students over there,
and to rejoice together with them all. It seemed to me that this would
be a foretaste of the eternal, heavenly Sabbath of joy. And now this
splendid opportunity presents itself to me; your kindness would reimburse
me all my travel costs; your Jubilee celebration seems an occasion at
which I almost dare not be absent, without sinning against the gratitude
I owe the LORD as well, and against the love I owe you and the brothers.
Thus it has swayed back and forth within me ever since last November. I
have sought, quite earnestly, to divest myself of all my own will in the
matter, in order to discern the LORD's will. But ever more it seems to me
that the latter reveals itself in the following two obstacles, whose
resolution I have been awaiting for months." In what follows, the dear
man now describes, first, the duties resting upon him with regard to his
pastorate, his pro-seminary, his mission periodical, and his extensive
correspondence, for none of which a substitute could be had in Germany.
"In short," he writes, "I am, in every direction, fixed in place like a
mainspring in a clockwork; how shall it go, if I should be torn out of it
altogether for several months?" He next refers, secondly, to his impaired
health, which, although it permits him uninterrupted work within his
accustomed routine, does not allow him to travel — travel regularly
ruining him completely, bodily. A journey to America was therefore for
him "a risk of life and death." "So then," he continues, "the question
for me is: may I, through a journey that brings me such a risk, expose
myself to the possibility of so gravely endangering, perhaps altogether
destroying, my whole calling and sphere of work, so richly blessed until
now? Were it a direct duty of my calling, it would of course be a matter
of joyfully risking my life. But as matters stand, it now seems to me the
opposite sacred duty — to spare and husband my waning strength as much as
possible, in order to preserve myself for my field of labor for as long
as the LORD wills. This is the consideration which, after the most
earnest examination before the face of the LORD, has tipped the scale for
me, and, as I believe, had to tip it: since a journey to America would be
a serious neglect of my present duties of office, as well as a risk to my
life and health, I cannot undertake it, unless I had a definite divine
command and calling to do so." As less