# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1872_S67
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

[p. 67]

—a rightly-believing preacher, we have the sacraments according to Christ's institution, we have schools for our children — let those who come later, in their own time, see for themselves how they get all this. Such an attitude is sad in the highest degree. The purpose God has with a human being in this world is that he should seek the benefit of others. If that were not so, God would take people into his heaven out of the world as soon as they became Christians. But no, he leaves them here, precisely so that they may be a blessing to the world. And it is for this reason that he raises up an entire synod and preserves it, so that it may become a leaven. It should therefore care not only for its own members, but also for its descendants. We must therefore take pains with all diligence to care for our institutions, so that the Word we have may also be handed down to our children. This spirit of Cain — what do we care about them, so long as we ourselves have preachers and are provided for — is simply an anti-Christian spirit, and we preachers should apply all earnestness to driving it out. Every Christian has the duty to see to it that those who come after him receive God's Word in its purity, just as he has the duty to see to it that he himself has it; and if an entire synod abandons this care altogether, it ceases to be a Christian synod. Much has been sinned against this in America, partly also out of mistaken views. Almost all synods have been very lax, and some have not cared at all, for the education and training of preachers and schoolteachers. A couple of testimonies from the previous century were read here, which ought to move us all the more to take care for the preservation and transmission of pure doctrine, because, as these testimonies show, people already at that time looked with full hope toward the church in this part of the world. Dr. Fresenius says, namely, in the preface to the 20th part of his *Pastoralsammlungen* [pastoral collections] of the year 1756, which contains reports on the Lutheran congregations in Pennsylvania, the following: "Let us pray for the better planting and spreading of God's vineyard in America. Let us help to further its building in every possible way. Let us consider that perhaps this remote part of the world may, in time — when God visits the European Christians with heavy judgments for their great ingratitude — become a place of refuge and rescue for the few believers." Further, Deacon Uhrlandt of Gera, in his 1784 tract "On the Signs of Our Time," after speaking of the withdrawal of the right doctrine of Christ, expresses himself thus: "However well-founded this fear is — which, through consideration of a thousand other circumstances that exist and that I know of but cannot possibly cite here, gains still more weight — we need nevertheless not be anxious for the church of Jesus Christ itself; it shall and will remain, even should it, since the earth is large, build itself up again outside of Europe. And to this end — as I already stated eight years ago in a printed writing — let—