# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1872_S73
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

— 73 —

admittedly gives us an advantage over the churches of Germany, in that God
here still favors us with new congregations. But we can boast all the less that
the first love is still stirring in many places among us. — A request was made
for suggestions on how to counter this spiritual satiety and turn it into
hunger, and to this it was remarked: I still remember the time when people
in the backwoods were glad of a sermon on a weekday evening, whereas now,
when it is made convenient for people even on Sunday, the church is no
longer full but stands empty. It would be a great grace of God if someone
could be found who would give counsel here; I would gladly accept it with
thanks toward God and follow it. To this it was answered: God must give
that; we can only pray and lay the complaint before God and one another,
and when that complaint becomes ever more general, it will help, for God
has mercy on sighing hearts. What is lacking is repentance, the daily
drowning of the old Adam; for where that does not happen, satiety must
arise. But if this jubilee season serves to awaken this lament in the hearts
of us all, then a beautiful time can come again, a new spring can begin.
How dreadful things looked when Luther died! Yet there still remained a
great and mighty host of those who clung to the truth with their whole
heart and sighed to God, and behold, in the year 1577 they lived to see the
glorious jubilee dawn again, when those same Lutherans who had sighed on
their knees also received the Formula of Concord on their knees with tears
of joy. — Here a motion was made that the Synod should set a fixed day of
repentance, to which it was answered: Scripture says, "Do you not know that
God's kindness leads you to repentance?" If we were to set before our
congregations, on the occasion of the jubilee celebration, God's kindness
and our conduct in the face of it — as indeed, when the preachers return
home, this will be done in their congregations — that would be the best
sermon of repentance. — For our humbling, God himself will provide, in that
he sends us tribulation, just as God's word then says: "Lord, when there is
trouble, that is when people seek you," etc. Indeed, when one observes how
in this recent age the whole striving of mankind is bent on gaining earthly
goods and on comfortable living, one's skin crawls, and one asks whether
God will not tie a rod together to chastise the wanton calf.

We must further guard against greed. What is meant here is not merely
the so-called dog-like covetousness, but rather the general craving to grow
rich, the love of riches, which is not only innate in us from original sin but
has here in America infected our people in particular. Satiety and greed
always go together. We have received from God a heart that carries a
great longing, and it grows calm only when God fills it and satisfies that
longing. When he fills it, it has rest, and those so graced become blessed
people even here. But once satiety has arisen with regard to the gospel,
then God abandons