# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1887_S23
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Fifth Delegate Synod of Missouri, Ohio, and Other States, 1887. 23

resolve to use only our own schoolbooks in place of foreign ones. That
alone, in fact, would bring in about $6,000 more a year.

Now, with so many requests for appropriations, the next question will
surely be: how do things stand with our general treasury? Well, the
treasurer's [Kaſſirer's] books have been found in the best order. And if
I understand the commission's report correctly [though that is not
beyond all doubt], the Synod's total debt has become considerably
smaller. But the details may be left to others to report. I will only
say what I know for certain, namely: it is and remains an error and a
superstition, however widely held, that our publishing house can meet
all the needs of our Synod. It cannot do so, not by a long way. And
our dear congregations must do considerably more for the synodal
treasury if things are to go honestly and properly in our household.

Our periodicals have certainly, in the years now past, accomplished
what one might fairly expect of them, especially under present
circumstances. But it is plain that in filling the St. Louis
professorships we shall also have to look seriously to winning men who
can competently assist our overburdened professors in their literary
work as well, and who know how to write in such a way that our
papers, while their purpose and aim remain the same, are edited so as
to be equally intelligible, and as engaging as possible, to all Christian
readers. For, to say it plainly, there is, this time too, no lack of
wishes, advice, and the like, particularly regarding the "Lutheraner."

As for our private church papers, I am convinced that they still render
good service even now. But gradually there will, I think, be enough of
them to meet genuine local needs. — Much the same seems to me true of
the private charitable institutions. At the very least, they should not
be promoted in such a way that our larger, general interests are
thereby pushed into the background. It would indeed be a bad sign if
people here and there began to look more to their own small local
institutes than to the welfare of the whole. Whatever were taken from
the latter to benefit the former could in the end only result in a
double harm.

Among these great, general interests, surely next to the preservation
of our educational institutions, belongs above all the so-called Inner
Mission [Innere Miſſion]. With undivided joy and heartfelt thanks to
God we can look upon this work again this time. About 60 traveling
preachers [Reiſeprediger] and some 70 settled pastors are laboring in
it, and now serve, besides the congregations already organized and
partly self-supporting, some 450 additional preaching stations. For
their support there were raised in the past year