# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1911_S20
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

20  Proceedings of the 28th General or

and its woe, its further blessed influence or its resulting infertility, its continued expansion or its coming stagnation, its vitality or its gradual ossification — in short, its flourishing or its decline — depends for the most part. As dear as the welfare of our church and its growth is to us, so earnestly ought we as a whole to watch over it and be concerned for it, and to omit nothing within our power toward achieving this end: that in our higher educational institutions the highest and most thorough training of the students be achieved by the most correct and fitting path, yet that in doing so the spirit of intellectual conceit never be produced or nourished by any kind of carnal rivalry — but rather that in all our institutions the Word of God remain the book of all books, that the spirit of the gospel, the fear of God, and the simplicity and humility inseparably bound up with it, govern there and permeate every teacher and student and all teaching and learning. Finally, we should for that reason shrink from no sacrifice, however great, that is needed not only to maintain these our institutions but also to raise them in every respect from year to year, in the living conviction that contributions for this purpose are the most necessary, the most indispensable, the first and most important, and, by God's grace, the most richly blessing offerings that we, as baptized Christians and Lutherans, can lay on the altar of our love and gratitude for the church — that is, for the blessed kingdom of our Savior, whose partners and God-appointed co-workers we all are. May this spirit, then, blow through all of us especially in the coming days; may our deliberations be conducted and our resolutions made in this spirit; and may this same spirit also take hold of and fill all our dear congregations and every member of them!" (*Brosamen* [Crumbs], p. 551.)

Second, the preaching of the gospel is the church's real business because it is only through the preaching of the gospel that the church can fulfill its calling, its task on earth.

What is the church's calling on earth? The Lord did not found the church so that it might engage in politics and see to civic and national government — for that purpose he instituted the civil authorities. Nor is it the church's calling to bring art and learning to the nations. Art and learning had long flourished in Greece and Rome before the founding of the Christian church. Nor, further, does the church have the task of banishing bodily misery from the world through culture and civilization and all sorts of other means, and of leading people to earthly happiness. The Lord Jesus says: "Whoever wants to follow me must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me." And Paul writes: "We must go through much tribulation into the kingdom of God." Finally, the church was not founded, either, in order to make people respectable citizens. Moses and reason can manage that much on their own. —