# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1911_S153
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13th Delegate Synod of Missouri, Ohio, and Other States, 1911. 153

...and P. C. C. Schmidt as members of this committee, whose work is to be submitted to the St. Louis Pastoral Conference for approval. 4. Your committee recommends that the Synod's thanks be expressed to the commission, Prof. E. A. W. Krauss and P. J. Schlerf, for their untiring work.

Revision of the Hymnal.

At the Delegate Synod in Fort Wayne a committee was appointed, consisting of Pastors J. Schlerf, Prof. A. Crull, and Prof. O. Hattstädt, which was to submit to the next Delegate Synod specific proposals for revision. This committee applied itself to its task with great diligence, as can be seen from the articles it published as instructed in *Lehre und Wehre* [Doctrine and Defense, the Synod's German theological journal].

The completed work and the full proposals of this committee, appointed in 1908, were handed over by the General Praesidium, well before this year's synodical convention, to a committee for review — a committee consisting of Pastor Fr. Brust and Professors J. H. C. Käppel and W. Schaller, all residing in Concordia, Missouri.

This committee submitted the following detailed report to the Reverend Synod:

"When a new edition of a book has become necessary, it is often reviewed by the author or by some other qualified and capable expert on the book. Such a renewed review is called a revision. The book is revised in order to remove any errors. Often only a few minor changes are made; sometimes, however, far-reaching changes are made that completely reshape the book.

"One cannot speak of a new edition of our hymnal, for it is printed again and again, and many thousands of copies are sold every year. Just as little can there be talk, among us, of a reshaping or drastic alteration of our hymnal in content or form. We have inherited this book from our fathers, and we love it in its present form. We do not, over time, grow weary of the glorious old hymns — on the contrary, the more often and the longer we read, pray, and sing them, the more precious their rich content becomes to us, the more intelligible their familiar words become to us, and the more endearing the lovely tunes to which our hymns are sung.

"But precisely because the hymnal stands so high in our esteem, and is used so diligently by young and old in church, school, and home, we may well revise it with a friendly, attentive eye, in order to remove any specks of dust or stains it may have. Our...