# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_April 1857_S116
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

...youth, this resolution was adopted, and Kirchenrath Nagel of Breslau was charged with the composition.

On this same thread of communications we may at once attach the introduction of several motions aiming at the publication of a proper Lutheran agenda [service book] at the church's expense. The committee to which these motions had been referred for review made them its own and submitted the petition to the synod: "May it express the urgent need for a good and comprehensive agenda, and empower the reverend Oberkirchencollegium to take the matter in hand, so that the church may obtain such a book at general expense." This was granted.

Properly doctrinal points — that is, such as would have touched the heart, the core, of the Lutheran faith — were not drawn at all into the circle of discussion and deliberation, which lay in the nature of the synod. Indeed, right at its opening the president put the question: whether the General Synod confessed with heart and mouth to all the symbols of the Lutheran Church and to all the doctrines contained in them? — which was affirmed unanimously by rising and a full-voiced Amen. The synod thus bore an ecumenical character in and of itself, and embodied that threefold saying of Augustine: In necessariis unitas, in dubiis libertas, in omnibus charitas (in necessary things unity, in doubtful things liberty, in all things love). A strengthening and refreshing sense of the unity of the faith pervaded all the synod members, and a bond of love wound itself about them all.

Among the more inward aspects brought before the discussion, we would count only the following points.

A motion had been submitted to the effect: "that the use of any baptismal formula other than the following be discontinued and forbidden within the bounds of our congregations, namely: 'N., I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.'" The reason given was: it is desirable and important, in this act, to be certain and conscious of conformity with one another, and still more with the words of institution of the Lord. The committee concerned believed it could not support the motion in this form, that every other formula be forbidden. It hoped, on this point, more from reasons and experience than from prohibitions, especially since this principle was already followed among us almost throughout in liturgical matters. Nonetheless, all recognized it as highly important and urgent that the Church in Prussia use the stated baptismal formula in agreement with all the other Lutheran churches. In the discussion it was pointed out that the formula of the so-called Meier agenda, as written, rested on private discretion, even though the good intention underlying it had been to emphasize particularly the deity of each Person in the Holy Trinity. This objection against Meier was, however, disputed