# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juli 1857_S207
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Declaration of the General Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Prussia, etc. 207

...Christian hearts is a grief? — We live in the confident conviction that the Lord, through our very existence, in which we honor a miracle of His grace, renders a service of love in deed and in power to all who are in earnest about the restoration of the Lutheran Church. To be found faithful in the discharge of this our precious calling — that we would gladly be, even if we must do it as the unknown, practiced in the painful lament: "I am become a stranger to my brethren and unknown to my mother's children" — if only we are rightly known to God! But therefore we here also confess with bowed heads that in faithfulness in the struggle to which we are appointed we have let much be wanting. We have often let love be wanting, which hopes, believes, and endures all things and does not let itself grow weary in intercession; still oftener, perhaps, courage and patience of testimony without any fear of man or respect of persons; but above all a living demonstration of the knowledge that God's gifts and calling ought not to make us proud but to fill us with fear and trembling. For this reason we have in these days bound ourselves anew to let God grant us the fruits of the Spirit, without which we, even though we contended, would nevertheless not be crowned.

In the spirit of this our testimony, several friends belonging to the Prussian territorial church were invited to hold a conference with us on the occasion of the General Synod assembled here.

Some of them kindly complied with this invitation, others gladdened us by letters, and we hope that God will also acknowledge this small beginning with His blessing. In any case we have thereby been strengthened in the conviction that, next to the way of stillness in which God fights for us, there could be no better way toward the removal of the separation we lament and toward the final and complete peace we long for than that of coming together for oral discussion. To deal eye to eye with those in whom we have, and who have in us, a good confidence of sincerity — for that we shall always be found willing, and with joy we shall, as hitherto so also hereafter, offer our hand for such personal intercourse wherever we meet a desire for it. And should those to whom this our testimony is chiefly directed have scruples, for whatever reason, about complying with invitations issued by us, then our own people, as soon as they are summoned to such conferences, will gladly follow, so far as they are able, the apostle's admonition which to that end was set before us in these very days by one of our own number: "But be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you" — thus to help our befriended opponents to an understanding of the position which for conscience' sake we maintain to this day.

Many among us once belonged themselves to the Prussian territorial church, and they are not unaware of what such hearts, distressed by the Union...