# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1872_S18
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

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have not called him, those degenerate crowds who belong to no one, we are to regard as people toward whom we have the duty to fulfil: "Compel them to come in." They too are all redeemed. Their inheritance of spiritual and heavenly goods lies ready already, and it is only required that they come to faith, so that they may also enjoy it. If we go after these with earnestness and a rescuing zeal, we shall, according to the divine promise, rescue many of them to their eternal salvation.

On section d it was remarked: We speak here against the General Synod and the General Council. To the former especially we owe it to say to it again and again: You boast that you are the church of living and active Christianity, and scold us as dead symbolists, who lack living and active Christianity, and yet you yourselves have shown yourselves such slack people in the Lord's work. Your enormous resources you have not used, as you should have, to bring the saving Gospel near to the mass of the American people. It is true, we indeed have no cause to boast, but if you scold us as dead orthodoxists and formalists, we ask you with good right: What then have you done to stop the masses who fell to the English sects and to gather them into Lutheran congregations? Where are the fruits of your living, active Christianity in this respect? In view of the fact that your theological institutions train only few young men for the ministry, and that even these few in many cases openly show no willingness to sacrifice for Christ and His church but ask above all for secure, good pay and a position, you should reflect a little before you keep holding your spiritual life up to us. In this respect, to be sure, things were better in the General Synod too; but the ever more bitter fighting against the zeal for pure doctrine has unfortunately been able to have no other influence on church activity than that it has more and more stifled it. We say this, by the way, not in self-exaltation, but as a warning to ourselves, that we do not make ourselves guilty of the same neglect.

Thesis 3 reads: "It is therefore the duty of our synods to see to it, partly that scattered fellow believers of the English tongue be gathered, partly that existing congregations be edified by means of the English language, and partly that those still standing outside be brought in by English preaching."

Thesis 4: "It is further, therefore, the duty of our congregations, wherever there is prospect of founding and nurturing an orthodox Lutheran congregation, to help toward that end according to their strength, partly through gifts of money, partly, under circumstances, by freeing their churches for holding English services, partly by releasing members to English congregations, namely when such members are either predominantly English or so situated that they or their descendants can foreseeably be kept with the Lutheran church only by means of the English language."