# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1876_S19
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

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at the same time demand of them a great measure of it. Precisely that expression implies that one has to bear with the weak with all love and patience until it succeeds in leading them to better knowledge. And this is surely irreproachable, indeed, rather our duty. Only then, when out of malice a congregation closed itself against all instruction, or wished to force a pastor to give the Lord's Supper to the Reformed, would the moment have come when one could no longer serve such a Unionist congregation.

As for the word "serve," it comprises not only the administration of the Holy Supper, but above all also the preaching of the divine Word. If one has to omit the former, one can and should all the more serve such a congregation with preaching, so much the more as it needs it. Just as a mother does not give her sick child everything to eat, but only what it can bear in its condition; as she gives it, above all things, medicine to help it to health: so we too would have to give such a congregation the Word, that it may become healthy in faith. That is surely a serving and as such irreproachable. It is not to go on continually, but only so long until, by God's grace, the longed-for goal is reached and the congregation leaves its previous false position, or it becomes evident that out of malice it resists the truth. As long as this happened only out of weakness, one would have to tolerate it, and a pastor may not leave such a congregation so long.

To this it was replied: Our thesis is not concerned with bearing with the weak. This should and must go on not only for a time but always. In our congregations we have to do for the most part with such as are not clear about the meaning of the Union, but think they are good Lutherans. Consciously Unionist people will never hold with us, but will always be our bitterest enemies. Whoever is Unionist here in America is so, for the most part, consciously. Nevertheless, none of our Lutheran pastors may ever concede that his congregation, out of weakness in knowledge, should receive openly Reformed persons. He would thereby confirm a sin that is committed out of weakness. If he were to tell the congregation that it does wrong, and at the same time tolerate such admission, he would declare by the deed that it is right.

Nor can it be decisive for us in answering this question that perhaps a large number of Unionist-minded people are found in a Lutheran congregation. Few congregations will probably be entirely free of this, perhaps none. That a defect is found in a congregation does not make it un-Lutheran, but that it exists by right does. There may be such defective congregations in our midst, but that congregations in fact Unionist should be found within the sphere of the *Synodalconferenz* [Synodical Conference], against that we must protest. If this were tolerated, we could not remain in it for a moment. This would be possible only if,