# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1876_S48
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

— 48 —

and one layman of the individual synods, to be elected, which should confer on this and still during the sessions of the Conference present the result of these its deliberations.

II. The Teaching Institutions [*Lehranſtalten*].

On the basis of the report of the committee which had been appointed to make proposals as to how it should be with the institutions for the training of pastors and teachers, in case the present synods dissolve and form synods delimited by states, the following six points were unanimously raised to a resolution:

1. The Synodical Conference gives its present synods the advice to dissolve the institutions for the training of preachers located in their territories, to establish a joint seminary, and to place this under the control of the Synodical Conference.

In support of this first point the following was emphasized:
a. It is a matter of necessity. The three existing seminaries can no longer remain in the possession of the present owners if state synods come into being. In every state synod there will be found such as, as members of their former synod, had a share in its seminary and would gladly keep this share. Since they cannot have it as individuals, an arrangement must be made so that all state synods can have a share in the seminary. In the establishment of state synods, therefore, all existing seminaries would have to be given up as separate institutions and merged into one seminary. This is an external reason.

b. If we really want to found one united Lutheran Church here, this can certainly be furthered by nothing more effectively than by the establishment of one preachers' seminary in which all are instructed in the one pure doctrine. If different seminaries remain, then different tendencies, as forerunners of different doctrines arising in the end, arise only too easily. If the time of the first love remained, that provision would indeed not be so necessary. Church history teaches us how in such a time of first love the Holy Spirit filled everything with his gifts, so that it was not necessary to take such special measures for the preservation of the doctrine. But it also teaches us that the first love is mostly abandoned very soon. Luther says of pure doctrine that it is like a travelling shower of rain, which does not stay long in one place and does not return once it has been. What a bearer of pure Lutheranism the University of Wittenberg was in Luther's lifetime! But after Luther's death it became the worst perverter. And now it was the University of Jena that stood up for pure doctrine. That in Germany so many univer-