# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1877_S9
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

— 9 —

"If the Christian Church is to rise again, the beginning must be made with proper instruction of the children."

Every Lutheran must confess this saying with his whole heart.

In the writing to the councilmen the dear man of God gives three reasons that should move us to establish schools, namely:

1. that we may withstand the wiles of the devil;
2. that we may not receive the grace of God in vain;
3. that we may be obedient to God's commandments.

Luther's words read:

"The devil acted most cleverly at the time when Christians brought up and taught their children in a Christian way: the young crowd was about to escape him altogether and set up something intolerable in his kingdom; so he stepped in and spread his nets, and set up such monasteries, schools and estates that it was not possible for a boy to escape him without a special wonder of God. But now that he sees that these snares are betrayed by God's Word, he goes to the other side and wants nothing at all to be learned. Again he acts rightly and cleverly, to preserve his kingdom, that the young crowd may stay with him. When he has them, they grow up under him and remain his; who will take anything from him? He then keeps the world quietly enough within. For if any harm is to be done to him, such as would really bite, it must be done through the young people who grow up in the knowledge of God and spread God's Word and teach others. Nobody, nobody believes what a harmful, devilish undertaking this is, and yet it goes on so quietly that nobody notices, and it wants to have done its damage before one can counsel, resist and help. People fear Turks and wars and floods; for there one understands what is harm and what is benefit; but what the devil has in mind here, nobody sees, nobody fears; it comes in quietly. Yet it would be right here that, where one would give one gulden to fight against the Turk, even if they were upon our necks, here a hundred gulden should be given, even if one could bring up only one boy with it, that he might become a true Christian man; seeing that a true Christian is much better, and can accomplish more benefit, than all the people on earth. Therefore I ask you all, my dear lords and friends, for God's sake and for the sake of the poor youth, do not take this matter as lightly as many do, who do not see what the prince of this world has in mind. For it is a great and serious matter, on which Christ and the whole world depend, that we help and counsel the young people. In that, we and all are helped and counselled. And remember that such quiet, secret, insidious assaults of the devil must be resisted with great Christian earnestness. Dear lords, if one must spend every year so much on guns, roads, paths, dikes and countless similar things