# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1877_S20
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

— 20 —

worthless. Every sensible pastor knows this much, that the command to establish parish schools [*Gemeindeſchulen*] is not a commandment expressly stated in God's Word, but is derived rather by inference from the divine Word. So it can happen that the weak do not see the right thing at once, or there may also be real exceptions. A pastor must judge that with Christian wisdom in the individual case. In any case, however, the loss of temporal goods, e.g. the great expense, and so forth, must not be decisive in judging the question. Stealing is simply forbidden, and I may not think that I may make an exception to this rule because I have nothing. Parents should rather think: God now wants to put us to the test, and therefore he lets us be tried; but he will not let us stay stuck, but will give us the victory. Moreover, one cannot set up rules at all that cover all possible exceptions.

Several cases were now cited which prove that the difficulties are often not as great as one thinks, or that they can in the end be overcome. A young pastor came into a southern state, into a region where nothing had ever been heard of Lutheran parish schools. Nevertheless he began to hold school with five children, and today not only the children of the congregation members are found in this school, but even some of Anglo-Americans. The like has been experienced in Texas. Therefore one should not too readily believe oneself entitled to establish exceptions where none are to be made, e.g. where there is a pastor who in an emergency can hold school himself and so at least make a beginning. Of course, if the pastors only talk of the school and for it, but do not begin, it remains empty words.

Often, when members living far from congregations cannot send their children to the Christian school, this is only the consequence of their own unchristian actions. For it is unchristian when Lutheran Christians deliberately move to a place where they can have neither a Christian school nor a church. If distress later comes upon such people, one should not at once apply salve but first of all try to move them to repentance over the fact that they have not only brought their children into such distress but also let their own souls languish. When our congregation members wish to move to another region, they should not only ask whether there is good land, good roads, etc., but above all whether they can have God's Word there in church and school. This important matter must be pointed out in sermons, and carelessness in this respect is to be punished as it deserves. God in his mercy, to be sure, sometimes turns even such moving out into the wilderness to good, in that churches and schools are later established through such people.

If their congregations the necessity of parish schools still