# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1882_S28
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

— 28 —

sit together with the said person as a member entitled to a seat in a church representative body.

In this connection we further testify that we are not only far from protesting against the recognition of any other representative of the Venerable Norwegian Synod as an entitled member of this assembly, but that our protest is also not directed against those Norwegian Lutheran brethren who have sent Prof. Schmidt here; since they may well not have had sufficient knowledge of the relationship in which Prof. Schmidt stands to us, but may rather have thought that precisely in this way the disunity that has arisen in doctrine could, by God's grace, be removed through brotherly discussion.

May the Lord have mercy on our American-Lutheran church, that she, not forgetting what the Lord has done for her, may not let herself be blinded to give up the true Gospel for a sham gospel. May the Lord especially in grace take up our poor common Christian people, so easily led astray and misled by fair speeches and bold assertions, that it may see through every deception played upon it and remain with the old sound doctrine. May the Lord finally free from all ungodly trust in human authority all those who think that Prof. Schmidt's doctrine is in any case that of a great multitude of later, highly esteemed teachers of our church whom a true Lutheran must follow, and give them the grace, also in the doctrine now become controversial, to ground themselves in firm trust on God's infallible Word alone, and, where God speaks, not to ask what terrible things man's blind reason draws from it, and to remember that human reason, even out of the little which the opponents still leave standing of the mystery of an election of grace, e.g. God's foreknowledge who will be saved and who not, draws the same horror-inspiring doctrines as irrefutably necessary inferences; hence Luther says so truly: "If it is to be a matter of reasoning, we shall keep no article in the faith." (XII, 1929.)

Chicago, Ill., 3 October 1882.

For the delegates at present elected for this year's Synodical Conference assembly of the German Evang. Luth. Synod of Missouri, Ohio and Other States, signed in their name and commission by their secretary

C. J. Otto Hanser.

Thereupon followed the adjournment of the first session with the Lord's Prayer.