# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1884_S93
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

of the Ev. Luth. Synodical Conference of North America. 1884. 91

yet the right man for it. So mission to the heathen has not been assigned to us by God. Let one also picture it soberly, how it would go if we encouraged some one of our candidates or preachers to mission among the heathen and sent him now to a city or country in Japan. What is he then to do there? He cannot come forward and preach. He does not know the language at all. He has years to spend merely learning the language, and meanwhile he stands idle and loses all desire and joyfulness.

We have always, and then in part with good success, done mission work when God opened a door for us; as our Home Mission, Negro Mission and Jewish Mission prove. Here God has now assigned us the work, and we have for the present quite enough to do with it. Only then could we confidently venture to ask more taxes of our congregations if God shows us clearly: Here is a man who suits this or that heathen people, send him out. What a strange practice of Christ's divine command: "Go ye into all the world," etc., it would be if we here in America did not concern ourselves about our poor immigrants or about the Negroes, as other so-called Lutheran church bodies have hitherto not done, and meanwhile directed our eyes to the East Indies and wanted to work there! No, what God lays before our door, that we are to do first. The rich man would surely have exercised no love toward his neighbour if, while he let poor Lazarus starve before his door, he gave help to a poor sick man two miles further on. No, here at Lazarus he should do it first, foremost and before all things.

And where is it written how many miles one is to go into all the world? Let us therefore help with all our strength the neglected fellow-believers here, the Jews and Negroes, and so we follow the word of the Lord.

And in addition, we may not intervene where other Christian mission societies are already at work, even if they are not orthodox. Elsewhere, where no one is yet working, no door has opened to us so far. We truly do not fold our hands in our lap here. Our Negro Mission is indeed in part itself a mission to the heathen. We are just now zealously engaged in penetrating also into the great tracts of Mississippi and Louisiana to such Negroes as have never yet heard a word of God, as is clearly evident from newspaper reports. Therefore let no one be confused that our work has not so great a reputation before the world as if we carried on mission in China or the East Indies. It is not at all the way of the church to do so much business-like activity without noticing whether God bids her do so.

By this, however, it is not to be said that no one should give gifts specially for foreign mission any more. Do not damp that. But let it be said