# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1892_S38
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38 Proceedings of the fourteenth convention

Business Proceedings.

(Minutes taken by Pastor G. Johannes.)

Negro Mission.

Pastor C. J. Otto Hanser of St. Louis, chairman of the commission elected by the Synodical Conference [*Synodalconferenz*] to direct the Negro Mission [*Negermiſſion*, the period's term for the mission among African Americans], presented the following report:

"The kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard seed, which a man took and sowed in his field, which is the least of all seeds; but when it is grown, it is the greatest among herbs, and becometh a tree, so that the birds of the air come and lodge in the branches thereof." Matt. 13. With these words our Savior, the heavenly Sower, describes the unobtrusive founding and wonderful spread of His blessed kingdom of God on earth. Unobtrusive, lowly, indeed despised in the eyes of human reason was the entrance of the Lord of glory Himself into this world and His departure on the accursed wood of the cross. Yet a world of sinners was redeemed by it, and the graveyard of the earth became once more a dwelling of God and a kingdom of heaven.

Equally unobtrusive and despised in the eyes of the world were, further, the instruments and the means to lead sinners to the enjoyment of the redemption accomplished. For the instruments were unlearned people, despised fishermen and tax collectors, and the means was the Gospel of the crucified and risen Son of God as the sinner's only salvation, a message that sounds so foolish to reason. But behold the divine power of the unobtrusive little mustard seed! From it there soon grows the wondrous tree of the Christian Church, which spreads its boughs and branches, to the salvation of immortal souls, with blessing over all lands and peoples. A glorious kingdom of God builds itself upon the ruins of the heathen world, sunk deep in the death of sin.

This wondrous way of God with the kingdom of heaven of His Church has repeated itself again and again in its history.

When the Church, under the iron foot of the Roman Antichrist, had lost all her beauty, and God now wished to redeem her again and make her glorious, he chose for himself not a mighty emperor or a world-famous scholar, but the unknown monk Luther, sprung from peasant stock and shut up within dull cloister walls, and planted the tree of blessing, the Reformation, which not only restores to the Church her old glory and blessed freedom, but bears fruits in which even the unbelieving world rejoices to this day, indeed until the last day