# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1896_S6
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

6 Proceedings of the sixteenth convention

pulpits, in the schools, and at most in the church papers, many a person puts up with it, if one is only not so strict about practice that it becomes inconvenient for him. One may well testify against the ungodly secret societies, against all kinds of worldliness, which has begun to flood into the congregations too, so long as individuals are allowed to do as they please. They will, as they say, answer for it. We must not close our eyes to the fact that the gravest danger that now threatens us is probably not that of an impending doctrinal struggle. Doctrine is, thank God, so loudly, so clearly, so richly and fully set forth and acknowledged among us that it would be hard to shake it, without the one who dared to shake it thereby giving testimony against himself that he had fallen into error. But it is the mark of the last times that they are set upon the things of this world and time, on eating and drinking, on marrying and being given in marriage, on setting up paradise for themselves here on earth and leaving paradise above, as one of their singers has put it, "to the angels and the sparrows." And if we do not watch in time, warn, and are active and ready to meet this danger, then it may come to pass that the divine doctrine, the pure, clear truth, for a time, until the filth breaks through, becomes a cloak for all kinds of wickedness.

Secondly, a thorough treatment of this subject is also useful and necessary because practice is most intimately bound up with doctrine. A false doctrine has a false practice as its consequence. A false doctrine of Church and Ministry has as its consequence either mob rule or priestly rule in the church or over the church, and the one is as much from the devil as the other. In our American Lutheran Church we have the evidence of this from its short history, as to where a false doctrine of Church and Ministry can lead, and perhaps there are some among us who have experienced it in their own persons. And again, a false practice contrary to Scripture will in time give birth to false doctrine into the world, just as the desire for ungodly doctrine follows of its own accord from the ungodly life. It is not the other way round, that first the false doctrine is in the world and afterward the ungodly life founded on and resting upon the false doctrine; rather, men love darkness more than light, the lie more than the truth, because their works are evil, as the apostle also describes the heathen, that they ruin themselves in error through lusts. Practical materialism of our day is followed by theoretical materialism, the gospel of the religion of the flesh. Because men are ungodly, they rejoice that someone comes who demonstrates to them, or pretends to demonstrate, that their ungodliness is perfectly in order. So, if a perverted practice became general among us, we would surely lose the jewel of pure doctrine.