# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1900_S23
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

of the Ev. Luth. Synodical Conference of North America. 1900. 23

what they have received be taken from them again by a godless hand, but that rather their spiritual life grow through this slight measure of spiritual nourishment. Therefore we do not yet think: What must be enough for those suffices for our children.

Then, how easily it can happen that the children who in the Christian weekday school enjoy the bread of life abundantly fall on Sunday into wretched soup kitchens, where things are unclean, where an unhealthy air blows, where even poison is handed out: namely, that our children are lured into one, or even two or three, Sunday schools of false belief. Should a Christian congregation be blamed if, in order to guard its children from this and keep them with itself, it sets up a Sunday school for them, alongside the weekday school and the catechism class [*Christenlehre*], as a children's service?

Conditions lie differently in different places and can change quickly in the same place. In general, however, one may say: Where in our congregations Sunday schools were set up alongside the weekday school and the catechism class, one has indeed in some places experienced disappointments and had troubled experiences, but in other places the Lutheran Sunday school has proved itself a glorious means of mission. Yet let us not forget: even the most gratifying experiences do not overturn the proposition that the Sunday school is not sufficient for the Christian education of the young. Luther says not only: "Where the Holy Scripture does not rule, there I truly advise no one to put his child," but he adds also: "Everything must perish that does not drive God's Word without ceasing." (St. Louis Edition, X, 341.)

The same that our thesis says of the Sunday school applies also to confirmation instruction. Many families, especially in the country, console themselves with the thought that their children get there the best and choicest instruction in religion, and that it therefore does no harm if they grow up even to their twelfth year in ignorance of spiritual things. To be sure, confirmation instruction stands far above the Sunday school even in its best form. It is, after all, to form the crown of a long and well-conducted course of religious instruction. In the teacher of the confirmands one can presuppose a deep knowledge of the truth, a hearty attitude of faith, a burning zeal, as experience also shows that the pastors take up this often heavy work with special love and carry it through. A pastor also has the skill for teaching and is therefore well able to reach the aim of instruction. But this aim consists precisely not in bringing the children the ABC of the Christian faith. One has often enough opportunity to observe how it goes when parents send their children without any knowledge of the divine Word, or with only the barest