# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1900_S24
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

24 Proceedings of the eighteenth convention

equipment into the confirmation class; when perhaps half the class cannot even speak and read the language that is used in the instruction. In that case the instruction cannot turn out satisfactory. Even if part of the confirmands come from the congregational school, the pastor will still have to be content with the barest minimum and will never experience that the whole class comes to the altar with really good knowledge and a grounded understanding of the Christian doctrine. When a father considers this, he must surely come to see that he neglects his child in an irresponsible manner if he lets him go until confirmation age without Christian instruction and consoles himself that the six months of confirmation instruction are to make everything good.

Here lies also in part a cause why so many of our confirmands are lost to us. The pastor had taken all pains to sow the seed of God's Word; so far as he could see, there was among the confirmands none who did not make his vow with his whole heart and from full conviction. But the experience of earlier years prompts him, already on confirmation day, with a moved heart, to warn the confirmands against falling away and to exhort them to remain faithful in what they have learned. For he foresees: In many the seed that has come up quickly and beautifully will soon be withered, because they are not deeply rooted. It would be wrong, to be sure, to suppose that for those young men and young women who have gone through a congregational school we should have nothing to fear; the Tempter will lie in wait for them too, for them especially. But this we hold, that parents cannot excuse themselves by the fact that children from the congregational school also fall away afterward, if their children are defenselessly exposed to the dangers and temptations of youth and perish in them. They must then not blame confirmation instruction, but must accuse themselves that their children could not stand in the hour of temptation, because they had not provided adequate preparation for their children.

3.

From this it follows that the congregation, quite apart from the office of the Word, has the duty of love to give opportunity for the Christian education of children through the congregational school.

In this thesis it is first necessary to show that the Christian congregational school is truly and alone the arrangement that meets in the best way the need of the Christian home with respect to the common education of the young.