# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1900_S28
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

28 Proceedings of the eighteenth convention

that they be made fit in the right way for the exercise of their later earthly calling. The parents are in need, because they are not in a position to do what they owe their children. Then the simplest commandment of love already demands that the congregation take hold, the commandment of love toward the parents as toward the children in its midst.

One may well point here to the parable of the Good Samaritan, in which Christ shows that everyone who is in need, whoever he may otherwise be, is our neighbor, to whom we owe love and service, even if all sorts of sacrifices and inconveniences are bound up with it. All members of a Christian congregation should take an interest in the children in the congregation, whether they themselves have children or not. Or do they, like the priest and the Levite, not wish to trouble themselves about their need? Do they want to say: What do other people's children matter to me? I am glad that I have brought my own children this far. That would be shameful lovelessness! But this godless, loveless mind is what in many cases stands in the way of the founding of a congregational school or hinders its prospering. It is the mind of Cain, who answered God's question: "Where is your brother Abel?" "Am I my brother's keeper?" It is as if such a one said: What do I care whether other people's children are saved! If only mine come into heaven! Against such a disposition one must wage an energetic fight.

We point here to Rom. 12:5: "So we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another." As the members of a body help one another in all things that the body needs for its maintenance and strengthening, so Christians, as members of a congregation, of the spiritual body of Christ, are to help one another and be serviceable in love. If we go on a few verses, we hear an admonition to a special demonstration of such serving love, when it says in v. 13: "Contribute to the needs of the saints." If here primarily earthly need is taken into account, these words may well be applied generally to all need that we perceive among our Christian brothers. Christian parents too are such saints who, because of the education of their children, find themselves in a state of need, so that it is said also of them: "Contribute to the needs of the saints." Here, further, is to be applied what Peter urges in his first Epistle, chap. 4:10: "As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God's varied grace."

In the proof that every congregation and every member of a congregation has the duty of love, by establishing congregational schools, to give opportunity for the Christian education of children, we must especially stress that this is also a duty of love of the pastor. Even if one sets aside that for him, as the bearer of the public ministry, the proclamation of the Word is commanded also toward the little ones, and, in so-