# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1900_S31
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

of the Ev. Luth. Synodical Conference of North America. 1900. 31

rule and instruct! And a heavy reckoning must be given for this, that we do not set God's Word before them; it happens to them as Jeremiah laments, Lam. 2:11, 12: 'My eyes are spent with weeping, my bowels are troubled, my liver is poured out on the ground because of the destruction of the daughter of my people, because the young children and sucklings swoon in all the streets of the city. They said to their mothers: Where is bread and wine? And they fainted like the wounded in the streets of the city, and gave up the spirit in their mothers' bosom.' This wretched misery we do not see, as also now the young folk in the midst of Christendom languish and miserably perish for lack of the Gospel, which should be constantly urged and practiced with them. . . . But where the Holy Scripture does not rule, there I truly advise no one to put his child. Everything must perish that does not drive God's Word without ceasing." (St. Louis Edition, X, 341.)

Comenius also has spoken words worth taking to heart on this, grounded on Scripture. He writes: "If anyone should be found who can give or devise counsel, or with entreaties and sighs, with tears and weeping can ask God, to show the procedure by which the best possible provision may be made for the growing young, let him not keep silent, but counsel, think, pray. Cursed be he who makes the blind go astray on the way, says God, Deut. 27:18; cursed therefore also is he who, when he can lead a blind man back from the wrong path, does not lead him back. Woe to him who offends one of these least ones, says Christ, Matt. 18:6, 7; woe therefore also to him who can remove the offense and does not remove it. If you meet your enemy's ox or ass going astray, you shall bring it back to him, Ex. 23:4. Compare Deut. 22:1; and it shall please God, if we, who are not mere brute animals but rational creatures, see not merely one or another but the whole world going astray, and pass by carelessly and do not lay hand to the task! Far be it! Cursed be he who does the Lord's work slackly; cursed be he who holds back his sword from blood, Jer. 48:10; and should we hope to be free of guilt if we bear the abominable Babel of our confusion with unconcern? Ah, draw your sword, you who have one girded on, or you who know in what sheath it lies hidden, and so that Jehovah may bless you, further the extirpation of Babylon." (Great Didactic [Gr. Unterr. Lehre], p. 20 f.)

4.

In the fourth thesis the circle is drawn wider, as we speak of the necessity of the Christian congregational school for the church, and indeed for the continued existence of the church. This thesis reads:
[Margin: a hand-drawn ink bracket ")" after "treibet." at the end of the Luther quotation; not printed.]