# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1900_S35
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

of the Ev. Luth. Synodical Conference of North America. 1900. 35

candidates upon us, then the need and the demand will not become smaller, but, God willing, ever greater.

But where are the preachers of the Word to come from? Luther says of learned people in general: One cannot carve them out of wood, nor draw them out of the water, but they must be brought up, brought up from childhood. We too may not count on God's bringing us, by a special awakening, those who are to work in the service of the Word. True, our practical preachers' seminaries have furnished proof that even men of riper years may be awakened to the knowledge that they should serve the Lord in his church as preachers; after short practical training they have entered this service and have worked in it with rich blessing. But we cannot count on that. God has ordered the way that his preachers be brought up for it from youth. As a rule he wants to give them to the church in the way he gave her Timothy, who from childhood knew the Holy Scriptures and was thereby made a man of God, equipped for every good work. Therefore the youth in the state school will not furnish us the preachers and teachers that we need. The state school has and cultivates quite other interests than must stand in the foreground in education for the ministry. There no sense for the kingdom of God and for work in it and for it can be planted in the hearts. Indeed, the selfishness which is bred there has as its consequence that young people and their parents reckon with them: So and so much salary a preacher gets and must spend nine years of his life or more on study; a businessman has, after a shorter period of preparation, much more brilliant prospects. So, one concludes, it does not pay to become a preacher. We can hope to combat this evil and dangerous spirit with success only by bringing up our children from youth in the Christian school, where they learn to love God's Word and to say: "The law of your mouth is better to me than gold and much fine gold." Then they will also hold the office of the Word to be the highest, most precious and most desirable work and gain a desire to be trained for it, cost what it may.

In his "Sermon, that one should keep the children at school," Luther says about this the following: "If now this is certain and true, that God himself has instituted and founded the spiritual estate with his own blood and death, it is well to reckon that he wants it to be held in high honor and will not suffer it to go under, but to be preserved until the Last Day. For the Gospel and Christendom must indeed remain until the Last Day, as Christ says in Matt. 28:20: 'Behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.' But through whom is it to be preserved? Oxen and horses, dogs and sows will not do it, wood and stones neither; we human beings will have to do it; for it is