# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1900_S40
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

40 Proceedings of the eighteenth convention

teaches indeed also the state school obedience to the laws; but with it that is a bare, empty command and can be nothing more, a demand without grounds, or at most with the ground that it is wiser, because better and more advantageous, to obey the laws than to resist them. The congregational school could also say so: If you want to be truly happy as a citizen, take care that you do not come into conflict with the law. For in itself that is indeed true. And yet this ground will not hold, as soon as something else appears to a man still better and more advantageous. The child needs quite a different motive, to be brought up to true obedience, namely the motive that God requires this obedience. The congregational school impresses on the children Rom. 13:1-5 and shows that the unbeliever obeys the law only for fear of punishment, but the Christian does it for conscience' sake, because in his conscience he recognizes the government as God's deputy and therefore keeps its laws, whether they suit him or not. He makes only the one exception, that the government issue a law against God's commandment. For then it exceeds its authority. Thus in the congregational school the right foundation is laid for the highest virtue of a citizen, obedience to the laws.

Another virtue is mercy toward the neighbor and its special manifestation in reconcilability and forgiveness of an offense. What does the state school say of that? If we look at the moral principles which the state school inculcates, we find in them almost no trace of true mercy. The highest principle of its morality is selfishness. Selfishness is at bottom also the mercy that the natural man practices when he occasionally gives way to his natural feelings, to natural pity, or, in the hope of obtaining something, once waives a right. True mercy is to him a ridiculous thing; yielding and forgiving he holds to be weakness; on the other hand he claims as an inalienable right that he may hate his enemy and repay evil with evil. The state school has no means of changing this bad mind. The congregational school, however, shows from Christ's words, Matt. 5:43-48, that whoever wants to be a child of the Father in heaven must also be merciful, as the Father in heaven is merciful; he must not love only his friends and benefactors, but also his enemies; he must not repay evil with evil and abuse with abuse, but must bless where one curses him. It teaches with the apostle Paul, 1 Tim. 2:1-3, that the Christian is to pray not only for himself and his fellow believers, but for all men, and in doing so especially to remember the government and its officials, even if it were a Nero, before God's throne. And this is grounded on the fact that Christ