# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1900_S42
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

42 Proceedings of the eighteenth convention

institution in our country in which children can be brought up to be really good citizens. For with the virtues described all others are connected, so far as they are required in civic and social life. And so love for the fatherland and its institutions requires that we establish, cherish and promote congregational schools. We do not let ourselves be led astray by the fact that our schools are attacked and slandered as an un-American arrangement hindering the prospering of the state. We defend them precisely for this reason, because we know they are the best bulwark of the state. We do not let ourselves have Bennett Laws and Edwards Laws forced upon us, by which our congregational schools are to be destroyed and our children forced to attend the state schools, under the pretext that true patriotism would be planted in them only there. We demand it as a right of the freedom of conscience guaranteed to us in the Constitution that we have and keep our congregational schools, and indeed without being put under guardianship and restricted by the state in their establishment and conduct. And if in our schools here and there all sorts of external defects are found; if we also have no magnificent and comfortable buildings, no especially copious stock of teaching aids, no brilliantly gifted and educated teachers: if our schools fulfill only the one task of bringing up the children in the discipline and instruction of the Lord, then they have the one thing that is needful, and stand far above the most magnificent state schools. If they are given up, then that is the heaviest loss that can befall our country; for then it will soon become poor in citizens who in right disposition practice the civic virtues.

This too is a point that Luther brings out. He writes: "Even if, as I have said, there were no soul, and one had no need of schools and languages for the sake of Scripture and God, this reason alone would be sufficient to establish the very best schools, for both boys and girls, in all places, since the world, even to maintain its external estate, still needs fine, capable men and women; that the men might well govern land and people, the women well bring up and keep house, children and servants. Now, such men must come from boys, and such women from girls; therefore it is to be done, that one teach and bring up boys and girls rightly for it." (St. Louis Edition, X, 476 f.)

In conclusion let one hear also the admonition, worth taking to heart, of our Father Luther, who writes "to the councilmen": "Therefore it is high necessity, not only for the sake of the young people, but also to maintain both our estates, spiritual and secular, that one in this matter act with earnestness and in time, so that we do not afterward, when we have neglected it, perhaps have to leave it, though we would then gladly do it, and in vain let the Reuling [remorse; Luther's word for the sting of regret] bite us to our harm forever.