# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1902_S62
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

62 Proceedings of the nineteenth convention

One of our missionaries writes as follows: "The whole character of our congregational life is so entirely different from that of the sectarian congregations around them that both these people and our own congregation members say: 'The Lutheran religion is entirely different from all others.' The religion of the Negroes is, after all, mostly a raving in emotional frenzy. Just as a tree trunk in a dried-up pond lies stone-dead in summer, but in the spring, when brooks and ponds fill with water, swims about briskly to and fro as if suddenly animated with new life, so it is with the Negro's religion: at one time stone-dead, but then, especially when at a 'revival' the 'spirit' (whether the Holy Spirit or the evil spirit, he himself does not know!) comes over his feelings, he rages, so to speak, to the 'mourner's bench' and behaves in religious zeal like a raging lion in his cage, and against all explanations he defends his insane behavior with the words which he thinks himself entitled to take from Ps. 23:5: 'When de cup am full, hit runneth over,' or, according to the saying of Paul: 'Squinch not de spirit.'"

Nevertheless we are certain that the pure word preached by us among the Negroes never goes forth without fruit. There stands our God before us and says: "So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it," Isa. 55:11.

God's Word is not to be preached in vain in the Negro Mission either. It is to win souls and make them blessed. This heavenly net is always to make a draught, this heavenly light is always to shine and give light, this heavenly seed is to bring forth fruit. Let blind reason, old custom, the devil and the sects set themselves against this word; the Word is to prevail. It glorifies God's name, it plants his kingdom, it carries out God's will. The Word celebrates one victory after another, also in the Negro Mission.

All our missionaries have been permitted in the last 25 years to experience the fulfillment of the promise of seed and harvest in our Negro Mission. Even in Little Rock, Ark., where the Negro Mission was begun in the autumn of 1877 but later came to an end, even there the fulfillment of that promise has been experienced: "My word . . . shall not return unto me void." When the writer of these lines was a few months ago in Little Rock, Ark., in the interest of the white mission, he met in the German Lutheran church at the English service, among others, "Sister Bransford" and "Sister Jones," two Negro women who had joined the Lutheran Negro congregation 24 years ago in Little Rock and to this day remain faithful and diligent in their attachment to the Lutheran Church. The German Lutheran congregation in Little Rock also has English services regularly every Sunday, and these Negroes attend those English services.