# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1904_S47
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

of the Ev. Luth. Synodical Conference of North America. 1904. 47

until one had become pious in such and such a way, one would probably never get to go to the Sacrament, as our Luther also says; but there must be a maturity of understanding, a maturity of man's natural understanding as led and guided by God's Word and Spirit.

Now when lodge people say that they cannot see what is sinful about membership in the lodge, where it is clear according to God's Word that membership is sinful, then in many cases one must surely say of such people that they lack the necessary maturity of the understanding required for a worthy partaking of the Sacrament, that it is missing in them, and that for this reason alone they are to be kept away from the table of the LORD. They then belong among the children, among the minors. As we do not give the Holy Supper to children until they have to some extent come to understand their baptismal covenant, so we cannot give it to lodge people either. We must say that they themselves declare it with their "We do not see it!" — that they do not yet understand what it means that they have renounced and must renounce the devil and all his works and all his ways, and that JESUS Christ is their LORD. That means to forsake all and follow him. — They belong among the children and need milk and not strong meat. The holy Apostles make a distinction between milk and strong meat in what they teach. What belongs on the one side and what on the other they do not further set out for us, but that the doctrine of the worthy partaking of the Holy Supper belongs to strong meat is surely clear. To this belongs the Sacrament of the Altar, where Christ gives his own his body to eat and his blood to drink, where the unworthy becomes guilty of the body and blood of Christ, the highest and holiest good which Christ has given to his Church on earth.

If, then, we see that lodge people, by their confession that they cannot see the sinfulness of membership in the lodge, themselves make plain their inability to comply with the command of self-examination, then, when they ask of us sacramental fellowship, we may well apply what the holy Apostles say of milk and strong meat.

Precisely where the holy writer in the Epistle to the Hebrews speaks of the high-priestly office of Christ, he writes in chap. 5:11–14: "Of whom we have many things to say, and hard to be uttered, seeing ye are dull of hearing. For when for the time ye ought to be teachers, ye have need that one teach you again which be the first principles of the oracles of God; and are become such as have need of milk, and not of strong meat. For every one that useth milk is unskilful in the word of righteousness: for he is a babe. But strong meat belongeth to them that are of full age, even those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil."

We must lament over them as Paul does in 1 Cor. 3:1, 2: "And I, brethren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as