# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1906_S48
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

48 Proceedings of the twenty-first convention

years run into all kinds of difficulties quite especially; yet even these difficulties, as we confidently hope, will with God's help be overcome more and more from year to year. For we are waiting for the time when in the Negro Mission we shall be given not only the ever-necessary funds but, what is still more important, the living forces, the workers, so that we may be able to devote ourselves to this so precious task in a more comprehensive manner than has been possible for us until now. "Pray ye the Lord of the harvest, that he send forth labourers into his harvest!" This mission prayer will not remain unheard in the Negro Mission either. We have our colored parish schools, and in addition we now also have, thank God, our two institutions, two schools of the prophets, one in New Orleans, La., and one in Greensboro, N. C., in which colored teachers and preachers for the Negro Mission are to be trained.

Yet let us look not only at the difficulties, not only at the disappointments, but also at the many blessings in the Negro Mission. It is true, a great, difficult way has the Lord marked out for us in this mission; but the Lord himself goes with us. That is his great promise: "And, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world." When Israel marched through the wilderness, the Lord went before the people, by day in a pillar of cloud, by night in a pillar of fire, to give them light day and night; and when Pharaoh pursued them, Moses said: "The Lord shall fight for you, and ye shall hold your peace," Ex. 13:21; 14:14. But when Moses had died and the heavy office was now laid on the shoulders of a lesser man, on Joshua, the Lord said to him: "As I was with Moses, so I will be with thee. I will not fail thee, nor forsake thee; only be thou strong and very courageous, and let not the book of the law depart out of thy mouth!" — What? Should the Lord grant less in the New Covenant? What would the Church have been from the beginning, and what would have become of her, if the Lord had not fulfilled his word: "Lo, I am with you alway," if he had not been present in Word and Sacrament, as then in the pillar of cloud and of fire? But if in any work of his Church this comfort is to be felt, then surely above all in that in the ordering of which he gave this promise, the work of mission. In this confident assurance the apostles went forth, and when Paul, in great fear, was to begin the work in Corinth, the Lord stood by him at night in a vision and said: "Be not afraid, but speak, and hold not thy peace: for I am with thee, and no man shall set on thee to hurt thee: for I have much people in this city." And has this not been proved true? And is it not still visible before our eyes today? In the Negro Mission too the same promise holds. When we survey the great mission field that is being worked by our laborers, is the Lord not visible in his work? Have