# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1908_S36
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

36 Proceedings of the twenty-second convention

with a sister congregation or sister synod has broken off and not yet restored. — Finally, when someone publicly attacks individual members of congregations, his whole congregation or his whole synod, he has thereby renounced brotherhood in the faith with them.

What a glorious treasure Christian fellowship is, and how grievous a sin the disturbance of it, Luther sets forth on John 17:11 and 21 thus: "A Christian, then, has this defiance, that he knows, wherever the devil attacks him, he attacks not a finger but the whole body, that is, all Christians in the world, indeed God and Christ besides. Just as in the body, where the smallest toe is trodden on, the whole body starts up, and the eyes look sour, the nose wrinkles, the hands reach out, and every member asks and cares what has befallen it. For it belongs to such unity that there be no piece or part that lives and feels for itself alone, and does not have the life and feeling of all others, that is, of the whole body. Where now the least member of Christendom suffers, as soon as the whole body feels it and stirs, so that they all run together, complain and cry out; then our Head, Christ, hears and feels it. And though He holds back a little, yet when He begins to look sour and wrinkle His nose, He will not jest either. For thus He speaks through the prophet Zechariah, chap. 2: 'He that toucheth you toucheth the apple of mine eye.' . . . A fine example of this we read in St. Paul's history. When he persecuted the Christians and had helped to kill Stephen, he thought he had also torn out a toe. But what does Christ in heaven say to it? He does not say: Why do you pinch my toe, or persecute my poor little flock? but thus He speaks: 'Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? It is hard for thee to kick against the pricks,' etc., Acts 9:5, just as if he had attacked His own person. Why? Because one cannot touch any member of the body without the head's feeling it, indeed feeling it first. For from the head comes and goes all power by which the body can feel and sense. That is, I say, the highest comfort in all sufferings of Christians, when they are assailed by the devil or attacked by the world, that they do not suffer alone, but the whole Christendom on earth, indeed all the angels in heaven together with Christ and the Father Himself take up their suffering and bear it with them, and nothing can befall them but it must befall them all. Whoever knows and believes this can bear and overcome all manner of misfortune; just as, on the other hand, nothing makes suffering or trial so heavy and unbearable as when the heart feels that it suffers quite alone and sees no example or fellow-sufferers of the same suffering, as if it alone were forsaken and shelled out; as all sufferings of Christians seem in the eyes of our flesh. Therefore faith must hold to this Word against its own feeling and the world's