# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1916_S59
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

of the Ev. Luth. Synodical Conference of North America. 1916. 59

on the spiritual abominations, on its condemnation and cursing of the Gospel and of all those who confess it and thereby bear witness of their Savior as the only Rescuer of the world.

And to one thing more I would point — last, but by all means not least — namely, to our schools and to the right influencing of our growing confirmed youth. Our schools are of eminent significance and importance in our struggle against Rome. It is of inexpressible importance that we ground our children from their youth firmly in the word of truth, in the teachings of Holy Scripture, in the Gospel, that in their whole upbringing the Word of God, the Gospel, may hold sway, that they may, as it were, drink in with their mother's milk also the rational, pure milk of the Gospel. And such an upbringing requires Christian schools, not, say, the Sunday school alongside the religionless public school, but the Christian weekday school, which has the child's whole schooling in its hands and conducts it by means of the Word of God. We cannot go into the importance of our schools at greater length here, and it is probably not necessary, since we are all firmly convinced of it. Only this we want to bear in mind on this occasion and point out, what an important factor these our schools are in our struggle against Rome, without doubt one of the most important weapons we have, far more important than public agitation against the Pope. Not the public school, in which no religion may and can be taught, is the bulwark against Rome, as people in certain circles now like so much to stress, but our Christian parish school [Gemeindeſchule] is. — It is of eminent importance also for this struggle that we keep our youth in view after confirmation too, that we do not fall into the mistake of thinking that these young people, who have enjoyed the parish school and the confirmation instruction, are now spiritually mature and need no special spiritual care any more. We want to keep them in our special care, to influence them still further with the Word of God, with the Gospel, "till we all come in the unity of the faith and knowledge of the Son of God and become a perfect man, who is in the measure of the perfect age of Christ, that we be no more children, and let ourselves be tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men and deceit, whereby they creep in upon us to lead us astray." (Eph. 4:13, 14.) Let us therefore not neglect the higher education of our youth either! It is probably of the same importance as the schooling before confirmation. — How do matters stand among us now with regard to the care of our confirmed youth and of our schools? It seems to me that with regard to the first we have substantial progress to record. It seems to me that in the