# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1922_S24
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

24 Proceedings of the twenty-eighth convention

from the enemies. It is true that they attack our schools in many cases under the pretext of backwardness; and if we can take this semblance from them, we may compel them to fight more with an open visor. But as surely as the lesser equipment of our schools is for the opponents only a convenient pretext behind which they can conceal their real disposition, so unswervingly will they continue their attacks even if we make our schools the most efficient in the land. What is to drive us to provide for our schools with all our strength is the zeal to want to have for our testimony to our children the most suitable means.

What a glorious victory, if God thus fills us with new zeal for our school! Let us call upon him earnestly for it.

A further victory will be that we learn ever better to conduct also all our struggles outward only as witnesses with the testimony. We have the calling to bring home to our fellow citizens who are not of our faith, in word and deed, that parents have the duty before God to bring up their children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. This we are to live out before them; this we are also to tell them, publicly and privately, as occasion brings, by word and writing, if necessary also before the authorities, in the halls of the legislatures and in the offices of the public "servants of the people." Such testimony, and such testimony alone, will be effective. What a blessed victory, when someone is won by our testimony for the right work of education with his children! And even if this blessed result is not always to be recorded, the Word nevertheless does not return empty. It is God's means by which he drives people to a clear stand and brings about a clean separation, so that the enemies rage all the more venomously.

But will the enemies then not, in their fury, lay hands on us personally and on our school property? Where then is the victory? Would it not be better after all to show them accommodation and to appease them? Our Savior has not promised us personal safety, nor safety of our property and of our institutions, but the victory he has promised us. What stronger testimony of their faith could the first Christians give than that they went to their death for it! Are we today unable to suffer?

Yet another brilliant victory, almost the most glorious of all, will finally be that we grow in faith, that we look into the future more calmly and confidently, more joyful in hope. It is a precious thing that the heart be established. The world knows that nothing can harm a cause more than faintheartedness. He who attacks a cause halfheartedly has already lost when a man of resolute courage opposes him. That is a general truth. It holds also in our spiritual struggles. Therefore Peter exhorts, regarding our fight against the devil: "Whom resist stedfast in the faith,