# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_M rz 1860_S95
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Church and Contemporary Notes.    95

or how far lay activity should be extended. On this a committee finally worked out the following resolutions:

§ 1. Laymen can and should mutually instruct one another with God's Word, within the order and limit prescribed in the Word.

§ 2. The order that holds here according to God's Word is that no one, except him to whom the office is entrusted, may come forward in the congregation as teacher for all and over all, so that he becomes the mouth and interpreter of all, and all others are to remain silent and listen.

§ 3. The activity of laymen for instruction and edification must therefore take place in the form and manner of a mutual conversation, in which each individual has the right, in an order befitting Christians, to answer, to ask, to refute and correct what is false in it, or to confirm what is true. As long as the conversation takes place in that manner and form, it is no encroachment on the office.

Note. Should disorder or confusion arise here, whether through strife or unsound doctrine or the like, this would be an abuse of the Word, which could be judged in the individual case only by weighing all the circumstances.

§ 4. (Contains some proposals for the arrangement of lay meetings.)

§ 5. Such meetings of laymen must always take place under the oversight of the ministers, and, like everything else in the congregation, be subject to the discipline of the church, should abuses creep in.

Time did not allow, however, for these resolutions to be discussed to the end, and since it appeared upon the vote that, of the 12 ministers and 35 lay members of the synod, five of the latter could not agree to § 2 and the middle part of § 3 ("in which — confirm"), it was resolved to regard only what was unanimously adopted as the mind of the synod, and to postpone further treatment of the matter until the next synod.

Another noteworthy resolution of the synod is also an urgent call to the congregations to take up the heathen mission more earnestly than before; under present circumstances it also wishes to recommend the Lutheran mission of the Missouri Synod among the Indians as an activity which the congregations should particularly support. Readers will already have seen the first fruits of this resolution in the receipts printed in the "Lutheraner."    L. L.

The Journal of the Norwegian Synod. — That the "Kirkelig Maanedstidende" will continue in future to belong among the truly Lutheran periodicals is promised with full determination by the editor's preface, from which we extract the following words: "And now, since it is the truth, and the truth alone, which makes us free and works true freedom and peace in us, the children of God, I will as editor of the Maanedstidende direct my whole attention and intention to seeing that everything admitted into it 'is of the truth.' This alone shall have the right of place here, not an equal right alongside falsehood and error. Therefore I will not only examine every piece and the doctrine contained in it according to God's revealed Word, as it is set forth in the confessional writings, and reserve to myself the full right to deny admission to any piece which in any way contradicts it, but in the selection of narratives and reports too I will look not merely to whether they appear edifying and can easily move and stir the feelings, but I will direct my attention to whether, through them, testimony is also borne to the power of 'the truth,' so that readers may through them be awakened to faith and strengthened and preserved in it, through the truth recognized — so that God's grace may be proclaimed and praised through all, and not our own glory." — God bless the labor of the dear brethren!    S.

II. Abroad.

"The chief need of present-day theology is, according to the most tried and gifted among our believing theological teachers on the Reformed side as