# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_M rz 1862_S87
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

The United Bavarian General Synod.    87

of firm perseverance in what is positive, which have shown themselves so uplifting in this assembly, out into your congregations, and scatter them among all their members. There goes, as is known to you all, through the world a spirit of negation, which seems to have set itself the task, consciously or unconsciously, of combating and destroying everything positive in church and state. Meet this spirit wherever you find it. Tell your congregations that what is at stake here is a struggle for the noblest goods of life, for the peace of the heart, of the family, of the congregation, and of the state. All these goods are entrusted to each and every one in the congregation, and each has, for his part, the duty and thereby also the right to defend these goods with word and deed. Here it holds that one may not merely keep silent when these principles are wantonly attacked in the congregation or in society. Do not suffer it; oppose it with candor and resolve, and do not fear the wanton mockery. If you step forward courageously, you will surely find companions whose courage is awakened by yours; and if you stand alone, then reckon on this: that a later time will vindicate you, and that the One contends with you who in the end will surely carry it through." — Harleß, on whom the synod bestowed so honorable a trust, and whom, no doubt, many a success has certainly gladdened, spoke, among other things: "The General Synod of 1861 has proven, in the face of this age, that we know what we stand on, that we mean to hold fast to what we have, without forgetting that it is also our task to improve deficiencies, remove defects, and to animate even the old, inherited good with the ever-young spirit of a truthful and living life. For what has become a withered corpse falls apart at the first hostile touch; but we stand in the midst of the struggle of the age, and behold, God has granted us not to fall apart, but to be newly united, tempered, and joined together. That is a great gift which we owe to the goodness and long-suffering of our faithful God, and not to any merit of our own." — Then, in closing: "And now, my dear gentlemen, farewell must be taken. May the Lord God guide you all home, to your hearths and to your congregations. You may — thanks and praise be to Him and to the Lord! — confidently tell your congregations, even if it sounds proud: let them hold fast in this hard and trial-filled time as we have held fast here. And when the struggle breaks in which, as it concerns the law and the state, will without doubt also concern our church, then let us lift high the banner of our fathers' confession! It is the banner under whose sign we become free and have become free from human arbitrariness and human bondage, in obedience to the divine Word; it is the banner that testifies that we belong not to a sectarian church of today and yesterday, but to that church which has its witnesses in every age and which reaches back from the present time to the very first age of the apostolic days. Let us seize this banner firmly and bury in the earth at its feet