# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_September 1863_S273
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Report of the sixth regular synodical assembly of the Norwegian Evang.-Luth. Church. 273

If I now discharge this obligation as well as I am able, I hope that the short time which the office of president, in conjunction with many other duties of my calling, allowed me, and my lack of experience and of the proficiency one might wish for, may serve as an excuse for the fact that my knowledge and account of the state of our church fellowship is neither so complete nor so exhaustive as would be desirable.

When we were assembled last year, we still felt here and there in our church fellowship the convulsive throes that are found everywhere as after-pains, wherever the bearing and re-bearing powers are especially active. As it often seems to hover between death and life at a natural birth, so here too, where God had His work of grace in view among us, he could not be absent who has the power of death, the prince of darkness and of lies; just as little, during the struggles among us, were there lacking those who at times feared that Satan, through his lies, might remain victor and hold the field of battle. Yet, God be praised! it did not go as we feared. Far beyond our expectation God let His work turn out to our blessing. Neither in the dispute over slavery, nor in the Sunday controversy — that is, over the Fourth and the Third Commandment — did the spirit of lies succeed in so blinding us that on the one hand we mistook spiritual freedom, which consists precisely in this, that man, made free from the power of sin, has the desire and impulse to do the will of the Lord as revealed in the Word, for the fleshly freedom with which the human spirit especially in our days practices a self-deification; nor, on the other hand, did we let ourselves be robbed of our Christian freedom, which Christ purchased for us with His blood, and let ourselves be made servants of men through human commandment and ordinance.

Through these controversies we all learned to prize our precious jewel, Christian freedom, more and more, but learned at the same time to understand that one set free by Christ is a servant of Christ, who is subject to all human ordinance for the Lord's sake. Some, who because of their slight knowledge of God's Word did not grasp the actual subject of the dispute, its truly great significance, but who were nevertheless troubled in their misled conscience, have at least come again to rest, even if not yet to clarity. Finally, those too whom the devil, with or against their will, wished to use as his servants to fight the truth and to frighten its witnesses, have fallen silent with their public attacks and mockeries, for the truth was too powerful for them; with or against their will they had to bow before its power. Accordingly we can say, so far as the circumstances are known to us, that the severest after-pains have been overcome, and, like a mother who forgets all the pains she has endured, so we can now rejoice the more undisturbed over the proofs of the Lord's grace and of