# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_December 1863_S363
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Report of the Sixth Ordinary Synodical Convention of the Norwegian Ev.-Luth. Church. 363

...has especially instituted for this purpose, that we should work ourselves free from worldly and earthly affairs and attend to the work of our souls. It is, alas, a dreadful instability in reputable Christendom, and a great godlessness, that this same day is now so shamefully profaned, and that the soul is endangered on scarcely any other day so much as on the very one appointed for its good."

When the question was then put as to who agreed with the second proposition, Pastor Clausen requested the liberty to explain himself concerning this as well as the following propositions together, since they all stood in so close a connection with what had thus far been discussed, that, being unclear on the latter, he could properly assent to none of the propositions.

With regard to the third proposition, it was then stated that it is indeed written in every man's heart, and must be recognized even by heathens and Turks, that we should accept with delight and joy, and diligently hear and learn, the Word which our God found good to speak to us, and should then also let this become plainly manifest in our lives, so that all our works are done in God, John 8:21. That this moral element in the Third Commandment also held under the Old Testament is best seen from passages such as Deuteronomy 6:6–9. And so far from this leading one to esteem the freely chosen festival day, Sunday, the less, the Christian who feels that he cannot altogether sanctify his whole life as he ought will, on the contrary, come to rejoice doubly over this day, whose exclusive use for the furthering of his sanctification will be of such great service to him in sanctifying his whole life.

Here too the following words of Luther were cited: "Therefore it depends wholly and entirely on this, that one should sanctify the day, more than on resting from work. For God does not say: Thou shalt keep the holy day, or make a Sabbath (that would happen of itself), but: Thou shalt sanctify the festival day or Sabbath, so that far more depends on the sanctifying than on the resting. And where one of the two must be omitted, it would be better that the resting be omitted than the sanctifying; because the commandment presses above all upon the sanctifying, and does not command the Sabbath for its own sake, but for the sake of the sanctifying. The Jews, however (which neither God nor Moses does), out of their own addition, value the resting more highly than the sanctifying. That Moses now names the seventh day, and how God made the world in six days, and therefore they should do no work — that is the temporal ornament by which Moses attaches this commandment to his people for that particular time. For before this one finds no such thing written, neither of Abraham nor of the times of the other fathers; rather it is a temporal addition and ornament placed solely upon this people that was led out of Egypt, and it was not meant to remain forever, any more than the whole Law of Moses. But the sanctifying, that is, teaching and preaching God's Word, which is the right, plain, and simple meaning of this commandment, is