# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_Januar 1933 ff. masthead not in scan _S137
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

137

to pay, as long as this is necessary. This offer testifies to a great love for our congregational schools.

We very often talk about the great expenses that the congregational schools cause us, but we forget that as a rule they cost us considerably less than the public schools. Thus, according to a report in the News Service, the State calculates an annual expenditure of about $28,000 for a school with six teachers and about three hundred children. From the "Statistisches Jahrbuch," School Secretary Stellhorn then cites how one of our congregations, which maintains a school with six teachers and 313 children, raised in the year 1931 for its own congregational budget only $21,484 in all. From this sum the salary of the two pastors of the congregation, as well as of the other assistants, was also paid, so that the school was run considerably more cheaply than the public school. The State calculates about fifty-one cents per day for the education of each child. Our congregational schools cost us even less than half of this sum.

J. T. M.

Education and Success in One's Life Calling. This is a question with which the educators of our country are now actively occupied, and about which, therefore, some things are also said in the News Service. The reason why people are now thinking so much about the matter is in part this, that the so widespread opinion, that whoever has enjoyed a higher education must now also get ahead quickly and surely in life and accomplish something great, has proved false. Experience teaches that despite all higher education many young people do not get ahead in life but rather go to ruin. In our prisons sit thousands of men and women who have enjoyed an excellent education: physicians, lawyers, mechanics, and the like. On the other hand, many men and women in leading positions have had only a deficient schooling.

How is one to explain this fact? We cannot go into all the details here, but one thing is certain: where education and the Gospel do not go together, there education has failed. If God, in spite of everything, still preserves civic honesty and a sense of justice and fairness among the children of the world, this is to be ascribed to his grace, which even in civic life always works only good for us human beings. But as for the person who indeed seeks education but takes nothing of Christianity into himself, he does everything he can on his part to make it easy for Satan to carry on his work of destruction. Even serious heathen have here and there judged quite correctly on this point, in that they have very earnestly put their finger on the great importance of moral education. In the News Service we read a saying of the old heathen Socrates, who is said to have once said: "Men of Athens, I advise you all, young and old, do not care for your person or for your property, but let it be your concern first and above all to ennoble your soul." How much differently still can we Christians heed and apply this admonition!

J. T. M.

Religion and Education. We cannot yet break off from the subject of education, especially now, when so many of our young fellow Christians have again been confirmed. At what kind of schools will these young fellow Christians continue their studies? What kind of education will be offered them there? What kind of teachers will they have? These are questions that ought to be very important to us Christians. In the News Service, Teacher Heintzen reports that recently the head of one of the best high schools in New Orleans said: "As long as such outstanding theologians as Harry Fosdick and other Modernists cannot tell us what religion is at all, as long as our learned scientists also cannot solve the riddle of the world, so long can we educators also not find the answer to the question, through what studies the wave of crime can be checked." That means nothing other than: Without religion there is no real education, an education that makes our young people into useful citizens of the country. Only the man who said this should not call people like Fosdick outstanding theologians; for they are not. Nor should he expect the solution of the riddles of the world from the learned; for these cannot accomplish it. He should listen to his own conscience and heed what it tells him; then he should take up the Bible, where true religion lies revealed, and learn from it how boys are to be brought up so that they become useful citizens of the country. Then he should point out that through faith in Christ the pupils first become true citizens of heaven, but then also proper, good citizens of the state, in whom one can take delight. But this is the great pity, that our educators want neither the Bible nor Christ. Here we have the real reason why things stand so badly with our people: it rejects God's Word.

J. T. M.

Annual Meeting of the National Lutheran Council. The National Lutheran Council held its annual meeting in January in Toledo. Represented were the United Lutheran Church, the American Lutheran Church, the United Norwegian Synod, the Augustana Synod, and the United Danish Synod. The chief attention was devoted to such questions as arise from the present world distress also for the Lutheran Church. For its work the Council set a budget of about $23,000. Participation in the work of the Lutheran World Convention is not to be continued; but President Knubel is, with the help of a committee, to serve in the matter for the time being. For the work of Lutheran world relief, $25,000 was appropriated. A committee was elected that is to deal with certain problems, the solution of which is the common responsibility of the synods concerned. Among these problems are also those that concern the home, marriage, and the many divorces in our country. The Council also intends to take part in the World's Fair in Chicago; seventy-five percent of the necessary funds have already been collected. June 18 is to be observed there as "Luther Day." On that day addresses by prominent Lutheran leaders are to be given, while a large choir under the direction of Dr. F. Melius Christiansen will sing. The week from June 12 to 18 is to be observed as "Luther Week."

J. T. M.

Foreign Countries.

News from Germany. In recent weeks all sorts of reports about political and church events in Germany have been published in the daily and weekly press. From the outset we have had great doubts whether these reports were altogether reliable, since they made various statements that anyone who is at all familiar with conditions in Germany had to recognize at once as erroneous. But a few days ago we also received a letter from one of our correspondents in Germany, a man who for years has followed events with a sharp eye and sound judgment, who has also lived on another continent and has visited America, and who knows what has happened in Europe in the last half century. He writes us on March 28, among other things: "In spite of the gratifying upheaval of the state in Germany, the economic conditions are still gloomy enough. . . . Since the newspapers report that news about horrible conditions in Germany is being spread abroad, I inform you that in spite of the economic distress that still prevails, complete calm prevails in the country, and no one is thinking of mis-