La Crosse, Wisconsin

June 21-29, 1873

President Preus did not prepare what we have come to think of as an address, but presented only a report. Only the opening paragraphs are translated here.

Grace be to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ!

Dear brothers in the faith and in the Ministry! A year has again elapsed. It has brought us many struggles, many disappointments, many sorrows and tribulations, but also, praise God, hours of victory and refreshment so that now when the Lord allows us to be gathered for our dear synod meeting we must say, “He has done all things well!” Paul says about Christian love that it rejoices in the truth and also that it is kind and does not seek its own. May the Lord then grant us grace to tend to our decisions in these days in such love, that believing the truth we may seek the up building of our congregations and the salvation of souls. To that end may he bless our discussions for Jesus’ sake!

The development of our synod has moved forward quietly and calmly in the past year: No more violent controversy or tremor within any portion of our church body than the constant battles against enemies within and without, in the old as well as in the new congregations. Powerfully, the ruinous stream of the spirit of the times seeks to make its way into our congregations to make the members worldly and to bring them to open falling away. Care for temporal livelihood hinders many people from earnestly seeking the One Thing Needful and doing the Lord’s work. It, as well as the spirit of pride, which with its own works and devices, wants to beatify mankind, and the spirit of false freedom which says, “Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us” (Ps. 2:3) drives more and more people away into the lap of the secret societies, or in any event to sympathize with them and to make many people indifferent to Christian education and schools, if not to being open opponents of them. The same opposition and breaking down of the Lord’s work on the part of various sects and opposing factions, the painful loss of pious, capable pastors, you see, is what I can mention here as heavy, painful pressure upon our church body.

However, it has given us rich comfort that through just such battles the Lord has let the most precious doctrine of our Lutheran Church, the sum and substance of the Gospel, be placed before us in so much clearer light, and thereby also allowed it to become so much more precious to us so that in spite of all the enemies’ backbiting, the Lord has allowed us to obtain more help from capable pastors from the church of the fatherland in the past year than ever before, so that in spite of the smallness of our pastors’ strength in numbers in relation to our enlarged field of work, the truth for which we are fighting, and appreciation for our synod’s work have gained entry with more and more people and the Lord has opened a wide door to us in our home mission fields.

The remaining pages report on the many aspects of the synod’s work over the course of the previous year.