The devout Lutheran mother presses her baptized child to her bosom, looks into its eyes, and thanks her Saviour from the depth of her heart, that He has blessed her child; that He has breathed into it His divine life, washed it, sealed it, and adopted it as His son or daughter. How sweet the consolation to know that her precious little one is a lamb of Christ"s flock, "_bearing on its body the marks of the Lord Jesus_."
But Christian parents have not fulfilled their whole duty in having children baptized into Christ. The children are indeed in covenant relationship with Jesus Christ. But it is their bounden duty and blessed privilege to keep their little ones in that covenant of Grace. Of this more in the next chapter.
CHAPTER V.
THE BAPTISMAL COVENANT CAN BE KEPT UNBROKEN.
AIM AND RESPONSIBILITY OF PARENTS.
We have gone "_to the Law and to the Testimony_" to find out what the nature and benefits of Baptism are. We have gathered out of the Word all the princ.i.p.al pa.s.sages bearing on this subject. We have grouped them together, and studied them side by side. We have noticed that their sense is uniform, clear, and strong. Unless we are willing to throw aside all sound principles of interpretation, we can extract from the words of inspiration only one meaning, and that is that the baptized child is, by virtue of that divine ordinance, a new creature in Christ Jesus.
Here let us be careful, however, to bear in mind and keep before us that we claim for the child only the _birth_ of a new life. It has been _born_ of water and the Spirit. A birth we know is but a very feeble beginning of life. So faint are the flickerings of the natural life at birth, that it is often doubtful at first whether any life is present. The result of a birth is not a full-grown man, but a very weak and helpless babe. The little life needs the most tender, watchful and intelligent fostering and care.
So it is also in the Kingdom of Grace. The divine life is there.
But it is life in its first beginnings. As yet only the seeds and germs of the new life. And this young spiritual life also needs gentle fostering and careful nourishing. Like the natural life of the child, so its spiritual life is beset with perils. While the germs of the new life are there, we must not forget that the roots of sin are also still there. Our Church does not teach with Rome that "sin (original) is destroyed in baptism, so that it no longer exists." Hollazius says: "The guilt and dominion of sin is taken away by baptism, but not the root or tinder of sin." Luther also writes that "Baptism takes away the guilt of sin, although the material, called concupiscence, remains."
Unfortunately for the child these roots of sin will grow of their own accord, like the weeds in our gardens. They need no fostering care. Not so with the germs of the new life. They, like the most precious plants of the gardens, must be watched and guarded and tended continually. Solomon says: Prov. xxix. 15, "_A child left to himself bringeth his mother to shame_." And this may be true even of a baptized child.
The Christian parent, therefore, has not fulfilled his whole duty to the child by having it baptized. It is now the parents" duty; or rather it should be considered the parents" most blessed privilege to _keep_ that child in covenant relationship with the blessed Redeemer. This also belongs to the teaching of the Church of the Reformation. This point, however, many parents seem to forget. Many who are sound on the question of baptismal Grace, are very unsound as to a parent"s duty to the baptized child.
Hunnius, a recognized standard theologian of our Church, in speaking of the responsibility of those who present children for baptism says it is expected of them _First_, to answer, in behalf of the child, as to the faith in which it is baptized, and in which it is to be brought up. _Second_, to instruct the child when it comes to years of discretion, that it has been truly baptized, as Christ has commanded. _Third_, to pray for the child, that G.o.d may keep it in that Covenant of Grace, bless it in body and spirit, and finally save it with all true believers, and _Fourth_, to use all diligence that the child may grow up in that faith, which they have confessed in the child"s name, and thus be preserved from dangerous error and false doctrine.
That most delightful Lutheran theologian, Luthardt, says: "Infant baptism is a comfort beyond any other, but it is also a responsibility beyond any other." Again: "As Christians we know that G.o.d has bestowed upon our children not only natural, but spiritual gifts. For our children have been baptized and received by baptism into the Covenant of Grace. To preserve them in this baptismal Grace, to develop in them the life of G.o.d"s spirit, this is one side of Christian education. To contend against sin in the child is the other." Dr. Schmid, in his Christian Ethics, also teaches that it is possible to continue in the uninterrupted enjoyment of baptismal Grace. Dr. Pontoppidan, in his explanation of Luther"s Small Catechism, asks the question: "Is it possible to keep one"s baptismal covenant?" He answers; "Yes, by the Grace of G.o.d it is possible."
The teaching of our Church, therefore, is that the baptized child can grow up, a child of Grace from infancy, and that under G.o.d, it rests princ.i.p.ally with the parents or guardians whether it shall be so. And this Lutheran idea, like all others, is grounded in the Word of G.o.d.
We note a few examples: Samuel was a child of prayer, given to his pious mother in answer to prayer. She called him Samuel, _i.e._, asked of G.o.d. Before his birth even, she dedicated him to G.o.d. As soon as he was weaned she carried him to the Tabernacle and there publicly consecrated him to the service of the Most High. From this time forth, according to the sacred record, he dwelt in G.o.d"s Tabernacle and "_ministered unto the Lord before Eli_". As a mere child G.o.d used him as a prophet. Of the prophet Jeremiah it is written: (Jer. i. 5) "_Before thou earnest forth out of the womb, I sanctified thee._" Of John the Baptist it is written: (Luke i. 15) "_He shall be filled with the Holy Ghost, even from his mother"s womb_". To Timothy, Paul says: "_From a child thou hast known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation_," and in speaking of Timothy"s faith Paul says, that faith "_dwelt first in thy grandmother Lois, and thy mother Eunice_." Psalms lxxi. 5-6: "_Thou art my trust from my youth.
By thee have I been holden up from the womb._"
It is therefore possible for G.o.d, not only to give His Grace to a child, but to keep that child in His Grace all its days. To dispute this is, simply, to dispute the record that G.o.d gave.
Lest some one should still say, however, that the examples above noted are isolated and exceptional, we note further, that the tenor of the whole Word is in harmony with this idea. Nowhere in the whole Bible is it even intimated that it is G.o.d"s desire or plan that children must remain outside of the covenant of Grace, and have no part or lot in the benefits of Christ"s redeeming work until they come to years of discretion and can choose for themselves. This modern idea is utterly foreign and contradictory to all we know of G.o.d, of His scheme of redemption, and of His dealings with His people, either in the old or new dispensation. He ordained that infants at eight days old should be brought into His covenant. He recognized infant children as partakers of the blessings of His covenant. "_Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings thou hast perfected praise_;" "_Suffer them to come unto Me_." Everywhere it is taken for granted that the children who have received either the Old or New Testament sacrament of initiation are His. Nowhere are parents exhorted to use their endeavors to have such children converted, as though they had never been touched by divine Grace. But everywhere they are exhorted to keep them in that relation to their Lord, into which His own ordinance has brought them.
Gen. xviii. 19, "_I know that he will command his household after him, and that they shall keep the way of the Lord_." Psalm lxxviii. 6, 7, "_That the generation to come might know them, even the children which should be born, which should arise and declare them to their children, that they might set their hope in G.o.d, and not forget the works of G.o.d, but keep His commandments_." Prov. xxii. 6, "_Train up a child in the way he should go; when he is old he will not depart from it_."
Eph. vi. 4, "_Bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord_."
Let the baptized child then be looked upon as already belonging to Christ. Let the parents not worry as though it could not be His until it experiences a change of heart. That heart has been changed.
The germs of faith and love are there. If the parent appreciates this fact and does his part, there will be developed, very early, the truest confidence and trust in Christ, and the purest love to G.o.d.
From the germs will grow the beautiful plant of child-trust and child-love. The graces of the new life may be thus early drawn out, so that the child, in after years, will never know of a time when it did not trust and love, and as a result of this love, hate sin. This is the ideal of G.o.d"s Word. It is the ideal which every Christian parent should strive to realize in the children given by G.o.d, and given to G.o.d in His own ordinance. How can it be done? Of this, more in the next chapter.
CHAPTER VI.
HOME INFLUENCE AND TRAINING IN THEIR RELATION TO THE KEEPING OF THE BAPTISMAL COVENANT.
According to the last chapter, it is indeed a high and holy ideal that every Christian parent should set before him in regard to his children. Every child that G.o.d gives to a Christian parent is to be so treated that, from the hour of its baptism, it is to be a son or daughter of G.o.d. It is to be so fostered and nurtured and trained that, from its earliest self-consciousness, it is to grow day by day in knowledge and in Grace. As it increases in stature, so it is to increase in wisdom and in favor with G.o.d and man.
In order that this may be realized, it is first of all necessary that there be the proper surroundings. We cannot expect that parent to draw out these graces of the new life in the child, who is not himself imbued with a spirit of living faith and fervent love to Christ. In the beautiful words of Luthardt: "Religion must first approach the child in the form of life, and afterward in the form of instruction.
Let religion be the atmosphere by which the child is surrounded, the air which it breathes. The whole spirit of the home, its order, its practice--that world in which the child finds himself so soon as he knows himself--this it is which must make religion appear to him a thing natural and self-evident."
And this is especially important for the mother. It is while resting on the mother"s bosom and playing at the mother"s knee, that the child is receiving impressions that are stones for character building. The father, of course, is not released from responsibility.
He too is to set a holy example, to make impressions for good and to use all his influence to direct the thoughts and inclinations of the child upward. The man who does not help in the religious training of his own children is not fit to be a father. But it is after all with the mother that the little child spends most of its time and receives most of its impressions. Oh, that every mother were a Hannah, an Elizabeth, an Eunice. Then would there be more Samuels, Johns and Timothys. Let us have more of the spirit of Christ in the heart of the mother and father, and in the home. Let the child learn, with the first dawnings of self-consciousness, that Jesus is known and loved and honored in the home, and there will be no trouble about the future.
But the child must be instructed. Begin early. Let it learn to pray as soon as it can speak. Let it use its first lispings and stammerings in speaking words of prayer. We quote again from Luthardt: "Let it not be objected that the child cannot understand the prayer.
The way of education is by practice to understanding, not by understanding to practice. And the child will have a feeling and a presentiment of what it cannot understand. The world of heavenly things is not an incomprehensible region to the child, but the home of its spirit. The child will speak to his Father in Heaven without needing much instruction as to who that Father is. It seems as though G.o.d were a well-known friend of his heart. The child will love to pray. If mother forgets it, the child will not."
Therefore, oh, ye parents! pray for your child. Pray with your child. Teach that child to pray. The writer knows of a little girl who came home from Sunday-school and said: "Mamma, why don"t you ever pray?" What a rebuke!
The child must be taught the truth of G.o.d"s Word. It also must be sanctified, _i.e._, made more and more holy "_through the truth_." As a child it needs first the "_milk of the Word_." It is not desirable, neither is it necessary, to try to teach the very young child doctrines and abstract truths. Neither ought the child to be required to learn by rote long pa.s.sages from the Scriptures. In this way some well-meaning, but mistaken parents make the Word a burden to their children, and it becomes odious in their eyes. There are other and better ways. Begin by showing the child Bible pictures, even if it should soil the book a little. Better a thousand times have its lessons of life and love graven on the heart of the child, than to have its fine engravings as a parlor ornament for strangers. In our day there is also an abundant supply of Bible pictures and story books for children. Those parents who have never tried it will be surprised to see the interest the little ones take. With the pictures connect the stories of the Bible. And where are the stories better calculated to interest a child than these same old stories, that have edified a hundred generations? When will children ever weary of hearing of Joseph, and Moses, and David, and Daniel, and especially of Him who is the special Friend of children? It will be easy to so connect the teachings of the Word with these pictures and stories that very young children will be able to distinguish right from wrong, to know and hate sin, and to be drawn ever nearer to the blessed Jesus.
As they become able to study, to think and to comprehend it, the judicious parent will be glad to avail himself of the help of Luther"s Catechism. Here the more important teachings of the Word are summarized and systemized.
Most parents indeed are glad to shirk this duty, and flatter themselves that if they send their children to catechetical cla.s.s, when they grow old enough, they have performed their whole duty. Such parents do not perhaps know, that Martin Luther wrote his Small Catechism especially for family use. Let them take their Church books and turn to the Catechism, and they will find that Luther heads the Ten Commandments with the words: "In the plain form in which they are to be taught by the head of the family."
So also with the Creed, the Lord"s Prayer, and the Sacraments.
This is Luther"s idea.
It is the true idea. It belongs to the Way of Salvation in the Lutheran Church. It is the custom, still practiced in our older Lutheran churches. The pastor, as we shall see hereafter, is only to help the parents, and not to do it all for them. In teaching the Catechism at home, it will give parents an opportunity to speak of and explain what sin is, what faith is, what prayer is, and what the sacraments are.
We would impress also the importance of instructing the child concerning its own baptism. Let it understand not only the fact of its baptism, but the nature, benefits and obligations of the same. It certainly has a most salutary effect to impress the thought on the child frequently that it was given to Christ and belongs to Him--that He has received it as His own, and adopted it into the family of the redeemed.
Here also there is a sad neglect on the part of parents. Many never say a word to their children about their baptism. Many children even grow up and know not whether they are baptized or not. This is certainly un-Scriptural and un-Lutheran. "_Know ye not_," says Paul, as if he said, have you forgotten it? "_that as many of us as have been baptized into Christ have been baptized into His death_?"
Doubtless if we appreciated our own baptism as we should, it would be a constant source of comfort, a never-failing fountain of Grace to us, and to our children.
The Apostles frequently speak of the "_Church that is in the house_." By this they mean such a household as we have tried to portray--a home where the religion of our blessed Saviour permeates the whole atmosphere; where the Word of G.o.d dwells richly; where there are altars of prayer and closets for prayer--a home where Jesus is a daily, a well-known Guest; where the children, baptized into Christ, are nourished with the milk of the Word, so that they grow thereby, increasing more and more, growing up unto Him who is the Head, even Christ. In such a home the Church is in the house, and the household in the Church. Blessed home! Blessed children, who have such parents!
Blessed parents, who have thus learned G.o.d"s ways of Grace! No anxious, restless parents there, hoping and praying that their children may be converted. No confused, repelled children there, crying because Jesus will not love them till they "get religion." On the contrary, parents and children, kneeling at one altar, children of one Father, with the same trust, the same hope, the same Lord--hand in hand they go from the church in the house to the house of G.o.d"s Church.
Says Dr. Cuyler, an eminent Presbyterian, "The children of Christian parents ought never to need conversion."
CHAPTER VII.
THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL IN ITS RELATION TO THE BAPTIZED CHILDREN OF CHRISTIAN PARENTS.
We have tried to set forth the Lutheran idea of a Christian home.
In such a home, called, "_a Church in the House_," all ought to be Christians. The children having been given and consecrated to Christ in holy baptism, and having had His renewing and life-giving Grace imparted to them through that Sacrament, are to be kept in that relationship with Him.
The popular idea that they must of necessity, during the most impressible and important period of their existence, belong to the world, the flesh and the devil, is utterly foreign to the Lutheran, or Scriptural view. That the child is fated, for a number of years, to be under the influence of evil, and to be permitted to "sow wild oats"
before divine Grace can reach it, is certainly a principle that is contradictory to the whole scheme of salvation. Yet this seems to be the idea of those parents who will not believe that G.o.d can reach and change the nature of a child, and bring it out of the state of nature into the state of Grace, and keep it in that Grace. These people treat their children much as a farmer does his colts, letting them run wild for a while, and then violently breaking them in.
This pernicious idea has also obtained sway to an alarming extent in the Sunday-school system of our land. The children in the Sunday-school, whether baptized or not, whether from Christian or Christless homes, are looked upon as outsiders, impenitent sinners, utter strangers to Christ and His Grace, until they experience such a marked change that they can tell exactly where and when and how they were converted. Hence the popular idea that it is the object of the Sunday-school to _convert_ the children. This seems to be the underlying principle of both the American Sunday-school Union and American Tract Society; inst.i.tutions otherwise so excellent that we are loth to say aught against either. This idea pervades also the undenominational helps and comments of the International Lesson System. This is the undertone of the great ma.s.s of undenominational Sunday-school hymnology. It is the key-note of the County, State, National and International Sunday-school Conventions and Inst.i.tutes.
So popular and wide-spread is this idea that many Lutheran pastors, Sunday-school teachers and workers have unconsciously imbibed it. Even our Church papers, professing to be strictly confessional, often publish articles setting forth the idea that it is the object of the Sunday-school to _Christianize_ the children. As though the baptized children of the Church, the children of devout Christian parents, had been heathen, until Christianized by the Sunday-school! Many of our Sunday-school const.i.tutions also set it down as the object of the school to "lead the children to Christ," or to "labor for their conversion."
Now we believe that this idea is un-Scriptural and therefore un-Lutheran. If what we have written in the preceding chapters on baptismal Grace, the baptismal covenant, and the possibility of keeping that covenant, is true, then this popular idea, set forth above, is false. And _vice versa_, if this popular view is correct, then the whole Lutheran system of baptism, baptismal Grace, and the baptismal covenant, falls to the ground.