# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1855 04 10_S132
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

132

the devil, etc., has its full justification. If I have thus justified those questions together with their answers as an expression of our conviction and confidence concerning the child's faith, I have yet not meant thereby to deny that to this expression another and perhaps still more convenient form might have been given; but who will quarrel with the Church that she has chosen this form of questions and answers, which is so full of meaning, so beautiful and lively and fully corresponding to our doctrine of the faith of children, which can appear dark and unsuitable only to him who has a mistaken notion of the faith of children?

If, beloved friend, you are satisfied by this exposition, as I hope, then the Christian labor of love of a baptismal sponsor will no longer be clouded and embittered to you by doubting thoughts; you will be able to answer with a joyful Yes; yes, the Christian office of sponsor will appear to you only so much the holier and more important; you will, to use Luther's words in the preface to the Baptismal Booklet, stand by the poor little children with your whole heart and strong faith, and pray most devoutly that God would not only help it out of the devil's power, but also strengthen it, that it may be able to withstand him manfully in life and death. And I fear, he adds, that the people turn out so ill after baptism because they have dealt so coldly and negligently with them, and have prayed for them so entirely without earnestness at baptism.

Your friend and brother,

T. B.

Postscript of the Editor. An unnamed "Reader of the Lutheraner" calls upon us for an explanation of how Johann Gerhard can say that faith in children is wrought through baptism, whereas the questions put to the sponsors at baptism show that the child, according to the conviction of the Church, believes already before baptism. Answer: Although no Christian can deny that God, in a case of necessity, is able to give faith to a child also before and without baptism, yet the Sacrament of baptism is and remains the ordinary means through which children are brought to Christ, blessed, endowed with faith and regenerated. Luther says quite rightly, against the papist Cochlaeus, that children are not made righteous and saved through baptism ex opere operato, but believe at (ad) baptism,*) but "1. to believe at baptism does not mean to believe before baptism, and 2. Luther understands by baptism (with full right) the whole compass of the acts belonging to baptism and the use of this Sacrament. 3. The sponsors do not lend the children the heart, but the mouth, and answer for them: 'I believe,' because they already believe through baptism. 4. Mathematically exact we can and will not determine the point, the moment, when children receive faith in the use of the Sacrament." (These are all words of the old Lutheran theologian Quenstedt.) Gerhard therefore agrees fully with Luther, and both with the Scripture. — The unnamed "Reader of the Lutheraner" takes offense further at this, that Gerhard cites Saul as an example of how God can work faith even without the hearing of preaching. Though this example may not be altogether striking, yet the matter is right, namely, that we men indeed are bound to the means of grace, but not God. — Moreover, we cannot refrain from expressing the wish that God may give the "Lutheraner" very many such attentive readers as the dear questioner must be.

*) See Luther's Works, Halle edition, XIX., 701. Compare Art. 5 of the Augsburg Confession.

Private Correspondence from Saxony.

. . . the 22d of Jan., 1855.

. . . .Since your vindication has appeared, everything has taken another shape. I have not yet seen or spoken with anyone who has not given you right. Kahnis, as I hear, is inclined to write a treatise on this question. And surely that has been a way wisely ordered by the LORD, to vindicate you, who stood with many in no very good odor, whom people regarded with much distrust, in a striking manner, and to bring you into good odor, at the same time, however, to give to our now leading theologians a good lesson, and thereby also to open a connection with them. Praised be the only wise God, who leads His believers wonderfully and governs His Church wisely .... For your answer I am especially obliged to you still further thanks. It has comforted, raised up, gladdened, and instructed me; for without your perhaps having surmised it, you have spoken a weighty word at the same time on the conditions here. Ah, that the time might come when we also should not be ashamed to profess the confession of the doctrine of Church and Ministry, which you with your congregations have set forth unanimously and with one heart, as our own, publicly, and to receive it among the "public testimonies of the faith of our Church"! Until then, however, there seems still a great leap, and the strength of the fewest among us to suffice for it. The matter is to them too strange and too high; they cannot comprehend it. So much the greater is the grace and mercy of God which He shows to those to whom He lets behold the depths of His mysteries. The sin of men causes, as church history shows, that one does not always first and before everything ask: What is truth? Where does it let itself be heard? but: Who is it that bears witness to it? — and then one is ever and ever again ready with a "Can there any good thing come out of Nazareth?" when the bearers and witnesses of the truth are not those from whom one, humanly speaking, would most readily expect that they should be so.

. . . .There are among my congregation people who are not ashamed of the Gospel and have received it with joy and still receive it. Truly the devil, through Mammon, through pride, through indifference, has built himself a bulwark among many, which cannot easily be taken. I have introduced personal announcement for Confession. Nevertheless I feel deeply the lack of any church discipline. My conscience suffers often great distress. With us the Dresden hymn-book is introduced. How little this expresses the Lutheran faith you will surely be able to recall. I am about to introduce the "Eisenach Draft" (150 hymns) as a school hymn-book and in the church first as an appendix to the Dresden, which perhaps with God's help will succeed. But what great blocks there are besides to be removed in our Church, over which one, so to speak, stumbles every day, and which make one's heart bleed! I name only: the Agenda, which for me is a perpetual cross. Our church government has indeed the best will, but very often its hands are bound, or it binds them itself. First they mean to alter the baptismal forms. As I hear, there are in future to be only two, one which will be nearly like the old, and one in which they mean to pass over the: Dost thou renounce the devil, etc., and change it into a confession of the person baptized. I am doubtful whether this is to be tolerated. — My schoolmaster is weak, but yet willing and lets himself be told. Luther's Catechism has been brought back into our schools. One cannot, in general, deny that in the last time much and good has been done. — My Superintendent is a good-natured man, inclining toward the Union. My neighbors in office are, except two, rationalistic in sentiment. The clergy of the Ephorie here are so for the greater part; they do not, however, come forward. Smilingly they look upon the younger generation, which boasts of being further than they have come; dreadfully hard it may indeed be for such to extricate themselves from their circle of life and thought, in which they have settled since school and university days. Most of them lack especially the courage to bear the disgrace of change and conversion. It is well that at least our University has now gained another shape. Niedner is long gone. His pride has cast him down. Krehl is emeritus. Theile is dead. Winer is an expiring light. In their stead we have Kahnis, who wills the good so far as he has recognized it, and has transplanted the Prussian Union conflict into our "peaceful" Saxony. Liebner works at Kahnis's side; he is a Schleiermacherian. Winer by his influence has contrived to smuggle in one of his pupils, a de Wette of this time on a small scale, into the University as professor extraordinarius and second University preacher. Who is to come into Theile's place is still in suspenso (undecided). They hope for Delitzsch, who indeed has let himself be moved from his course by science. Our Leipzig has still an Anger, a rationalist of the old grain, and a Tuch, a Hebraist from Ewald's school, to show. Surely a varied bill of fare! Take