OR AN INQUIRY INTO THE CONDITION OF CHILDREN
IN THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH.
BY CAESAR MALAN, DOCTOR IN THEOLOGY.
“For me and my house, we shall serve Jehovah.”—JOSHUA xxiv. 15.
(Translated for the first time from the French.)
(Continued from page 337.)
CHAPTER VI.—THE GOSPEL DOES NOT SEPARATE THE CHILD FROM ITS FATHER.
Samuel.—”You then hark back on this, that children born to parents to whom the covenant has come, find themselves, along with their parents, in that covenant.”
The father of the family.—”That is what Messiah says, as you saw (Psalm xxii.). They are the posterity who should be enrolled from age to age. In regard to this I have no doubt. I see in the children of believers the recruits of the Church militant, and I regard them as being certainly of that army, as long, that is, as they do not voluntarily desert the colours.”
Samuel.—”And is it to that posterity of the people that you think the ordinances of the Church belong?”
The father of the family.—”By no means yet that of the Supper, for in respect to it there comes in an active duty of faith. But the Sacrament of enrolment, if I may so speak—I mean baptism with water—belongs to them without doubt, seeing that it is equivalent not to an active duty, but it is a mark, a seal, of levy and sovereign admission on the part of Jehovah, who Himself applies it, and that on a passive subject.”
Samuel.—”But is that distinction which you make between the two ordinances Scriptural?”
The father of the family.—”Beyond doubt, for, as we have already seen, as to the Supper, the Scriptures say to him who approaches it, ‘Examine thou thyself, afterwards do this’ (1 Cor. xi. 28). But as to baptism the Scriptures do not say, ‘Examine thyself,’ but ‘Be baptised’ (Acts ii. 38), that is to say, receive the seal, be marked in the name of the Lord. So, I repeat, it is always after that mode that baptism is administered. ‘Go and baptise,’ says the Lord. ‘Let every one of you be baptised,’ says St. Peter. ‘It is permitted thee,’ not ‘do it,’ says Philip.”
Samuel.—”From which you conclude, as I see, that if a little child has been called of God he is as proper a subject to receive the seal of baptism as is a man who has believed, and confesses Him.”
The father of the family.—”Assuredly; for yet once more, for it is not from him who is marked with the seal that the seal has either its impression or its authority.”
Samuel.—“In a word, you hold that, under the new covenant, the little child who belongs to it ought to receive the initiating sign, just as the little child received it under the old covenant?”
The father of the family.—“And you too, Samuel, say the same thing. For, mark you, your doubt does not concern the propriety of putting the seal of the covenant on one that is within that covenant, but you ask if the covenant can belong to a little child. From which it follows that if it is shown you from the Word that such a little child is within the covenant, you will admit that the child should receive the seal of the covenant.”
Samuel.—“Thus then your principle is that baptism with water, the sign or seal of the new covenant, may, and often ought to be placed on those who have not faith.”
The father of the family.—“Not by any means on the unbeliever, but on a person not actively believing, certainly.”
Samuel.—“Do you find proofs of the truth of that view in the Word of God.”
The father of the family.—“A great number. For, not to speak of Simon Magus, who was baptised and who, although he had made a profession of believing, yet never had faith, you see from the Gospels that several of the disciples of the Lord left Him, and returned no more to Him (John vi. 66, 1 John ii. 19). Now these disciples had surely been baptised, and that with the Lord’s own cognisance (John iv. 2), and that Lord who knew from the beginning who they were that the Father had given Him, knew also who had faith. In that case it is evident that some had not faith whom the Lord baptised with water, for had they been true believers they would never have turned back from Him, as those did. That is why it seems to me that to say that baptism with water is the seal or confirmation of faith is to bring a charge against the Lord Himself, and amounts to saying that he baptised badly, or that he was deceived when He made these disciples.”
Samuel.—“I see your point. Your reasoning is very close: for to suppose that any of those who finally quitted the Lord had not been baptised by Him would be purely imaginary, seeing that they were named as His disciples. . . . Therefore I, from this hour, give up saying that baptism with water was given by the Lord in confirmation of faith, or a seal put upon faith. But was not baptism with water always granted after a profession of faith? Is there mention made in the Scriptures of a single baptised person who had not made a profession of faith before being thus sealed with water baptism?”
The father of the family.—“Here, good friend, I recall to your memory that which I said concerning the baptism of the Lord Jesus, by whom no confession of faith was made, and I also repeat that, although that profession should be made by one who is not yet within the Church but is being called thereto, the case is different in regard to those who are already within the Church. Baptism with water proclaims the promise of grace, which is in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. It is then joined to that promise, and accompanies it and seals it; it attaches itself to him whom the promise reaches—that is to say, to him to whom God hath extended it. If, then, I am a person to whom God has extended that promise, I am a person that ought to be baptised, seeing that baptism as much as says—Thou who art thus sealed with water, thou art under the promise which takes in the name of Jehovah. This baptism marks me then because, according to the will of God, I am the subject of that promise, of which I shall have the spiritual benefit if I receive it in my heart and by faith.”
Samuel.—”That view, dear friend, is new to me. Yet it is all the time your self-same principle of the sovereignty of God. It is God that, according to His pleasure, envelopes under the promise of grace those whom it pleases Him, and who places on them the seal of this dispensation of this call?”
The father of the family.—”Yes, my brother, it is the subject of that sovereign promise that God thus points out, and at the very time that He gives this subject by this baptism the commandment to believe the promise, he publishes it and by a material and symbolical kind of preaching he recalls the promise in the midst of the people to whom the promise has come, and they both hear and see it at every baptism which they witness. Now, you surely understand, that as I have received baptism because that to me the promise came, if that promise reaches my child also, he too ought to be marked with the same seal, since that he also is one of the subjects of this covenant.”
Samuel.—”Yes, without doubt; but it is there exactly that the question comes in. Is the child within this covenant simply because his father is within it?”
The father of the family.—”The child was there assuredly from the beginning of the Church on earth, or as soon as the promise of grace, which is God’s covenant towards man, was made to the human race.”
Samuel.—”Please shew it me, for this matter is of the greatest interest to me?”
The father of the family.—”To begin with then, as soon as you open the Bible, please give heed to a circumstance which appears to me very striking. We are told (Genesis iv. 26) ‘That Seth had a son, and that he called his name Enos, and that then began men to call upon the name of Jehovah.’ That is to say, from the beginning of the world you find on the occasion of the birth of a child, the invocation of the name of Jehovah, and that invocation constitutes henceforth the Church, the people of God, distinct and separate from the impious race of Cain; and that Church—thus taking its beginning from the birth of believing Seth’s first-born child—was set up within the family of that believer, and it consisted of his children, of his race, who remained distinct from the family of Cain by the name of Jehovah being called upon them, and by their being called sons or children of God (Genesis vi. 2). Certainly, I mean to say, that so far as it concerns that primitive Church, and for the following well-nigh seven generations the family was reputed as the Church, and the children who were members of the family were precisely ‘the posterity enlisted unto Jehovah,’ and within which that Church was continued. You see then that in those primitive times of the Gospel (for it was the Promise, without the Law, that was then announced) the children were born within the Church, and at that time already the name of Jehovah was called upon them.”
Samuel.—”I thank you for shewing me that fact, which I had not before noticed, a fact which appears to me to be as solid as it is interesting. I can only recognise that then assuredly the name of the Lord was invoked upon the child as well as upon its father.”
The father of the family.—”You will also grant that it was so done to the child by the authority of God, and according to the covenant of His promise. For we learn that then also God taught His people among whom the offering of the sacrifice, which was the worship of the Lord, and at which the families assisted, was offered up. Now to suppose that the children were turned away from that solemn worship would be to contradict the very constitution of the Church at that time.”
Samuel.—”No, I do not think the thing can be supposed.”
The father of the family.—”But that was how the matter stood up to the time that the Church, becoming adulterous, mingled with the descendants of Cain. Then Noah, the head of a family, alone remained faithful, and it was to him alone, but together with his children, that the Promise came. The Church was then only in the Ark, and shortly after the flood it was only in the family of Shem that the people of God were found, until that Abraham, one of the descendants of Shem, became in a special sense the depository, within his family, of the promise of the covenant. Now you see, don’t you, that from the beginning of the Church up to the time of which we speak, the Church was not composed of individuals so to say picked out from here and there, or taken from so many places or plucked from off so many trunks, but rather was it a propagated body, increased by families and race and generations up to the day that the Lord pointed out a particular family in which the promise should find accomplishment, and indicated His will that that family should add to the name of God which was called upon them a sign or seal of the covenant which henceforth should appertain to that family alone. Now, dear brother, please observe two things: First, that that dispensation which endured more than two thousand five hundred years was always a dispensation of the promise of grace, and, secondly, that when to the calling upon them of the name of Jehovah there was added a visible seal, that mark or seal was spiritual.”
[This chapter is rather long and so we break off here in the middle of it.—
J. R. M.]
(To be continued.)