OR AN INQUIRY INTO THE CONDITION OF CHILDREN
IN THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH.
“For me and my house, we shall serve Jehovah.”—JOSHUA xxiv. 15.
(Translated for the first time from the French.)
(Continued from page 383.)
CHAPTER VI.—(CONTINUED).
(The father of the family had spoken of circumcision as a spiritual seal: see page 383.)
Samuel.—“Spiritual! Speak you thus of the material seal of circumcision?”
The father of the family.—“You know that St. Paul calls it ‘the seal of the righteousness which is by faith’ (Romans iv. 11); and besides, if, like water-baptism it was, as to its form, material; it had, as to its substance, reference to the spiritual circumcision of the heart, which it was fitted to remind the Jews of, continually.”
Samuel.—“But was not that ordinance enjoined upon Abraham in order to place his posterity in the position of a separate people, and with a view mainly to temporal blessings?”
The father of the family.—“That circumcision had such an end, I admit. But its spiritual sense could not be overlooked, seeing that is the sense on which the Scriptures insist, and the sense which the prophets and the Apostles so often recall” (Jeremiah iv. 4; ix. 26. Acts vii. 51).
Samuel.—“That is very true. I see that quite clearly.”
The father of the family.—“You see then that although circumcision had a spiritual sense, yet infants, who could not understand its meaning, were circumcised, and that then (in the days of Abraham), as in the days of Seth, and afterwards in the days of Shem, the name of Jehovah was by way of renewal called upon the infant child of the believer. Now this constitution of the Church on earth under the covenant of the Promise was not altered from the beginning up to the time of Moses, that is to say, for more than two thousand five hundred years. And besides, notice that that Church was propagated within one sole family, which was that of Seth, of whom Noah and after him Shem, and after him Terah, and after him Abraham, were the children.”
Samuel.—“I had not noticed that before, and yet it is certainly worthy of being pondered, since it shows us the Church perpetu- ated, as a matter of fact, from generation to generation.”
The father of the family.—“That, certainly, does not mean that every child of those families was one of God’s elect. That was not the case. But it implies that it was God’s will, in the dispensation of His providence, that the recruiting and mustering of His Church should take place in this way, and that children consecrated with their parents by the name of the Lord, should form the people to whom He should confide His promise, His revelations and His oracles. His election of grace was over and above this dispensation, from the midst of which, and by faith, He was drawing the Church of the first-born.”
Samuel.—”I appreciate what you say. You mean, don’t you, that the recruits were thus formed to begin with, and that out of those consecrated families the Lord was gathering together His elect?”
The father of the family.—”I fail to see aught else in the history of the promise of grace up to Moses; then from the time of Moses, under the law, for the fifteen centuries during which it lasted, I see the same constitution, to wit, infants along with their fathers called and sealed by the name of God, as, from the beginning of the world, had been the case in respect of the families of the patriarchs.”
Samuel.—”Truly, the condition of the children of believing parents begin to appear to me different to what I had up till now regarded it, and what strikes me most is the manner of acting of the principle of God’s sovereignty, who, according to His good pleasure, thus set apart and consecrated the subjects of His promise.”
The father of the promise.—”You may take it as a fact, Samuel, as I already said to you, that this is a heavenly principle which Baptists allow to go out of sight in their system, and in so doing, they lose sight of something that pertains to the glory of the promise.”
Samuel.—”I can’t say I quite sympathise with you in your last remark. On the contrary, I certainly gave all the glory to God when, in order to obey Him, I received baptism after I believed. Also I affirm that with a good conscience, and, at the same time, as humbling myself with a sense of absolute dependence before the Lord, I brought to Him, in spirit, my infant child and consecrated the child to Him, imploring upon the child God’s blessing.”
The father of the child.—”And in all this, I will venture to say, you, not knowing the rights of God, with a good conscience, have forgotten His word, and done that for which you had not His permission.”
Samuel.—”Me! brother. In what respect, now, I should like to know?”
The father of the family.—”To pretend to consecrate, on your own initiative, a creature of God! As if man, sinful and impure as he is, should on his own initiative, and by his feelings, his ceremonies or his vows, render holy that which God has not sanctified!”
Samuel.—“You quite astonish me, my friend. Do you speak in earnest?”
The father of the family.—“That which I say, I say with all earnestness, for it is a matter which bears on the rights and on the majesty of Jehovah, who will not give His glory to any other. Now, my friend, it is Jehovah that sanctifies, it’s He who consecrates one for His own service, as it is He who foreknows, and calls and justifies. That which God declares to be unclean remains such, whatever opinion man may have of it or whatever ceremony he may employ with a view to consecrate it. So also that which God declares to be holy to Him, is such, and remains such, howsoever little be the esteem that man puts thereon. There is an infinite distance between Jehovah and man, and that distance is overlapped only by the grace which comes down from God to us, but can never mount up from man to God. It is on this account that I say that neither your presentation, as you call it, of your child to God, nor your tender and fervent prayer, nor any ceremony that of your own initiative you could employ can avail to render holy to Jehovah that which God Himself has not rendered holy, and that if you have thought of putting thus apart your child for the Lord, you have usurped the rights of God who never gives this power to any parent.”
Samuel.—“But did not Hannah consecrate her child, Samuel, to the Lord?”
The father of the family.—“Yes; but did not God say that to Him appertained all the first-born? And was not Samuel also of that holy race that were under obligations to bear the name of God? And, once more, was it otherwise than by the name of Jehovah that he was consecrated?”
Samuel.—“But parents carried, presented, to the Lord Jesus their little children: Cannot I do the same thing?”
The father of the family.—“Yes, the same thing, and to that end you should have regarded your child, as the parents of whom you speak regarded theirs, that is to say, as holy to the Lord, as being of His people, and of His Church.”
Samuel.—“Besides, dear brother, I consider my child as holy, for I have prayed with all my soul for him now it is written (1 Tim. iv. 5) that every creature of God is sanctified through prayer.”
The father of the family.—“No, dear Samuel, but it is written that it is consecrated through the word of God and prayer, and not by prayer alone. And herein appears the very great difference which the Bible makes as between faith and superstition. Superstition gets persuaded in a certain direction, then it prays and makes its vows. Faith, on the other hand, believes that which God has written in His book, then it prays conformably to God’s will, but never according to its own imaginings. What a difference there is between those two ways!”
Samuel.—“Do you believe then that a Baptist Church which gathers together, with the infant children of the families thereof, in order to present them to the Lord, commits a superstitious act?”
The father of the family.—”Certainly, for either these infant children are holy in Jehovah’s name, or else they are not holy. But if they are not holy, it’s a sin to suppose them such, and especially to pretend to make them such. Now in the opinion of Baptists Christian children are not consecrated by Jehovah: these children therefore, ought not to be found in the midst of His people, and the presentation of which you speak is quite a vain thing, just as, under the law, would be the presentation of an animal not clean upon the altar of the Lord. Neither the intention, nor the prayers, nor the ceremonies of all Israel would have sanctified to Jehovah that which He Himself had not consecrated.”
Samuel.—”But, dear friend, my child was surely holy, seeing that God said to St. Peter, ‘what God hath cleansed that make not thou common'” (Acts x. 15).
The father of the family.—”What an argument, Samuel! what a way to interpret the Scriptures! What, my friend, because God said that the Gospel should indiscriminately be preached to all nations, and that thus the middle wall of partition, which was by the law, was taken out of the way, you conclude that your infant child had been consecrated to the Lord, and that thus you are at liberty to present, as you say, your child to the Lord in the Church? Ah well, if the purity or consecration of your infant is none other than this, the same is true of every other child in the world, and thus you have as much right to bring within the Church the children of Turks, and of pagans, and to present them, along with yours, to the Lord.”
Samuel.—”Well, I feel that I could not present to God a Mussulman child, in the same way as I have presented to Him my own child. For I do not see how a Christian Church could have, in its gatherings of little children, Turks or Pagans, or could present them to the Lord. . . . It must be therefore that there is here something which I have not yet been able to perceive, or something which I have not been able to understand in the sense of the Scriptures.”
The father of the family.—”That something, dear Samuel, is the authority of God; it is His word. You have forgotten both, in regard to your infant, and you have substituted your feeling in place of the divine declaration.”
Samuel.—”That is to say, according to you, I have been superstitious rather than believing?”
The father of the family.—”That is what it looks like to me, my dear friend.”
Samuel.—”What should I have done then?”
The father of the family.—”You should have, to begin with, assured yourself, according to God’s word well understood, that your child was consecrated by the will of the Lord, then after having seen that that is so, you should have invoked upon him the very word of that consecration, and prayed to the Lord to bring to realisation the promise which the word of consecration contains. To act thus, was to have acted according to faith.”
Samuel.—”But by what word of the Lord, I pray you, was my child consecrated?”
The father of the family.—”By that of the covenant of Promise, my brother, that is to say, by the same word which from the beginning of the Church consecrated the children of Seth, after that of Shem, after that of Abraham. That word has not once been changed, neither has it even been recalled.”
Samuel.—”But, my brother, has not the Gospel abolished those old things? Are not all things now made new?”
The father of the family.—”But rather, I would ask you, if that was not the Gospel, in other words the promise of grace, which Seth and Shem and Abraham knew and believed? Is it not to that Gospel that the law has borne witness? Was not that covenant, within which the Patriarchs found themselves, and of which Melchizedec was a priest (Hebrews vii.), the covenant of which Jesus, the true Melchizedec, is the eternal Mediator? Was it those ‘old things of the law’ that were in question when Abraham, as St. Paul observes, was blessed by this priest of the order of grace? What a mistake, good friend, what a confusion of times and of dispensations, to thus cast upon the Church of the patriarchs, which lasted for more than twenty-five centuries, the legal colour of the Levitical dispensation! It was the Promise, it was the covenant of grace, it was Christ and His fulness that was, in those remote times, the object of faith, as is the case to-day. The law, with its shadows and ordinances, was added afterwards within the kingdom, within the Church of the promise, and if the Gospel by its splendour has brought life to perfect light, it has not on this account changed the nature of the covenant, which, from the Promise given in the garden of Eden even to the incarnation of the Son of God in the seed of the woman, has only had the one and the same constitution.”
Samuel.—”In brief, think you, that now within the Church, the relation of infant children to their parents is the same as it was in the days of the patriarchs, and under the law?”
The father of the family.—”Absolutely. Election, without doubt, is no more hereditary to-day than it was then. Now, then, always, it is ‘not of blood, nor of the will of man, nor of the will of the flesh’ that the elect family of the Lord are born. But to-day, as always, that which God has consecrated is holy, and that which His word has instituted, remains. That, Samuel, is the reason why, seeing that God has not under the Gospel revoked His first word in respect of the infant children of believers, man will no more do it, whatever he may, through ignorance or through error, attempt.
(To be continued.)