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 429.)
CHAPTER VII.—THAT WHICH WAS ONCE ORDAINED BY THE LORD CONTINUES IN FORCE AS LONG AS THE LORD HIMSELF DOES NOT REVOKE IT.
Samuel.—“It is true that God has not formally abolished that which He said concerning the infant children of His ancient people; but, on the other hand, neither has He repeated it nor confirmed it—things which I think He would have done if it had been His will to continue it.”
The father of the family.—“Yet once more, Samuel, I must say that your mode of reasoning astonishes me. What! You, dear friend, reckon that what the Lord appointed of old is now revoked because He has not proclaimed it anew! In that way the commandments, the precepts, the doctrines, the promises, the consolations, wherewith the books of the prophets are full, are to us as though they were not, because they have not been reproduced and repeated in the Gospel! So that it is open to us, under the Gospel, to fear the coming of a second flood, because the promise which God made to Noah was not repeated in formal terms! What strange teaching, my brother!”
Samuel.—“My reasoning, I must admit, was not sound. Yes, I understand that the things which God ordained remain; at least until He has revoked them by a word as specific as that whereby He instituted them. It was thus, as I perceive, that He put an end to the Levitical ordinances: He formally revoked them.”
The father of the family.—“Well, then, dear brother, if such a relation of parents to their children as had place in the primitive Church had no vital connection with the Levitical law, which alone was revoked, why should you say that that ancient relation has come to an end if God Himself has not said so?”
Samuel.—“I freely grant that I am not at liberty to do it. And yet it seems to me that if the Lord Jesus had meant that the children of believers, under the Gospel, should be members of His Church, and that they should bear the seal thereof, He would have said so, for the thing was important.”
The father of the family.—“Ah, well! Now look if this reasoning is sound. Tell me, Samuel, if you believe that the Fourth Commandment is yet in force under the Gospel?”
Samuel.—“Yes, surely; and that for two positive reasons. First, that the ground on which the commandment is based—to wit, ‘that God rested’—is to-day just what it was from the beginning of the world; and, second, that this commandment does not belong to the Levitical ordinances, and that therefore it has not been revoked with them.”
The father of the family.—“And do you also think that the substitution of the Lord’s Day instead of the day we call Saturday has been in accordance with the divine will?”
Samuel.—“Assuredly, since at the same time that the commandment to sanctify the seventh day is maintained intact, the analogy of the faith, in regard to the resurrection of the Saviour, is preserved. Besides, I can’t believe that the Church apostolic would have made this change if the thing had not been according to the mind of the Holy Spirit, who directed them.”
The father of the family.—“Nevertheless, my brother, although that thing also was important, the Lord did not say it over again, for not only did He not formally repeat the Fourth Commandment, but besides He did not make mention of the change of day. Why, then, on your way of reasoning do you keep the Sabbath, or transfer it to the first day of the week?”
Samuel.—“I own indeed that my reasoning has had something halting in it, seeing that if I am satisfied in respect of the Fourth Commandment, with the inferences upon which I have been proceeding, I ought also to admit their force in regard to the parallel case which now occupies our attention.”
The father of the family.—“So I too think, and that is why I, without fear, affirm that now, under the Gospel (as was always the case under the same Gospel) the children of believers’ belong to the Church, because (1) the establishing ordinance which concerns them has never been revoked; (2) the ground upon which that ordinance was based is now the same as it had been at the beginning; (3) the consecration of children in this sense is in keeping with the analogy of the faith; (4) and lastly, because the apostolic Church counted them as saints,* a thing they did not do without the guidance of the Holy Spirit.
* Compare Eph. i. 1 with Eph. vi. 1; also Col. i. 2 with Col. iii. 20.—J. R. M.
Now, taking up these reasons seriatim, I ask in connection with the first of them, Where is it said in the Scriptures that God has withdrawn or abolished the blessing put upon the children of believers from the beginning, and notably in the family of Abraham, both before the Law was given and after it was given? You will not find it anywhere. It is not then permitted me on any account to imagine it.
I conclude then in regard to this first head that the blessing, because not revoked, continues, and therefore to-day, as then, it is of divine institution that the name of the Lord should be called on the child of a believing parent, to whom God to-day, as then, says, “I am thy God and the God of thy seed after thee, and my promise is for thee and for thy children.” Let a Seth then, or an Abraham now re-appear, and his family, sealed with the name of Jehovah, will be named “the sons* or the children of God,” and by that name they will be separated from the impious who slight and reject this sacred seal.
* I suppose Dr. Malan would support this statement by a reference to Genesis vi. 2, it being the commonly accepted view that “sons of God” here mean the descendants of Seth. Personally I am not satisfied that Benê elohîm (sons of God) mean anything else than “the strong ones.”—J. R. M.
Besides, I observe that, even under the dispensation of the Law, the consecration of children was not based on any purely Levitical ordinance, but had for its ground a spiritual reason, to wit, that the name and the glory of Jehovah was put upon them (Micah ii. 9), and this was accompanied with a seal which had a spiritual import (Romans iv. 11). Moreover, I find that two commandments of the moral law directly concern them, for does not the Second Commandment pronounce a blessing or a curse upon them from generation to generation, and does not the Fifth Commandment enjoin upon children a duty, and add a promise to them that keep it?
I conclude therefore, in the second place, that infant children are within the Church of God, to whom belong the name, the glory, the commandments, and the promises of God; and that they are within the Church not in virtue of an ordinance which has had an end, but in virtue of a spiritual reason which remains to-day what it had ever been.
I go still farther: fifteen centuries have passed since the time of Moses, and there appear, first, ‘he that should turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers,’ and, next, the Lord Himself, who, having within the Church received the baptism of water before He received that of the Spirit, sets forth several things which are so far from abolishing that consecration of children which obtained in the primitive Church that they rather confirm and give the institution a new lustre. Thus in keeping with the prophecy which had been spoken concerning Him, ‘that he would gather the lambs in his arms’ (Isaiah xl. 11), I hear him bless the little children whom he took up into his arms, and on whom he laid his hands (Matthew xix. 13; Mark x. 13); and, according to the analogy of the faith, I conclude that these children whom He welcomed and whom He blessed are not outside ‘the flock of His pasture.’
I understand Him also to say concerning these children (who, being Jews, had already been consecrated), that the kingdom of heaven appertained to them, and, according to the analogy of the faith, I conclude from this that the Gospel dispensation, which is this kingdom, does not cast them out from its bosom.
He says also concerning those little children that, ‘they may be received in his name,’ that is to say, as He Himself puts it, ‘because they are his disciples’ (Matthew xviii. 5; x. 42), or as it is put in Mark ix. 41, ‘because they belong to him,’ and, according to the analogy of the faith, I conclude from all this, that, so far from being separated from their believing parents, little children belong to the people on whom ‘the name of Christ is called,’ and that they are thus of His ‘disciples.’
Samuel.—”Of His ‘disciples,’ say you? How can a little child be a disciple?”
The father of the family.—”Why not, if this discipleship is of divine authority, and one upon which we must enter not at all by choice or by acquisition, but by grace and by authority? Were not the little children of the slave family [see chapter ii.] disciples of liberty, in order that they might be instructed therein, although they had not the very knowledge thereof at the time? And we ourselves, Samuel, are not we ourselves disciples of the fulness of the knowledge which is in Christ, although in many respects we are yet strangers, both as to knowledge and feeling, to those mysteries which yet hold us under their power?”
Samuel.—”It is then the sovereignty of God and the majesty of His dispensations that you regard all the time?”
The father of the family.—”Yes, always; and I reckon that it is a misunderstanding of discipleship when one thinks that one is such only when one personally consents to be such. When the Lord determines that His promise shall come to a tribe of men, and that the families of this tribe shall know it, it is this determination of God which constitutes them disciples, and they are not such only when they shall have actually laid hold of the promise, or when they shall have professed to have believed it. It is then, without doubt, that they become ‘believing disciples,’ ‘obedient disciples,’ ‘true disciples,’ ‘disciples set free,’ as the Lord Himself puts it (John viii. 30-33), but it is not then that they become enrolled in the number of the people upon whom the name of the Lord is called, for this was true of them when God caused it to be so.”
Samuel.—”That view is new to me. I had always understood that a disciple meant a believer, or at least one that was actually being taught.”
The father of the family.—”But your view has been defective, in so much as it overlooks the supremacy of the divine institution. Thus, for example, under the Law the little child was, along with its parents, under the pedagogy of the Levitical ordinances. He was the disciple in this sense even from the very beginning of his life. He was under that law—he was under those doctrines, those ordinances, those promises—and he had all this not from personal choice but from the divine appointment; and in that the Jewish child differed essentially from the children of the Moabites or of the Greeks, who were but disciples of falsehood.”
Samuel.—“That is very clear to me as to the Law, but is the case the same when our reference is to the spiritual doctrine of the Gospel?”
The father of the family.—“Let us be frank, dear Samuel, and do not let us forget that the Law also was spiritual in all that constituted the essential truth of it, its doctrine and its promises.”
Samuel.—“I thank you, good friend; you have done well to reprove me.”
The father of the family.—“Consider then, in this connection that when the Lord Jesus set forth the severe parable, as I may call it, of the vinedressers (Matthew xxi.), He declared to the rulers of the Jews “that the Kingdom of God should be taken from them, and should be given to a nation that should render the fruits in their season.” That nation, as you know, were the Gentiles, and that Kingdom of God was the dispensation of the Covenant of Promise, even such as the Jewish people had been in possession of—the Levitical ordinances, which were only accidental, only a transitory circumstance in the constitution of the Kingdom, being here left out of account. Now, in this Kingdom, and according to its fundamental constitution, children were not separated from their parents, and were under obligation to carry on them the name of Jehovah—and so, according to the analogy of the faith, I without doubt conclude that in this Kingdom of God, now as then, the children are with their parents, and on them ought to be called the name of Jehovah.”
Samuel.—“What shall I answer you? The induction is certainly simple and natural: can I then refuse assent to it?”
(To be continued.)
A Letter from Rev. J. B. Radasi, Rhodesia.—Rev. Neil Cameron has received a letter from Mr. Radasi, in which he refers to his visit to Lovedale and the young people there belonging to our Mission:—“I saw the two boys and the young girl from our Mission here being trained as teachers. They were all very well spoken of by the authorities at Lovedale. May the Lord bless them and keep them and give them grace that they might be a blessing to their people here if spared to return again! Our people are praying for them there, and we also hope that you will not forget them in your prayers. We are thankful that you have not forgotten us in your prayers. . . . I got the enclosed P.O. for £1, sent me by a friend in Kingussie. You will kindly thank the friend for me. Kindest regards to you, Mrs. Radasi joining.—Yours very sincerely,
JOHN B. RADASI.”
“WHEN you send your prayers, be sure to direct them to the care of the Redeemer, and then they will never miscarry.”—Matt. Henry.