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 28.)
CHAPTER VIII. CONTINUED.—THE APOSTLES REGARDED THE CHILDREN OF BELIEVERS AS MEMBERS OF THE CHURCH.
Samuel.—”Your observations may possibly be well grounded, but an objection which seems to me a forcible one always comes up to me in the form, that, if little children had been baptised by the Apostles, they surely would have made mention of the fact or circumstance, at least in so much as a single instance. And yet they say nothing about it anywhere.”
The father of the family.—”How differently, dear friend, one and the same thing looks to us according as we regard it from different points of view! From the circumstance that the Apostles have not said, ‘We baptised such or such a little child,’ you conclude that they never did baptise an infant, and I, on the other hand, draw a proof positive of the fact of their having done it from this silence.”
Samuel.—”But, how? May I not in turn now say to you, Why suppose that that is not written?”
The father of the family.—”I am not going to suppose anything. I mean only to reason rightly, and in keeping with that that is written. And first, you will acknowledge, I think, that a thing may have had place in the Church, and may have been there habitually although the Holy Scriptures should not have made express mention of it. For example, you admit that it was customary among the Jews for some one to teach the children to read, although God had not formally given commandments to that effect, and although He has nowhere said that the practice prevailed?”
Samuel.—”Without doubt; and I quite take in the significance of the example you quote.”
The father of the family.—”Now, here is another case:—Although neither the Lord nor any of His Apostles has said that women ought to partake of the Lord’s Supper, and although we are not told in the Bible that women did partake thereof even so much as once, yet you admit that the practice of women partaking of the Lord’s Supper is a good one, and that it is thoroughly scriptural?”
Samuel.—”Certainly, and in fact I perceive that from the silence of the Apostles as touching that usage I cannot conclude that in the Apostolic Church women did not partake of the Lord’s Supper.”
The father of the family.—”Then surely you will allow that their silence in respect of the baptism of infants cannot be taken as proving that the thing was not done in the days of the Apostles. And not only that, but I think that this silence proves the contrary of what you maintain.”
Samuel.—”You, I suppose, would put it thus: As infant baptism was the ordinary thing, the thing went without saying, and there was no occasion to speak about it?”
The father of the family.—”Exactly; for, in brief, would you yourself say that neither Samuel, the son of Elkanah, nor the Jewish children during the days of the Judges and the Kings of Israel were not circumcised, because the sacred history makes no record of the fact?”
Samuel.—”I would rather reason quite in an opposite sense: for seeing that the sacred historian (Joshua v.) makes mention of the omission of circumcision as long as the children of Israel sojourned in the wilderness, note would have been taken of it, if this omission occurred at a second period.”
The father of the family.—”Ah well, my brother, in the same way would I interpret the silence of the Apostles as regards the matter now in hand. I would say that the baptising of children was regarded as a matter of course and that it had not need to be specified. Besides I am so sure of the faithfulness of the Spirit of God that I do not doubt but that if the facts had been otherwise, He would have told us of it. Yes, my brother, it seems to me that the faithfulness of the Saviour is involved here, just as when He said to His disciples in respect of the heavenly mansions (John xiv. 2): ‘If it were not so, I would have told you.’ Just so, I do not doubt but that, if the position of infants in the Church of God from the days of Christ were to become altered from what it had been up to His time, the Lord Himself would have expressly told us so: for He is faithful.”
Samuel.—”Nevertheless, my brother, it seems to me that if the Lord Jesus had baptised infants, the Apostles, who had seen and known Him to do it, would not have turned infants away from the Person of Christ.”
The father of the family.—”Your conclusion goes too far, dear friend: for the conduct of the Apostles on the occasion you refer to, taken in your sense of the matter, would only prove that up to that time the Lord had not baptised whole families. Besides, insisting as I do in a matter of such importance on the faithfulness of the Saviour, I draw from the circumstance which is now under consideration a conclusion which is quite opposite to yours, in the sense that if the Lord had excluded little children from His fold, and by consequence had excluded them from the seal of the covenant of promise, He would have declared Himself in that sense from the beginning of His ministry, and so, every one having known of this, no parent would have had even the thought of bringing to Him a little child in order to be blessed by Him.”
Samuel.—”Thus, then, you assure me, the silence both of the Apostles and of the Saviour Himself is from every point of view the proof of that which I call in question?”
The father of the family.—”Yes, my brother; and especially so if you compare this silence with another silence of which you tell me nothing, but which nevertheless carries with it a convincing conclusion.”
Samuel.—”To what other case of silence do you refer?”
The father of the family.—”To the absolute silence on the baptism of adult disciples within the Church, which the Apostles maintain.”
Samuel.—”How so, my brother? On the contrary, was it not the constant practice of John, of the Saviour, and of the Apostles to baptise adults?”
The father of the family.—”Yes, without the Church; and such is our practice too. But I speak of those within the Visible Church, of those who were born within the Church, of the children of believers; children who, according to you, were not baptised in their infancy, but who nevertheless were doubtlessly baptised at some time or other. Now I ask how it has to come to pass that, in a period of, say, sixty-seven years from the public ministry of John, the Baptist, to the last of the apostolic writings, there is no mention made of a baptism administered within the Church, which nevertheless must have sometimes been administered within the thousands of Christian families then existing?”
Samuel.—”I didn’t think, I admit, of that remarkable circumstance before.”
The father of the family.—”Now, how are we to explain this silence? If one should say that there was no case of conversion in all those families during three generations, and that then the Church got all its recruits from without, it is a proposition that cannot be admitted. Or if one should say that the conversion and the baptism of the adult sons and daughters of Christians was a matter of no interest, and a thing that carried no weight either in the family or in the Church, the proposition runs counter to Christian charity and to natural affection. So that it seems to me we must admit the only other possible explication, to wit, that the reason why no mention is made of the baptism of adults within the Church is that in the Church the usual thing was to baptise the offspring of Christian parents when they were infants.”
Samuel.—”I admit that that proof is worthy of being pondered, and I am far from rejecting it, for it has a practical look about it.”
The father of the family.—”You will be still more of that mind when you consider that, as we are here treating of a matter common to many countries, a matter with which the thoughts of many disciples intent upon guarding the deposit of divine truth could not fail to be occupied, this universal silence can only be explained on the supposition of universal consent, which further brings us to the conclusion that if the baptism of infants had not been recognised all the way down from the days of the Apostles, or in other words was not recognised as being in keeping with the commission which the Apostles had received from the Lord, the practice could never have had a beginning, neither could it have been introduced or advanced a step within the Church without its causing trouble—without its meeting on every side formal opposition.”
Samuel.—”Now some one has told me that the practice of baptising infants was unknown in apostolic times, that it stole into the Church only very slowly, that it came in by degrees and as it were insensibly. Is that the case?”
(To be continued.)