ceptibility of human nature for Christ; as its possibility of being redeemed and perfected in the direction of its destiny. Aud in this it differs from that receptivity which is presupposed in the Lord's Supper. The holy Supper is a believing reception and enjoyment of a personal communion with Christ; it establishes a real reciprocation between Christ and the believer. Baptism on the other hand is not reception of, but a divine consecration to faith. Therefore the receptivity which the holy Supper presupposes is one already specified and defined, since it is only found with such as have already attained a definite grade of the communion-life; and which seek, in the use of the sacrainent, a strengthening of their personal life of faith, to the end that each one may be individually glorified in the love of Christ and of the church. But the receptivity, which is presupposed in baptism, can only be regarded as purely general, slumbering as yet in the personal peculiarity of the individual; and in this indefinite, twilight-like generality, it can only be comprehended negatively. First of all, it manifests itself in this, that the baptized one do not withstand or resist the grace; and we can here appropriately adopt the catholic formula: "obicem non ponere.' This, however, must not be regarded merely as dead careless passiveness, for no receptivity can be destitute of all activity. Although we cannot, of course, regard this activity as a personal one, which would confound the relation of the person to baptism with his relation to the holy Supper, we must nevertheless regard it as a living activity; and this active moment in the indefinite receptivity we designate as the "bent or bias to the kingdom of God," which constitutes the divine in human na. ture, but which can only be formed, unfolded into a personal will, and rendered truly ethical, in an actual communion with Christ and the Church. But that receptivity which thus belongs to or flows from the conception of baptism, is just the same which is found with the child. For just as the bent or bias of this world moves in the child from its birth, so also does the bent or inclination to the kingdom of God move in the nature of the infantile life; and as the human nature in the child is averted from God and diverted to the world, so does also that nature contain the dark earnest longing of the creature after Christ. In substance it is therefore also this receptivity which must be required in the adult subject of baptism, because it only, in this way, agrees with the true conception of baptism. But that receptivity which is originally in the child must first be waked up in the adult, which is done when his old world passes away, and he is brought to that point where he despairs of bim

VOL. IV. NO. V.

31*

self, and seeks a new foundation for his life. The adult subject of baptism cannot, in reference to redemption and the kingdom of God, appear as an independent personality; the steps of development in his moral life, to which he has attained, his acts and works, which he has accomplished in the civil communionlife of his nation, are, over against baptism, a vanishing quantity; for the reason, that the conceptions of duty and virtue, of communion-life and moral actings, only receive their true signification and importance where baptism has gone before-only have their true reality in Christ and the Church, in the kingdom of spiritual gifts. Since, therefore, he must thus look away from his actual personality, and forgetting that which is behind, must seek to begin his life anew, he places himself, in reference to redemption and the kingdom of God, upon a level with the child which is to be born into the new world of Christianity. Although he in reality differs from the child, yet his relation to baptism is in substance the same. This will become clear when we view the adult subject of baptism, not only from the stand-point of redemption, but also from the stand-point of sin. For, as he must be viewed in regard to grace or the idea of goodness, not according to his actual personality, but according to the possibility in him of attaining to a new personality; so also, in reference to sin, he must not judge himself according to his actual sins-which would be but a superficial view of sin -but he must go back to the origin of his sinful self-consciousness, to his Adamic nature, to his birth. The main problem of Christian missionary preaching must therefore be this, to bring the heathen or Jewish subject of baptism to such a consciousness of sin that it shall be possible for him to place himself on a level with the infant-a demand, which according to the teaching of Scripture, appeared already to Nicodemus such a great paradox, (John iii: 4) because he could not escape from his personal I, from his Scripture-wise, legal self-consciousness, from his acts and works,--because he has not as yet a correct idea of the sinfulness of the race, and consequently also no correct idea of the sinfulness of his own nature. This consciousness of the necessity of salvation gives, according to the principles of the apostolic mission, admission to baptism-a consciousness, which need not be present clearly in the thoughts of the subject; yea, which cannot even be so present, but which only makes itself valid practically in the form of feeling. Where now, the doctrine of general sinfulness, and of general salvation in Christ is gladly received, so that the hearers willingly permit themselves to be baptized, as we see it described in so many places in the Acts of

the Apostles, there the bent towards the kingdom of God has come to an actual issue, and the old self and the old world can not hinder baptism from becoming what, in its conception, it inust become, an infant baptism. Since therefore the idea of infant baptism is always hovering before the Christian mission, it is plain that infant baptism stands most directly opposed both to Baptistic and to compulsory baptism; because namely, both these forms of baptism in fact deny the identity of adult and infant baptism. Both extremes meet and agree in this, that they hold fast to the idea that in baptism they have a finished and definite personality-only with this difference that the Baptistic theory regards this finished self (Ich) as a new man which bas already attained to a definite stage of moral perfection; on the other hand the compulsory baptism regards this finished self as an old man, which has already established himself in the worldly consciousness, in which he has awakened, and now offers, a natural resistance to that which would drive him out of that position. Both mistake in this way, forgetting that not a finished self, but one beginning, a germinating self is to be baptized, or that the baptism of adults is an infant baptism: the Baptistic theory, because it improperly defers baptism, and proposes only to baptize a full-born new man; the compulsory mission, because it makes too great haste with baptism, and seeks to baptize an old man rooted in heathenism or Judaism, without allowing to itself time to awaken in him that receptivity which sets aside the natural resistance of the heart, and makes it possible for him to receive the kingdom of God as a little child. Since both these extremes mistake the substance of baptism, they both become defective executors of the divine purpose; for while the Baptistic theory, in baptism, attributes to human subjectivity such a significance, that it makes, in substance, baptism but an act of the individual freedom, instead of an act of Christ, the compulsory mission pays no respect whatever to individual freedom. It considers the persons to be baptized, not as subjects, but only as substrata for baptism; and while it accomplishes baptism with sword in hand, this baptism has so little the character of being the execution of a divine gracious election, that it comes upon the nations rather as a fate. The divine decree, therefore, receives its true execution, neither where baptism appears as a work of Baptistic arbitrariness, nor yet where it ap pears as a work of fate; but only where creating grace lays the ground for human freedom. Freedom must therefore be presupposed in baptism; but since it is presupposed as that fredom which is yet to be established, it must be presupposed only as

possibility, as bias or inclination towards the kingdom of God. In virtue therefore of her doctrine of the universality of grace, the Church is justified, and it is her duty, to baptize children in every place where mother-churches are established, and it would be absurd to continue missionary baptism in the bosom of the Church, instead of turning it into the form of infant baptism.

Only when baptism is made to hold its place in its form of infant baptism, can the operations of baptism completely unfold themselves, since then the whole life can appear as a divine growth in Christ. The conception of following Christ only reaches its full signification through infant baptism. In order that the perfection of Christ may penetrate, with fructifying power, every natural stage in the history of human life, baptism must be conferred in the beginning of life. The direct antipode of this, is the error of deferring baptism to the end of life; an error, by the way, which is backed by distinguished authority, as Constantine the Great, the first Christian Emperor, gave it the force of his own example. This notion proceeds upon the supposition, that by deferring baptism to the farthest point, the subject may secure to himself a Christian, that is, a blessed death. It is not remembered, however, that a Christian death only attains its true significance through the Christian life which preceedes it. But the Christian life begins, according to the divine order, like Christ's own life, with infancy. In this, that the God-man himself was a child, that he increased in wisdom and grace, that his whole life and actions were nothing else than the free development of the divine fulness which slumbered in the child-in this lies clearly the fact that the human nature may be united with the divine, not only at a certain stage of its conscious development, but in its inmost ground, previous to all consciousness. What the child Christ, is, in his original nature, that all the children of men are to become, by grace; and the childhood of Christ would have been useless, if it were not pos· sible to change the Adamic infant nature into the image of the child Christ. To reject infant baptism, upon the ground that the period of infancy, on account of its innocence, does not need the Saviour, is Pelagian. This denies the universal depravity of human nature, and regards the infancy of Christ as redundant, and of no meaning, in the work of redemption. If, on the other hand, we take in earnest the dogma of sin and natural depravity, and yet nevertheless defer baptism until later life, because redemption cannot begin to work upon the child, and because it is supposed that its operations can only begin later in life-this is a Manichean conception of infancy; for, in this

case, a period of human life is designated, in which, although it is subject to the general defection of sin, it is, according to this conception, excluded from the system of redemption, and from the communion of Christ. In this way vanishes the heavenly glory from the infancy of Christ. The reality of the incarnation is denied, and we are carried back into the old heretical conception, that the divinity only then united itself with Christ, when self-conscious thoughts had arisen in his soul. It is therefore clear, that where infant baptism is denied, there also are the most important fundamental truths of Christianity, concerning the human and divine nature, denied. But where these truths have been in a living way appropriated; where, namely, a Christian family-life has been constituted, there also was the child, which was born in the bosom of the family, regarded as holy, (1 Cor. vii: 14); that is, not as one which is already holy by natural birth, but as one which is destined to become holy through baptism.

Lancaster, Pa.

H. H.