ARTICLE III. THE CHURCH-MEMBERSHIP OF BAPTIZED CHILDREN. BY REV. LEWIS GROUT, FORMERLY MISSIONARY OF THE A. B. C. F. M. It is a common remark that our duties are modified and determined by our relations. Taking this to be true, how important it is that the church of Christ should carefully consider that relation which is instituted between herself and those children whom she brings to the baptismal font. Nor would this seem to be either common or easy; else we might suppose the opinions of many of our clergy and laity would be less vague and diversified. Inquiring of one and another as to their thoughts on this subject what they be lieve to be the proper ecclesiastical standing of baptized children; whether they belong to the church, are in it and of it, or out of it, or where they are the writer has been somewhat surprised at the variety of views that prevail, even among those who are supposed to be of the same general faith in respect to the duty and import of infant baptism. All agree that such children must be related to the church somehow, and that this relation must be of such a nature that something good ought to be expected to come of it. Yet some seem to look upon it as wholly an external one, and so deny that they are either in the church or members of it at all, in any sense. Some will admit that they belong to the church, yet seem to doubt or deny that the church belongs at all to them; that is, the church has a claim upon the children, and an interest in them, but the children have as yet no interest or place in the church. Some hold that they are in the church, yet not of it; as though to be in it, in any sense deserving the name, is not to be of it. Not a few seem to regard them as neither in it nor out of it, but as occupy ing some sort of middle ground; as though this were either scriptural or tenable. Our own conviction is that these views fall, all sadly, though not all equally, short of the truth; that on this point our Congregational churches, many of them, at least many members in most of them, have departed from the teaching of the divine word, from the faith and practice of the primitive church, from the faith and practice of the Puritan Fathers, and from the faith, at least, of other branches of the catholic church of the present age, the Baptists alone excepted. Nor can we rid ourselves of the conviction that much of the neglect into which infant baptism is alleged to have fallen within the memory of the living, and much of the neglect of that nurture, too, which the church owes her baptized children, are among the sad consequences of the doubts, errors, and haziness of sentiment that prevail among us on this subject. Nor, again, do we think it among the least hopeful signs of the times, pertaining to this point, that so many are coming to be dissatisfied with the present state of the question. If we mistake not, the opinion is beginning to prevail that we, as Congregationalists, must take up this subject anew; that both the clergy and the laity must think it through, from end to end, and come to some conclusion less crude, more positive, definite, and consistent; that we must go either backward or forward, if we would ever hope to set our feet on solid ground. Some, indeed, are all ready to go forward, and take the ground which a few, in fact, have never yielded — that baptized children are truly members of the church. And such is the belief of the writer. Not that he is one of those who have always held this view. further from it than he was when first led, not long since, to take up the subject, and give it more than ordinary attention. But every step in the investigation served only to lead him to the conviction here avowed, that the children of whom we speak are really and truly in the church and members of it. We may call them children of the church, if we will, as indeed we often do; and for certain occasions and purposes the term is a good one. gers too. The fact is, the words we use, the names we apply, often have in time, a strange, powerful, though silent influence in moulding and determining our ideas of the things they are used to represent. John Foster somewhere tells us of a ship that was turned out of its proper course and carried into the port of an enemy by a magnet concealed near the compass. So the mind may be quietly deflected and drift off into error by the hidden influence of a misapplied name. And how is it, in fact, with the language, the name in question? What really ought to be the natural effect of an indiscriminate or exclusive use of it, but a gentle and easy letting down of the mind, a gradual but sure turning off of the thought, from the true idea of that relation to the church into which the child is brought when he is set apart and sealed as the Lord's in the ordinance of baptism? Were the term " children of the church "always understood and employed, when used in the connection of which we speak, to signify even as much as it does when applied to the children of a household, that such persons are, of course, members thereof, we should have less objection to it. And yet there would be another difficulty in confining ourselves to this mode of designating them. For, others than those who have been baptized, being born in the church, that is, of parents belonging to the church, as the children of parents in the Baptist church, not to mention any in our own who have been neglected, and never brought to the font, may be called the children of the church. But probably very few of those who believe in infant baptism would be ready to admit that the two classes, the baptized and the unbaptized, sustain equal relations to the church, though both are born alike of parents in the church, and so, for that reason, may be called her children. But it has its defects, and its dan We may call them infant members, minor members, or members in minority, if we will; only say not that a membership of this kind is imaginary, absurd, or worthless, but rather bona fide, most real, and of blessed import. The citizen in minority has rights, privileges, prospects, of which the alien might well be proud. The infant king is heir to royal prerogatives; as yet in appearance but "a servant," he is in truth"lord of all." Or take another illustration: On some trees, as on the lemon, for instance, we may often find fruit both green and ripe; fruit in all stages of growth, from the lily-white blossom of the opening bud, to the full grown, the yellow, and the mellow, that waits only to be plucked. The green, though unripe, is not unreal. Doctor Bushnell puts the thought before us in this form: "While horses and sheep are not all to be classed as colts and lambs, all colts and lambs may be classed as horses and sheep. And just so children are all men and women; and, if there is any law of futurition in them to justify it, may be fitly classed as believing men and women. And all the sharp arguments that go to cover their membership, as such, in the church with absurdity, or turn it into derision, are just such arguments as the inventors could raise with equal point, to ridicule the horsehood and sheephood of the young animals just referred to. The propriety of this membership does not lie in what those infants can or cannot believe, or do or do not believe, at some given time, as, for example, on the day of their baptism; but lies in the covenant of promise which makes their parents, parents in the Lord; their nurture, a nurture of the Lord; and so constitutes a force of futurition by which they are to grow up, imperceptibly, into 'faithfuls among faithfuls,' in Christ Jesus."1 We may speak of the church-membership of baptized children as incipient, inchoate, prospective, or potential, if we will, having reference to that perfected connection or completeness of standing and fulness of communion which come from a public profession of their own personal faith in Christ, and a consequent voluntary assumption of all the obligations of the covenant under which they were placed by their parents; yet guard, on the one hand, against the idea that such primary membership is really no membership 1 Christian Nurture, pp. 166, 167. at all; and, on the other, against the idea that the child can be properly advanced from this real, though primary, incipient membership to that which is full and complete by any process which does not involve and evince all that radical change of heart which is expected of those who come into the church direct from the ranks of the world. Say, if you will, that the class of persons to whom we refer are hereditary members of the church; that they are in it, in a sense, by reason of their having been born therein; that they can claim membership to a certain extent, if they will, as a kind of birthright; just as we regard a child as a member of the family into which he is born, or count him a citizen of the state where he first sees the sun and spends his infant years; or just as the infant children of priests, under the Mosaic economy, were members of the priesthood; yet stop not here. The membership which we claim for those of whom we speak, is more than hereditary, nominal, or honorary. The baptized child is brought into the church, and made and sealed a member of it, in a higher sense, for other purposes, and in other mode, than can find a parallel or perfect illustration in any natural birth, civil code, or ceremonial law; brought in, made, and sealed a member, through divine direction, by virtue of having the initiatory ordinance, the rite of baptism, administered to him on the ground of the parents' faith and covenant, and to the end that he may be guarded from evil, be nurtured in holiness, be trained for service, and be prepared for heaven. Just as a young man may be entered into college, be enrolled a member of one of her classes, be made at once partaker of all the privileges and honors of which he is capable and for which he is prepared, yet kept under watch and care, in training and on probation, for still higher privileges and honors; or just as an infant citizen may be a bona fide member of a civil community, so far as his capacity and qualifications can allow and make him one; especially and at once entitled to all the protection which either the civil or military power of the state can furnish, though, as yet, himself not able to |