which they would convey to the majority of hearers. But I noticed that when he and those excellent men whom he quotes come to define what they mean by members and membership, in this connection, they make explanations and qualifications, and also protestations, showing that no one can be, in their view, a member of the spiritual, or what is called the invisible, church of Christ, without repentance and faith.... It admits of a question, therefore, in my view, whether the terms 'members' and 'membership,' as applied to children, really mean that which these writers themselves intend to convey by them; for certainly they do not mean all which their readers at first suppose. The terms in question require a great deal of explanation, which a term, if possible, ought never to need. And, after all has been said, a wrong impression is conveyed to the minds of many, while opponents gain undue advantage in arguing against that which for substance all the friends of infant baptism cordially maintain.” He concludes the chapter1 by fixing on the term, " children of the church," as the more appropriate name for those who are baptized in infancy, and says: "Did infant church-membership admit to the Lord's supper, as it did to the passover, the children would now with propriety be said to be 'members of the church.' But inasmuch as, under the Christian dispensation, they cannot come to the sacrament which distinguishes between the regenerate and the unregenerate, without a change of heart; ... they are, under the Christian system, removed from outward membership." But he adds: "The children of the church have privileges and promises which go far to increase the future probability of their church-membership, and directly to prepare them for that sacred relation."

.3

PROF. POND, of Bangor Theological Seminary, Maine, says: "Baptism teaches, (1) That infants are moral beings, and capable of receiving spiritual blessings. (2) That they are depraved beings. (3) This ordiInance does not, indeed, import that those to whom it is applied are regenerated in heart; ... but it does import that there is cleansing for them in the gospel, and that this is to be effected through the special operations of the Holy Spirit. (4) Baptism is the seal of a covenant between God and the parent respecting the child. It is, in fact, no other than the covenant of the church—the covenant with Abraham." "If covenanting parents will be faithful to their children, and train them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, he promises to bestow upon them converting grace, and to be their God and portion in this world and forever." "The child, though not yet an actual member, belongs to the church by promise. It is promised to the church, and the promise, unless annulled by parental unfaithfulness, will sooner or later be fulfilled.""

1 Ibid. p. 254.

2 p. 253.

3 Lectures on Christian Theology. By Enoch Pond, D.D. (Boston Congregational Board of Publication, 1867), Lecture lxv.

'p. 679.

5 p. 680.

President NOAH PORTER' speaks of the constitution of the family institution as being one of the strongest warrants for infant baptism. The Christian family "may be said to be the ante-room or vestibule to the inner sanctuary [the church]. . To initiation therein [this ante-room] there is appointed a rite symbolizing the privileges and hopes which gather about the infant that is admitted through its portals.”

...

We add a quotation from one of the ablest of living ENGLISH INDEPENDENTS, expressing our own sentiments better than we could ourselves. "We should also contend that formally a religious society ceases to be a church when it ceases to require personal union with Christ as the condition of communion with itself, and when it consciously, voluntarily, and of deliberate purpose includes within its limits what John Robinson, after the manner of his age, calls a mingled generation of the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent.'... No man is a member of a Congregational church by birth. Nor is baptism a sufficient qualification for membership, nor an orthodox creed, nor a blameless moral life. For three hundred years, whatever changes may have passed upon our theology, and whatever modifications may have been introduced into the details of our church organization, we have steadily and with unflinching fidelity maintained that only those who are in Christ have any right to be in the church. Nor do I know that there are any of us who have consciously renounced this principle.... We have heard something, occasionally, about the church-membership of children. If those who use this phrase meant nothing more than to affirm that children who love God and cling to the infinite goodness of Christ have a right to be received into the church communion; if they meant to protest against the perverse folly of requiring as signs of the presence of the Holy Ghost in a child the sharp agony of repentance for sin and all the shame and conflict and fear which are natural only in those who have sinned against God for twenty or thirty years; ... if this were all, then there would be no reason for apprehension. Or, if they intended only to remind the church of its forgotten and neglected duties to the children of its members,-duties which have been forgotten and neglected in our very eagerness to rescue from ignorance and irreligion the children of those who are outside, they would be rendering us good service. But by those who use it, the phrase 'the church-membership of children' appears to be intended to assert the claims of baptized children, or of the children of Christian parents, to be acknowledged as church members by virtue of their baptism or of their birth. Their birth seems, however, to be regarded as of primary importance; 1 New Englander, Vol. vi. p. 140.

3

2 Essay of Rev. R. W. Dale, M.A., on the "Idea of the Church in Relation to Modern Congregationalism," in Ecclesia; "a Second Series of Essays on Theological and Ecclesiastical Questions" (London, 1871), p. 356 sq.

3

* pp. 377-379.

baptism is a very subordinate matter. Now, it may be conceded, for the moment, that considerable advantage might come to the children, if instead of having to find their way into the church when they become conscious of restoration to God, they were required to separate themselves from it by their own deliberate act, if at the age of fifteen or sixteen it was clear that they had not yielded to influences of a Christian education, and received the Holy Ghost. But, apart from the consideration that this advantage might be fully secured in another way, it requires to be shown, that the claim is not inconsistent with the idea of the church. Churchmembership implies participation in the supernatural life of the church. Is that life transmitted by the ordinary laws of descent? Does faith in Christ come to us by birth, like our features and our complexion, like the color of our hair and the form of our limbs? We may inherit the temperament of our parents, and their passions; but do we inherit the inspiration of the Holy Ghost? That the children of eminently good men may be born with moral dispositions which show the ennobling effect of their parents' piety; that they may possess in exceptional strength those natural sentiments which are akin to the supernatural affections, and are often mistaken for them; that they may pass out of this 'present evil world' into 'the kingdom of heaven' without any sharp and severe moral conflict, it is not necessary to deny; ... but, unless we go very much farther than this and contend for the existence of a law under which God grants the supernatural life to the children of all regenerate parents, no adequate reason can be shown why such children should be constituted members of the church on the ground of their birth."

...

To show how extremes meet on the subject of baptizmal regeneration, we append a brief statement of

VII. THE CAMPBELLITE VIEW.

In the "Debate on Baptism,"1 Alexander Campbell says: "This solemn and significant moral change or transition out of the world into Christ is consummated in the following manner: The gospel is proclaimed to them without the kingdom. Men have it, believe it, become penitent, and are baptized in water into the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. They have then put on Christ, are baptized into Christ, and are henceforth in him a new creation. ... It [baptism] is an introduction into the mystical body of Christ, by which he [the baptized person] necessarily obtains the remission of sins. He puts off [in baptism] his old relations to the world, the flesh, and Satan. Consequently, that moment he is adopted into the family of God, and is personally invested with all the rights of a of a citizen of the kingdom of God."

1 Debate on Baptism, Campbell and Rice (Cincinnati, 1844), p. 442.

ARTICLE IX.

NOTICES OF RECENT PUBLICATIONS.

THE FUNDAMENTAL TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANity, or the General PRINCIPLES OF CHRISTIAN DOGMATICS.1

[In our last Number (Vol. XxxI. pp. 378-382), was inserted the first part of a Notice of Prof. Goltz's work on The Fundamental Truths of Christianity, etc. We here insert the second and concluding part of the Notice. Both parts of this careful and candid Review are from the pen of Dr. Besser of Halle, a gentleman to whom we are indebted for many contributions to the Bibliotheca Sacra].

Let us now consider the contents of the work of Prof. Goltz. It is the office of the dogmatical system to set forth in connected form the true and best adapted expression of the object of faith of all Christians. Therefore the real subject of the system is not doctrines and views concerning Christ. It is rather those realities, which in their essence lie above the regions of the senses, but have become manifest and operative within the world of sense in Christianity, and which compose the real object of Christian faith and the power of Christian life. The doctrinal system must be derived from the essence of Christianity; and this is possible, for the inner unity of the Christian truth in Christ is given as the immediate intuition and certainty of faith. Here is a principle of unity, and therefore the truth allows a systematical statement according to strict scientific rule.

sources

Dogmatical theology obtains the material for her doctrines from three from the primitive records relating to the rise of Christianity, from the history of the development of Christian doctrine and life in the church, and from the personal experience of believers. These three sources are at the same time norms of truth for Christian doctrine; for Christianity is historical and ethical fact, and therefore the norms of correct dogmatical statement of Christian truth must lie in the sources themselves. Neither so-called reason, i.e. a philosophical system, nor an external ecclesiastical authority may be recognized by dogmatical science as judge in her department. The three sources of the system must rather

1 H. von d. Goltz, Prof. der Theologie in Basel. Die christliche Grundgedanken oder die allgemeinen Principien der christlichen Dogmatik. 8. Seiten 379. Gotha, bei Perthes. 1873.

mutually control one another, since personal experience must be the standard of the religious importance of the doctrines, the scriptures that of their Christian contents, and the development of the church that of their dogmatical value. Among these three norms the primitive Christian records claim the highest rank of authority. This they do altogether apart from any theory of inspiration, because the chief aim of the dogmatical system is the pure and complete expression of Christian truth.

Let us now see what is the division of the dogmatical system to be drawn from these sources. The author seeks first, in a part devoted to laying foundations, to obtain a clear and appropriate expression for that one thing which lies at the basis of all that is Christian, or, for the essence of Christianity. Following this, a special part is devoted to setting forth in detail the Christian truth in its manifold particulars, and according to the internal connection of these. In the fundamental part is to be sought, above all things, in view of the present divisions of the Christian church into confessions and parties, a canon by means of which an agreement on the essence of Christianity may be reached. And this fundamental part is not, like prolegomena to dogmatics, to discuss certain general preliminary questions which do not belong exclusively to Christianity itself. Nor are the doctrines concerning first principles herein laid down to be drawn from a philosophy of religion or ethics, or from speculative theology, as Schleiermacher or Rothe draws them. The establishment of the dogmatical principles is rather to be treated as part of the dogmatical task itself; on the one hand, based on the historical facts and the testimony of Christian believers, and following, on the other hand, the scientific rules which must apply to every systematic process. The fundamental part is not to give definitions of the ideas religion and revelation, since the Christian conceptions of religion and revelation arise out of the essence of Christianity. The introductory discussion of these two ideas comes under apologetics, not under the treatment of the dogmatical system. This latter does not take them up till we reach the second part, devoted to detailed discussion.

In the fundamental part, following the establishment of the general Christian principles comes the testing of the confessional principles. While in the general principles we see what is that essence of Christianity which lives in all the confessional sections of the church in common, and is in effect recognized as such essence by all confessions; on the other hand, the confessional principles show how, and in what measure, the principles of the one confession agree with the essence of Christianity more purely and more perfectly than those of the others.

The particular part of the dogmatical system unfolds the Christian truth, with its intrinsic connection of its various doctrines, in accordance with the established canon of the catholic and confessional principles. This part is divided into dogmatics and ethics, that is, into the Christian VOL. XXXI. No. 123.

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