The question might here be asked:  Is baptism so absolutely essential to salvation, that unbaptized children are lost?  To this we would briefly reply, that the very men who drew up our Confessions deny emphatically that it is thus absolutely necessary.  Luther, Melanchthon, Bugenhagen and others, repudiate the idea that an unbaptized infant is lost.  No single acknowledged theologian of the Lutheran Church ever taught this repulsive doctrine.  Why then does our Confession say baptism is necessary to salvation?  It is necessary in the same sense in which it is necessary to use all Christ’s ordinances.  The necessity is ordinary, not absolute.  Ordinarily Christ bestows His Grace on the child through baptism, as the means or channel through which the Holy Spirit is conferred.  But when, through no fault of its own, this is not applied, He can reach it in some other way.

As we have seen above, He is not so limited to certain means, that His Grace cannot operate without them.  The only thing on which our Church insists in the case of a child as absolutely necessary, is the new birth.  Ordinarily this is effected, by the Holy Spirit, through baptism, as the means of Grace.  When the means, however, cannot be applied, the Spirit of God can effect this new birth in some other way.  He is not bound to means.  And from what we have learned above of the will of God, toward these little ones, we have every reason to believe that He does so reach and change every infant that dies unbaptized.  The position of our Church, as held by all her great theologians, is tersely and clearly expressed in the words, “Not the absence but the contempt of the sacrament condemns.”

While the Lutheran Church, therefore, has confidence enough in her dear heavenly Father and loving Saviour, to believe that her Lord will never let a little one perish, but will always regenerate and fit it for His blessed Kingdom ere he takes it hence, she still strenuously insists on having the children of all her households baptized into Christ.

Others may come and say:  You have no authority in the Bible for baptizing infants.  Without entering fully on this point we will briefly say:  It is enough for a Lutheran to know that the divine commission is to “baptize the nations”—­there never was a nation without infants.  The children need Grace:  baptism confers Grace.  It is specially adapted to impart spiritual blessings to these little ones.  We cannot take the preached Word, but we can take the sacramental Word and apply it to them.  God established infant membership in his Church.  He alone has a right to revoke it.  He has never done so.  Therefore it stands.  If the Old Testament covenant of Grace embraced infants, the New is not narrower, but wider.

The pious Baptist mother’s heart is much more scripturally correct than her head.  She presses her babe to her bosom, and prays earnestly to Jesus to bless that babe.  Her heart knows and believes that that dear child needs the blessing of Jesus, and that He can bestow the needed blessing.  And yet she will deny that He can bless it through His own sacrament.—­“the washing of water by the Word.”