r requiring a
religious experience from children of fourteen years which in the nature
of the case they cannot have. But have we a right in this crisis in the
history of the child to overlook that infinitely important experience
which our dogmaticians termed _regressus ad baptismum?_ Said Professor
Kaftan, in an address to a Ministers' Conference: "The word conversion
is the appropriate term for expressing the way in which a man becomes a
Christian and a believer. Most Christians can tell you something about
how it happened that they sought a new aim and chose another path in
life. Even among those who have had a peaceful and gradual development,
there came a time when they reached a conscious and decisive resolution
to belong no more to the world but to God. _"Man wird nicht von selbst
ein Christ, man muss sich bekehren um ein Christ zu werden."_ We do not
repudiate the doctrine of baptismal regeneration as it is held in the
Lutheran Church. On this point we are in accord with our Confessions.
But before we adopt without reservation the idea that baptized children
are regenerate, we must revise our practice in the matter of baptizing
infants. So long as we practice the _Winkeltaufe_ and baptize
indiscriminately the children of people who give us no guarantee that
the children will be brought up in the Christian faith, so long as the
Church fails to recognize her obligation to these baptized children and
does not take them under her nourishing care from the time when they
emerge from the family and enter into the larger life of the street and
the school, we have no right to place such an emphasis upon baptismal
regeneration. It is to be feared that the Lutheran doctrine of baptismal
grace has in many minds been supplanted by a mechanical, thaumaturgiel
conception which differs from the Roman doctrine only in being far more
dangerous. Rome at least enforces the claims of tthe [sic] Church
recognized in baptism. We baptize them and let them run. We corral a few
of them for a few months just before confirmation and then let them run
again. So does not Rome." [tr. note: original has no close quotation mark
for Kaftan quotation]

Dr. Cremer, of Greifswald, an able defender of the Lutheran faith, in
his reply to Dr. Lepsius on the subject of Baptismal Regeneration, says:

"It is sad indeed that in the use of the sacraments there is generally
more of superstition than of faith. This must be openly confessed, for
only then can