and
salvation on all who believe, as the Word and promise of God declare."
Our solid and impregnable Augsburg Confession, also, when in Article
II. it confesses that the new birth by baptism and the Holy Spirit
delivers from the power and penalty of original sin. Also in Article
IX., "of baptism they teach that it is necessary to salvation, and
that by baptism the Grace of God is offered, and that children are to
be baptized, who by baptism being offered to God, are received into
God's favor." And so with all our other confessional writings.

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