168 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD 



Christianity is normal to human life, it must cover 

 the whole of it, and especially that part in which 

 character is formed. If the child can come to a 

 normal human spiritual stature without the help 

 of the Church, the acceptance of Christ by the 

 adult is emphatically superfluous. But to admit 

 that the child may receive the benefits of Chris- 

 tianity, and yet refuse it the ministry of this rite, 

 universally regarded as initiatory, is an indefen- 

 sible position. How can it run the course, if it 

 never enters upon it? We would place the bap- 

 tism of children in a central position, and at the 

 same time divorce it from the mystical, irrational, 

 unrealizable ministrations that have been claimed 

 for it. Its benefits in plain sight are sufficient to 

 bind it upon us with indissoluble bands. With 

 the cancellation of the doctrine of hereditary sin 

 we at a stroke get rid of a mass of contradictions 

 and absurdities. However the phrase, "for the 

 remission of sins," may be interpreted, it creates 

 more difficulties than it dissolves to say it is either 

 for the sins which we inherit from Adam or, so 

 far as it is a physical act, that it has the least 

 effect in washing away actual sins. Biblical in- 

 terpretation is never justified in creating more 

 difficulties than it finds. If Biblical phrase is so 

 mysterious that we can not penetrate its meaning, 

 let it remain a mystery; but let there be no obli- 

 gation created by the exegete that compels a be- 

 liever to accept what he knows can not be true 

 without the destruction of fundamental principles 



