# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_April 1862_S113
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

On the Sacramental Conception of Confirmation. 113

the child, with his whole outward and inward man, turns back once more to his Baptism and then forward to the giving and receiving of the sacrament of the altar, and thus comes to accomplish, in and for himself, an effective mediation of these two heavenly gifts" — only then does the "prayer or confirmation instruction" first take its assigned place. This instruction is meant to serve the purpose that the young Christian, on the ground of Holy Baptism, "may learn to seek, with definite direction of the will, the mediation of the sacrament of the body and blood of his Lord," "that he may be able to step from the baptismal font, where he was carried, to the altar, there truly and essentially to taste and enjoy, in the Supper, as Christ's dearly won good, what has been given and imparted to him by Jesus Christ in Holy Baptism." "This independence, and the testimony that follows from it as fruit of divine appointment, must be given to him by the church out of the fullness of Christ's Spirit dwelling within her, and through the organs of God appointed in her for this purpose, through the shepherds and teachers, and toward this all prayer or confirmation instruction must be directed." — — — As a further point toward which all prayer or confirmation instruction must be directed, it is required that the children under instruction, or confirmands, take upon themselves the sacred obligation, belonging to them, of all due obedience toward God and his beloved church, and enter upon a conscientious practice of it. "The grace of justification and sanctification they have received in Baptism, and have already been able and bound to exercise it from childhood on. But in drawing near to the sacrament of the altar, which stands in closest connection with the perfection of the Christian life, the obedience of the church must be pledged in the most definite manner. For the Christian who becomes a partaker of the body and blood of Christ is to work out and exercise the gifts that have become his, within his calling, for the good of the church and thus of the world — whereby alone he is able to strive toward perfection."

— — — "The act by which the confirmands are to experience or undergo all this, each according to his individual endowment, is their confirmation by the pastor and pastor of souls appointed for this purpose." — — One can see, from the whole exposition, that it is unable to distinguish what is to fall to the child's share in confirmation instruction from what befalls him in the act of confirmation itself — just as, later, the laying on of hands is called "the capstone or seal of a work of intercession carried on through the weeks of prayer — the time of confirmation instruction," "which is gathered up and comes to its culmination in the prayer at the blessing (whether before or after)." But even if what confirmation instruction accomplishes for the child can only be distinguished, more or less by degree, from what Christian discipline and teaching, joined with believing intercession, have offered to and worked in the young Christian in school and at home — for that very "obligation to all due obedience toward God and his beloved church" is likewise, from childhood, laid upon the con-