# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_April 1862_S114
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

114 On the Sacramental Conception of Confirmation.

-firmands from childhood, and does not in any way serve to explain the sacrament-like character of confirmation — so it may be held excused in us that we are unable, on the ground of the development given by the author, to arrive at the conclusion: "so little, then, can confirmation thereafter count as a sacrament or divine act, just as certainly is it something sacrament-like, or a sacramental act."*)

— — — It is a piece of frivolity to complain of "uncertainty and indecision in the conception of confirmation," and, instead of the "usual" opinions about it, to assert with great emphasis the "sacrament-like" character of this act, while yet not enlightening the reader with a single word as to just what constitutes that quality of the act by virtue of which it, although "taking place by the power of a prophetic and apostolic word," may nevertheless not count as a sacrament. The Holy Spirit is supposed to be "imparted" "through our laying on of hands, as the capstone or seal of an intercession carried on through the time of confirmation instruction and coming to its culmination in the prayer at the blessing": how, then, does the medium of the impartation of the Spirit, the laying on of hands, relate to the intercession of which it is supposed to be the capstone and seal? Does the bestowal of the sacramental gift take place through the one, or through the other, or through both together? Does it take place continuously, throughout "the continued work of intercession," or only, finally, in the act where the intercession receives its seal in the laying on of hands? And if it takes place there too, how does that square with the fact that the scriptural passages adduced for confirmation are ones in which the gift of the Spirit appears as mediated through the laying on of hands? — — — We ask: does it follow, from the fact that the apostles of their time laid hands on the baptized with some effect or other, that the church should let that fact serve as a directive, and have its officeholders lay on hands with the certainty of the same effect? Does it follow, from the fact that Timothy received the gift needed for his office through prophecy with the laying on of the hands of the presbytery, that the church may claim for itself the calling to impart, by means of prophecy joined with the laying on of hands, the charism of office to the chosen officeholder? And since the passage 2 Timothy 1:6 must be understood in light of 1 Timothy 4:14, who, on the assumption made, gives the church the right, in her conduct bound by the apostolic pattern, arbitrarily to set aside an essential part of that pattern? Does it follow, from the fact that nowhere in the New Testament is a laying on of hands recounted at the choosing of presbyters, whereas at the choosing of deacons mention is indeed made of it, that the church must regard that fact as a norm for her own practice? And if it is only a probable conjecture, at best,

*) Hear, dear reader! confirmation is no sacrament, no divine act, and yet a sacramental act — the understanding stands still before this, and the conviction forces itself upon one, irresistibly, that these poor people themselves do not know what they are saying, or what they mean by it.   Note of the Editor.