# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_December 1862_S373
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Church and Contemporary History. 373

according to the order prescribed by the founders of the church. This
naturally includes the prayer for the President of the United States.
Last Sunday morning Major Strong, the head of General Butler's staff,
feeling moved in spirit to attend the service in the second Episcopal
church, which lies directly opposite headquarters, resolved to do so. His
only motive for visiting the church was to attend the service, and he was
not in the least moved by any wish or intention to interfere with the
proceedings there. But when the rector omitted the prayer for the
President and prayed with particular unction and emphasis that his
people might be spared from their enemies, the Major's anger was
justly kindled. Resolved to give the pastor full opportunity, should he
wish, to read the prayer, he waited until the litany was finished and a
hymn had been announced. He then rose, and, having commanded the
pastor to be silent, turned to the congregation and declared that he had
visited the church solely for the purpose of serving God; but since it had
pleased the rector to omit the prayer for the President of the United
States, he now declared, in the name and by the authority of the
commander of the Gulf Department, the service closed. Naturally the
female portion of the assembly at once fell into an immense commotion,
and some began to sob and to scream, while others gnashed their teeth
and otherwise made themselves conspicuous by their behavior. When
the Major (and those who know him will readily perceive how
disagreeable to him was the duty he had to perform) left the church, the
ladies (?) who had gathered in quite a crowd at the door honored him
with a hissing that would have scared away the ambitious dreams of
many a young and modest aspirant to theatrical marks of honor. But he
walked calmly through them, with the bearing of one who knows that he
is in the right. After the church had been closed, the General had the
rector, the Reverend Mr. Goodrich, brought to him and had a long
conversation with him. Mr. Goodrich declared that he was an
unyielding secessionist, said that up to the previous Sunday he had
prayed for Jefferson Davis, and decidedly refused to obey the order to
pray for the President of the United States. The General released him
on his word of honor that he would report today at headquarters, and he
will probably be sent north as a prisoner on the McClellan, which
departs for New York this evening. One of the chaplains of our army
(probably the Reverend Mr. Barr of the 2nd Louisiana Regiment) will
for the present officiate in the church, and it is likely that divine service
in this sanctuary will not again be mutilated." —

The Doctrine of Infant Baptism. This doctrine, too, evidently
stands on very sandy ground within the General Synod. In the Lutheran
Observer, at least, in the issue of November 7, it is asserted that
children are baptized not on their own faith but on that of their parents
or sponsors. After the writer has appealed to Article 13 of the Augsburg
Confession, according to which the Sacraments require faith, he
continues: "But who exercises faith at infant baptism? Not the child, but
the father or sponsor. — But can a godless father exercise faith for the
child, which does not exercise it for itself? And yet hundreds of children
in our church are baptized on the faith of such fathers. Can we wonder
that infant baptism among us has degenerated into a mere form, into a
decent method of giving the child a name and nothing more?... From
this passage (1 Cor. 7:14) we learn that the blessings of the covenant
come down upon the child by means of the faith either of the father or
of the mother, the child being, by virtue of its birth into a Christian
family, regarded by God with favor. Therefore, if one of the parents is a
worthy communicant of a Christian church, the child is a fit subject for
infant baptism. Where both parents are irreligious, the child is born
outside the church and can be brought into it only through its own act
of faith in mature years, or through a devout relative or friend who
spiritually adopts it by becoming sponsor or surety for it at the
baptismal font." — That is plainly Calvinist doctrine