A goodly number of pastors speak to the candidates "unter vier Augen," but they are the exceptions. The ordinary practice knows nothing of such a course. The public examination is little more than an exhibition.
In other words, we have strayed over to the Roman side of the road. The difference between us and the Roman priest being this: he will see them again at the confessional, but those whom we confirm in this superficial way, many of them, we shall never see again. Or, if perchance we should see some of them, it will be at long range, the same as when we first admitted them to confirmation. Imagine a doctor curing his patients in this way, getting them together in a room and prescribing for their diseases from what he sees of them in a crowd. The care of souls cannot be performed in bulk, it is the care of a soul.
Besides what a privilege the pastor loses, the opportunity of a lifeline, not only to explain to an inquiring heart the mysteries of our faith in the light of his personal need, but also to put himself in such a relation to the individual that he may become a beloved Beichvater. But alas, we have to a great extent lost the confessional. Instead of it we have a hybrid combination of Lutheran doctrine and Reformed practice, and we distribute our absolution ore rotundo over mixed congregations on Sunday mornings and at the Preparatory Service. But the real confession we seldom hear and a valid absolution therefore we cannot pronounce. The Keys have indeed been committed to us, but we seem to have lost them, for the door of the sheepfold hangs very loose in our churches and the sheep run in and out pretty much as they please.
But while some of our churches are thus leaning toward Rome, there is need of caution also against the opposite error. A false and exaggerated spirituality will lead to standards of holiness which are not warranted by the New Testament. Of these Luther himself somewhere said, "May the God of mercy preserve me from belonging to a congregation of holy people. I desire to belong to a church of poor sinners who constantly need forgiveness and the help of a good physician."* *Methods of receiving candidates into active membership vary. Some synods, as we have seen, make no distinction whatever in their statistical reports between occasional communicants and actual members of the congregation. Admission to membership should take place by vote of the congregation or at least of the Church Council. There should likewise be some rite of initiation. In the case of adults who come from other congregations it need not and should not be a confirmation service, but it should at least be a public introduction of the candidate into the fellowship of the congregation with which he desires to become identified. (Matthew 10, 32).
Rome's position was a protest against Montanism. Without question there is a great truth in Cyprian's position as developed by Rome, and the Reformers, particularly Melanchthon, guarded it. How often do we hear in our day the declaration: "I do not need to go to church. I can be just as good a Christian without." This position Lutheranism rebukes by making preaching and the sacraments the pillars on which the church rests. Thus is conserved what was best in the institutional theory of the ancient church, so that in spite of her many defects both as a national church and in her transplanted condition, the Lutheran church will remain an important factor in the development of Protestant Christianity.
When our Reformed neighbors charge us with Romanism, it is either because they do not understand our theory and have overlooked the historical development, or because they judge of us by the Romish practice of our own ministers who have thoughtlessly slipped over too far toward the institutional theory. In the present condition of religious flux we have a mission not only in the field of doctrine, but also in practical theology, on the question of the Church. For we are still standing between two antagonists. Catholics on the one hand attract the masses by the definiteness of their external organization. Over against them we emphasize the essentially spiritual nature of the Church. There are Protestants on the other hand who, while placing the emphasis on the inner life, ignore the importance of the ordinances. They maintain public worship, it is true, but do so in combination with secular entertainment or by appealing to the intellectual or esthetic needs of the community. Others, more spiritually minded, base their hopes on the evangelist and the revival. But when the evangelist has taken his leave, and the people have to listen to the same voice they have heard so long before, having been thoroughly indoctrinated with the idea that it is not the Church that makes a man a Christian, that sacraments and ordinances are merely human devices, is it any wonder that many of them ignore the church altogether?
It is here that the Lutheran Church, with her catholic spirit and her evangelical doctrine, has a message for our times. Her doctrine of baptism, of Christian instruction as its corrollary, of repentance, faith, and the new life, of the Lord's Supper, of church attendance, of the sanctification of the Lord's Day, and a practical application of these doctrines to the life in the care of souls, establishes a standard of membership that ought to make our churches sources of spiritual power.
The Problem of Religious Education
Historically and doctrinally the Lutheran Church is committed to week-day instruction in religion. Historically, because in establishing the public school her chief purpose was to provide instruction in religion; doctrinally, because from her point of view life is a unit and cannot be divided into secular and spiritual compartments.
American Christians are confronted with two apparently contradictory propositions. One is that there can be no true education without religion. The other is that we must have a public school, open to all children without regard to creed.