XIII

CONFIRMATION

HERE are many notions current about Confirmation that are entirely mistaken. They spring largely from the chaotic religious situation which surrounds us. It is not surprising that people who have imbibed their religious information from all sorts of teachers and lecturers should have erroneous ideas upon some points. First then it may be well to lay aside some of these erroneous notions, and then we shall be in a position to understand what Confirmation really is.

Confirmation is not joining the Church. We join the Church when we are baptized. In the Public Baptism of Infants, we pray that "he, being delivered from thy wrath, may be received into the ark of Christ's Church." After the child

66

is baptized, the Minister says, Seeing now, dearly beloved brethren, that this child is regenerate, and grafted into the body of Christ's Church." The mistake of course is due to the fact that many Protestant denominations have invented a ceremony which they call "joining the

Church," which consists in shaking hands with certain persons and admitting them to all the privileges of that particular fellowship.

Confirmation is not the religious parallel of graduation. Our spiritual graduation comes at death, for it is then that our days of schooling and preparation are over and we enter upon our real life. And yet many children are taught to look upon their Confirmation as a graduation from Sunday School, and often from the Church. They have received their instructions and been presented with their diploma,—so they think,— and only too frequently they turn their backs upon the Church and never give it another thought. The Prayer Book affords no ground for any such notion. On the contrary it assumes that those who are confirmed will continue to practice their religion faithfully, that they may daily increase in the manifold gifts of grace. The Bishop prays, "let thy Holy Spirit ever be with them; and so lead them in the knowledge and obedience of thy Word, that in the end they may obtain everlasting life."

Confirmation is not the assumption of a new responsibility. Somehow the extraordinary notion has grown up that until one is confirmed the sponsors are entirely responsible for the keeping of the baptismal vows, but that after confirmation

the responsibility falls upon oneself. If that were true, it might be better to go through life unconfirmed. But we cannot escape responsibility so lightly. We are in any case responsible before God for keeping the vows that were made in our name at our Baptism, just as we are responsible for observing the ordinary decencies of life and for performing the duties of American citizenship. It is true that we are not consulted when we were taken to the Font and born again as children of God; but neither were we consulted when we were brought into the world, nor when we were born as Americans rather than as Chinese or South Sea Islanders. Confirmation does not put upon us any responsibility which was not there before; it simply gives us additional spiritual strength to enable us to meet the increasing power of temptation and to be true to the vows of our Baptism.

66

It is true that in Confirmation we do renew the vows of our Baptism; we do with our own mouth and consent, openly before the Church, ratify and confirm the same. But a child does the same thing every time he repeats the answer in the Catechism, “Yes, verily; and by God's help so I will." The ratifying and confirming of one's baptismal vows is not the essential thing in Confirmation, nor does it give the sacrament its name.

Children do not confirm themselves. They come to be confirmed (or strengthened) by the Bishop. It would really be absurd to ask a busy administrator like the Bishop to visit a church once a year simply to hear some children and grown people renew their Baptismal vows, which they do whenever they recite the Catechism. No, the renewal of vows is merely a preliminary to the great act for which the Bishop came to the church, the laying on of his hands that they might receive the Holy Ghost. Before he does that, it is necessary that he should know that they are in earnest about trying to live the Christian life, that they have really repented of their sins, and fully purpose to amend their lives in the future. All of this is implied in the answer, “ I do."

66

What then is Confirmation? Confirmation is a sacrament, not one of the two great sacraments of the Gospel which are generally necessary for salvation," but one of the five "commonly called sacraments," an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace. The outward and visible sign is the laying on of the Bishop's hands, accompanied by the suitable form of prayer, which in our Prayer Book contains the words, "Strengthen them, we beseech thee, O Lord, with the Holy Ghost the Comforter, and daily increase in them thy manifold gifts of grace:

the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and ghostly strength, the spirit of knowledge and true godliness; and fill them, O Lord, with the spirit of thy holy fear." The inward and spiritual grace is the coming of the Holy Spirit into the soul with all His strengthening

power.

The Holy Spirit came to us in our Baptism to give us life. In Confirmation He comes to give us strength, to round out the perfect development of our spiritual manhood. But here we must be careful not to fall into the error that Confirmation is the completion of Baptism. Baptism is complete in itself,—a spiritual birth,- just as the birth of a child is complete even though the child dies in infancy. Baptism is the sacrament of spiritual birth. Confirmation is the sacrament of completed spiritual manhood. It is necessary now, just as it was necessary in the first age of the Church. It was not enough that the Samaritans should be converted and baptized through the preaching of S. Philip the Deacon; the Apostles at once sent down from Jerusalem S. Peter and S. John to administer the sacrament of Confirmation. When they were come, they "prayed for them, that they might receive the Holy Ghost.. Then laid they their hands upon them, and they