LECTURE III.

THE VERY REVEREND WILFORD L. ROBBINS, D.D. Dean of All Saints Cathedral, Albany, N. Y.

CONFIRMATION.

I. THE doctrine of Confirmation is doubtless accounted, by popular estimate, one of the less difficult of the subjects which have to do with the Sacramental system of the Church.

The definition of that doctrine in the authoritative formulas of the Church is meagre. An office for the administration of the rite is provided in the Prayer Book, but this office is not rich in doctrinal suggestiveness. The Twentyfifth Article refers incidentally to the subject, but in terms which confuse quite as much as they enlighten, and which leave us with what amounts to a mere negation. The Catechism says nothing of Confirmation.

This silence naturally produces on many minds the impression that a subject thus passed over cannot, to say the least, be of prime importance. Meanwhile the ritual connected with the office is of a symbolic type very easily apprehended.

It

consists in a solemn benediction of the children of the Church by their chief pastor, accompanied by a prayer that God will strengthen them with gifts of grace for their hard warfare.

Here I fancy the majority of Churchmen rest content. They do not seek to penetrate further into the mystery of the doctrine, perhaps esteem that there is no mystery to penetrate. The popular interpretation based upon this slender doctrinal foundation swings indeed, according to the bent of individual minds, between two rather widely divergent extremes. On the one hand the preface to the office is taken as key-note, and Confirmation becomes little more than a public profession of faith. The act of the child then presented to the Bishop is emphasized, and God has very little to do with the matter save as He must be accounted as accepting this willing proffer of a soldier's service. The Bishop's benediction is construed sentimentally, it is a most becoming symbol of God's gracious favor. On the other hand, the mind imbued with the sacramental character of the Church's life lays greater stress on the Divine aspect of the rite. God does the confirming, not man. Confirmation is a distinct spiritual crisis in life, thenceforward the soul is endued with a fulness of spiritual power which enables it to reach a higher plane of Christain attainment than was possible before.

But even so, the exact nature of the gift bestowed, the relation of Confirmation to baptismal grace, its relative importance in the Christian life, these are questions which are left to answer themselves as best they may.

The moment that one enters upon any serious inquiry, however, he finds that the subject so far from being simple is exceedingly complex, encompassed with peculiar difficulties whether it be approached on the historical, the ritual, or the doctrinal side. By reason of the paucity of reference in Anglican formularies, we are driven for information to Scripture and the testimony of the primitive Church, together with the general consensus of the Church Catholic of later ages. But while the Scripture basis is plain so far as it goes, immediately that the rite emerges as an accepted part of the sacramental system of the early Church in the writings of the Fathers, we find certain ritual additions esteemed essential of which there is no trace in Scripture. We find, moreover, that the language of the Fathers is, on the surface at least, capable of various constructions. Often they seem to attribute to Baptism what in other passages they state in no less decided terms to be the distinctive grace of Confirmation. Moreover, we find that a great change has passed over the use of the Western Church, namely, the deferring of Confirmation to a time

long subsequent to Baptism, which brings to the front a difficult problem which in this form never pressed upon the early Church for solution-the question, What is the spiritual estate of a man baptized but as yet unconfirmed?

And lastly, whatever Confirmation may or may not be, if it be a sacramental rite at all it has to do with a gift of the Spirit. And here lies the profoundest difficulty in the way of exact definition of the Confirmation gift. In the course of the doctrinal development of the Church the truths which have to do more especially with the First and Second Persons of the Blessed Trinity have been explicated and defined with a far greater fulness than can be predicated of the doctrine of the Spirit. This is partly due it may be to historic causes, but also in great measure we must attribute it to the inherent difficulty of dogmatic definition in treating of the person and work of the Holy Spirit. He is recognized as pre-eminently in this latter dispensation "the Lord and Giver of life;" He is "with the Father and Son together worshipped and glorified"; He "spake by the prophets." But though we recognize His agency in all the manifold works of grace which abound within the Church, He is still like "the wind that bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof but canst not tell whence it cometh and whither it goeth." To

draw an analogy from the spirit of man: here lies the very centre of personal existence, this is nearer to us than the breath we breathe, it is ourselves, and yet it eludes definition, its activities transcend explanation. Love, which is the highest exercise of the spirit, the firmest rock amid the shifting sands of human experience, is yet essentially paradoxical in its nature, the spirit losing itself in another, only to find its true self through the willing abandonment of self. The illustration must not, of course, be pressed too far, but it surely should lead us to recognize that we may know some things from living experience, which yet refuse to be bodied forth in language strictly amenable to logic.

II. The method which naturally suggests itself in approaching the subject of Confirmation is to begin with those passages of Scripture which seem to bear upon the apostolic institution of the rite.

In Acts viii. we read that, after the death of Stephen, Philip went down to Samaria to preach the Gospel. The preaching bore fruit and many were converted and baptized. "Now when the apostles which were at Jerusalem heard that Samaria had received the Word of God, they sent unto them Peter and John: who when they were come down, prayed for them, that they might receive the Holy Ghost: for as yet He was fallen