Chapters 8 to 9 - Christ’s Teachings and Today’s Christianity

- 43 - That is why the Christians of the first centuries never dispensed baptism to children. That is also why Christ commanded his Apostles that they should first preach the gospel and only thereafter baptize those who were ready to accept it. It also follows that the doctrine of the Christian churches, that baptism purges a child of original sin and that the souls of children who die unbaptized have forever lost the kingdom of God, is completely wrong. • A cleansing from sin can be effected only by a determined effort to abandon the ways of evil, and not by any action that comes from without. Paul relates of some of the Christians of his day that they had themselves baptized on behalf of persons who had already died. This was an example of excess of zeal in new converts. No one can be baptized in another’s place. Everyone must work out his own Salvation, for in this there can be no acting as a deputy for someone else. Nevertheless, the intentions of these converts were good: They thereby sought to proclaim that the deceased, had they still been alive, would also have accepted Christ’s teaching and received baptism in outward testimony thereof. They did it as a gesture of love for their departed.

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