This pernicious idea has also obtained sway to an alarming extent in the Sunday-school system of our land. The children in the Sunday-school, whether baptized or not, whether from Christian or Christless homes, are looked upon as outsiders, impenitent sinners, utter strangers to Christ and His Grace, until they experience such a marked change that they can tell exactly where and when and how they were converted. Hence the popular idea that it is the object of the Sunday-school to _convert_ the children. This seems to be the underlying principle of both the American Sunday-school Union and American Tract Society; institutions otherwise so excellent that we are loth to say aught against either. This idea pervades also the undenominational helps and comments of the International Lesson System. This is the undertone of the great mass of undenominational Sunday-school hymnology. It is the key-note of the County, State, National and International Sunday-school Conventions and Institutes. So popular and wide-spread is this idea that many Lutheran pastors, Sunday-school teachers and workers have unconsciously imbibed it. Even our Church papers, professing to be strictly confessional, often publish articles setting forth the idea that it is the object of the Sunday-school to _Christianize_ the children. As though the baptized children of the Church, the children of devout Christian parents, had been heathen, until Christianized by the Sunday-school! Many of our Sunday-school constitutions also set it down as the object of the school to "lead the children to Christ," or to "labor for their conversion." Now we believe that this idea is un-Scriptural and therefore un-Lutheran. If what we have written in the preceding chapters on baptismal Grace, the baptismal covenant, and the possibility of keeping that covenant, is true, then this popular idea, set forth above, is false. And _vice versa_, if this popular view is correct, then the whole Lutheran system of baptism, baptismal Grace, and the baptismal covenant, falls to the ground. But notwithstanding the immense array of opposition, we still believe that the Lutheran doctrine is nothing else than the pure teaching of God's word. Where we have the "_Church in the House_," there we have lambs of Christ's flock. Ah, how many more we could have, how many more we would have, if the fathers and mothers in the Church understood this precious article of our faith, and prayerfully built their home life thereon! Then would there be a more regular and healthful growth of the Church, and the necessity for fitful, spasmodic revival efforts would cease. But we digress. From our Christian homes the baptized children of the Church come to the Sunday-school. How is the school to treat them?--We speak now of the baptized children from Christian homes; we will speak of the unbaptized and untrained further on.