Three classes of members are recognized in our churches: 1, Those who
have been baptized. 2, Those who have been confirmed-that is, those who
after the prescribed course of instruction and examination have been
admitted to the communion. 3, Communicants-that is, those who are in
active fellowship with the church in the use of the word and the
sacrament.*
*The temporal affairs of the congregation as a civic corporation
are regulated by the State and the qualifications of a voting member are
defined in the laws of the State. This chapter deals only with the
question of membership in the church as a spiritual body. In general
the State readily acquiesces in the polity of the various churches so
long as it does not interfere with the civic rights of the individual.

There is a fourth class of which no note is taken in our church records.
It is the class of lapsed Lutherans-that is, of those who have been
admitted to full communion but who have slipped away and are no longer
in active connection with the church.

Of these we shall speak in a separate chapter.

It is sometimes charged that the Lutheran communion does not hold clear
views of the church. On the one hand her confessions abound in
definitions of the church as a spiritual kingdom, as a fellowship of
believers. On the other hand her practice frequently reminds our brother
Protestants of the Catholics, and they are disposed to look upon us as
Romanists, _minorum gentium_. "Like a will-of-the-wisp," says Delitzsch,
"the idea of the church eludes us. It seems impossible to find the safe
middle ground between a false externalism on the one hand and a false
internalism on the other hand."