historical evidence of our practice having ever crept in,-the innovation of a later period in the history of the church. Had the mode of infant baptism sprung up as a new piece of sectarianism, it would not have escaped the notice of the authorship of the times. But there is no credible written memorial of its ever having entered amongst us as a novelty, and we have, therefore, the strongest reason for believing that it came down in one uncontrolled tide of example and observation from the days of the Apostles. And if they have not, in the shape of any decree, or statutory enactment, that can be found in the New Testament, given us any authority for it, they at least, had it been wrong, and when they saw that whole families of discipleship were getting into this style of observation, would have interposed and lifted up the voice of their authority against it. But we read of no such interdiet in our Scriptures; and, in these circumstances, we hold the inspired Teachers of our faith to have given their testimony in favour of infant baptism, by giving us the testimony of their silence. It is vain to allege that the Jewish was a grosser dispensation; not so impregnated with life and rationality and spiritual meaning as ours; with a ceremonial appended to it for the purpose mainly of building up a great outward distinction between the children of Israel and all the other families that were on the face of the earth; and that this was one great use of circumcision, which, whether affixed during the period of infancy or advanced life, served equally to signalize the people, and so to strengthen that wall of separation which, in the wisdom of Providence, had been raised for the sake of keeping the whole race apart from the general world till the ushering in of a more comprehensive and liberal dispensation. "The flesh profiteth nothing," says the Saviour;"" the words I speak unto you they are spirit and they are life." But it so happens that in the ordinance of circumcision, there are the very spirit and the very life which lie in the ordinance of baptism. Viewed as a seal, it marks a promissory obligation on the part of God, of the same privileges in both cases; and that is the righteousness of faith. Viewed as a sign, it indicates the same graces. It indicates the existence of faith, and all its accompanying influences on the character of him who has been subjected to it. "That is not circumcision which is outward in the flesh," says Paul; " but circumcision is of the heart; in the spirit, and not in the letter." That is not baptism, says Peter, which merely puts away the filth of the flesh; but baptism is the answer of a good conscience unto God. If the baptism of infants offer any violence to the vital and essential principles of that ordinance, the principles of the ordinance of circumcision are altogether the same. Circumcision is the sign of an inward grace; and upon Abraham, in the previous possession of this grace, the sign was impressed. And, in the face of what might have been alleged, that it was wrong when the sign and the thing signified did not go together, this sign of circumcision was nevertheless perpetuated in the family of Abraham, by being impressed on the infancy of all his descendants. In like manner, when an adult stands before us for baptism, should we be satisfied that he has the washing of regeneration, then we may put the question, "Can any man forbid water, that he should not be baptized who hath received the Holy Ghost as well as we?" But should any man go further, and forbid water to the infants of his present or his future family, he appears to do so on a principle which God himself did not recognise; and, while he seems to exalt faith over forms, by waiting for the rise of this inward grace ere he will impose the outward ceremonial, he stamps a reflection on that very procedure that was instituted for him who is called the "father of the faithful." But is it not wrong, when the sign and the thing signified do not go together? Yes, it is very wrong: and let us shortly consider who they generally are that are in the wrong when such a disjunction at any time Occurs. In the case of an adult, the thing signified should precede the sign. When he offers himself for baptism, he asks to be invested with the sign that he is a disciple, and he makes a credible appearance and profession of his being so. Were it not a credible profession, then the administrator is in the fault for having put the outward stamp of Christianity on one whom he believed to be a counterfeit. Were it a profession rendered credible by the arts of hypocrisy, then the Minister is free; and the whole guilt that arises from an unworthy subject, standing arrayed in the insignia of our faith, lies upon him who wears them. But in the case of an infant, the sign precedes the thing signified. The former has been impressed upon him by the will of his parent; and the latter remains to be wrought in him by the care of his parent. If he do not put forth this care, he is in the fault. Better that there had been no sign, if there was to be no substance; and he by whose application it was that the sign was imprinted, but by whose neglect it is that the substance is not infused, he is the author of this mockery upon ordinances. He it is who hath made the symbolical language of Christianity the vehicle of a falsehood. He is like the steward who is entrusted by his superior with the subscription of his name to a space of blank paper, on the understanding that it was to be filled up in a particular manner, agreeable to the will of his Lord; and, instead of doing so, has filled it up with matter of a different import altogether. The infant, with its mind unfilled and unfurnished, has been put by the God of providence into his hands; and after the baptism which he himself hath craved, it has been again made over to him with the signature of Christian discipleship, and, by his own consent, impressed upon it; and he, by failing to grave the characters of discipleship upon it, hath unworthily betrayed the trust that was reposed in him; and, like the treacherous agent, who hath prosti tuted his master's name to a purpose different from his master's will, he hath so perverted the sign of Heaven's appointment, as to frustrate the end of Heaven's ordination. The worthies of the Old Testament, who, in obedience to the God whom they served, circumcised their children in infancy, never forgot that they were the children of the circumcision; and the mark of separation they had been enjoined to impose upon them reminded them of the duty under which they lay, to rear them in all the virtues of a holy and separate generation; and many a Hebrew parent was solemnized by this observance into the devotedness of Joshua, who said that whatever others should do, he with all his house should fear the Lord: and this was the testimony of the Searcher of hearts in behalf of one who had laid the great initiatory rite of Judaism upon his offspring, "that He knew him, that he would bring up his children after him in all the ways, and statutes, and ordinances that he had himself been taught;" and it was the commandment of God to his servants of old, that they should teach their children diligently, and talk to them as they rose up and sat down, and as they walked by the way-side, of the loyalty and gratitude that should be rendered to the God of Israel. Thus was the matter ordered under the old dispensation. The sign was impressed upon the infant, and it served for a signal of duty and direction to the parent. It pointed out to him the moral destination of his child, and led him to guide it onward accordingly. There ought to be a correspondence between the sign and the thing signified. At the very outset of the child's life, did the parent fix upon its person the one term of this correspondence, as a mark of his determination to fix upon its character the other term of it. It was as good as his promissory declaration to that effect; and if this be enough to rationalize the infant circumcision of the Jews, it is equally enough to rationalize the infant baptism of Christians. The parent of our day, who feels as he ought, will feel himself in conscience to be solemnly charged, that the infant whom he has held up to the baptism of Christianity, he should bring up in the belief of Christianity; and if he fail to do this, it is he who has degraded this simple and impressive ceremonial into a thing of nought; it is he who has dissolved the alliance between the sign and the thing signified; it is he who brings scandal upon ordinances, by stripping them of all their respect, and all their significancy. Should the child live and die unchristian, there will be a proper and essential guilt attached to him in consequence; but it will at least not be the guilt of having broken a vow which he was incapable of making. And yet the vow was made by some one. It was made by the parent; and in as far as the ruin of the child may be resolved into the negligence of him to whom he owes his birth, it is he who moved the baptism, and it is he who hath profaned it. This ordinance lays a responsibility on parents; the sense of which has, we doubt not, given a mighty impulse to the cause of Christian education. It is well that there should be one sacrament in behalf of the grown-up disciple, for the solemn avowal of his Christianity before men; and the very participation of which binds more closely about his conscience all the duties and all the consistencies of the Gospel. But it is also well that there should be another sacrament, the place of which in his history is, not at the period of his youth or manhood, but at the period of his infancy; and the obligation of which is felt, not by his conscience still in embryo, but by the conscience of him whose business is to develope, and to guard, and to nurture its yet unawakened sensibilities. This is like removing baptism upward on a higher vantage ground. It is assigning for it a station of command and of custody at the very fountainhead of moral influence; and we repeat it to be well that Christianity should have here fixed one of its sacraments; that it should have reared such a security around the VOL. XVII. Third Series. birth of every immortal; that it should have so constituted baptism, as to render it a guide and a guardian, whose post is by the cradle of the infant spirit; and which, from coming into contact with the first elements of tuition, has, we doubt not, from this presiding eminence, done much to sustain and perpetuate the faith of the Gospel from generation to generation. We have one observation more. Baptism, viewed as a seal, marks the promise of God, to grant the righteousness of faith to him who is impressed by it; but, viewed as a sign, it marks the existence of this faith. But if it be not a true sign, it is not an obligatory seal. He who believes and is baptized shall be saved. But he who is baptized and believes not shall be damned. It is not the circumcision which availeth, but a new creature. It is not the baptism which availeth, but the answer of a good conscience. God hath given a terrible demonstration of the utter worthlessness of a sign that is deceitful, and hath let us know that on that event as a seal it is dissolved. He thus stands emancipated from all his promises; and adds to his direct vengeance upon iniquity, a vengeance for the hypocrisy of its lying ceremonial. When a whole circumcised nation lost the spirit, though they retained the letter of the ordinance, he swept it away. The presence of the letter, we have no doubt, heightened the provocation; and beware, ye parents, who regularly hold up your children to the baptism of water, and make their baptism by the Holy Ghost no part of your concern or of your prayer, lest you hereby swell the judgments of the land, and bring down the sore displeasure of God upon your families. This affords, we think, something more than a dubious glimpse into the question that is often put by a distracted mother, when her babe is taken away from her; when all the converse it ever had with the world amounted to the gaze upon it of a few months, or a few opening smiles, which marked the dawn of felt enjoyment; and ere it had reached FEBRUARY, 1838. I perhaps the lisp of infancy, it, all unconscious of death, had to wrestle through a period of sickness with its power, and at length to be overcome by it. O it little knew what an interest it had created in that home where it was so passing a visit ant; nor, when carried to its early grave, what a tide of emotion it would raise among the few acquaintances it had left behind it! On it, too, baptism was impressed as a seal, and as a sign it was never falsified. There was no positive unbelief in its little bosom; no resistance yet put forth to the truth; no love at all for the darkness rather than the light; nor had it yet fallen into that great condemnation which will attach to all who perish because of unbelief, that their deeds are evil. It is interesting to know that God instituted circumcision for the infant children of the Jews, and at least suffered baptism for the infant children of those who profess Christianity. Should the child die in infancy, the use of baptism as a sign has never been thwarted by it: and may we not be permitted to indulge a hope so pleasing, as that the use of baptism as a seal remains in all its entireness; that He who sanctioned the affixing of it to a babe will fulfil upon it the whole expression of this ordinance? And when we couple with this the known disposition of our great Forerunner; the love that he manifested to children on earth; how he suffered them to approach his person; and, lavishing endearment and kindness upon them in the streets of Jerusalem, told his disciples that the presence and company of such as these in heaven formed one ingredient of the joy that was set before him: tell us if Christianity do not throw a pleasing radiance around an infant's tomb? And should any parent who hears us feel softened by the touching remembrance of a light that twinkled a few short months under his roof, and at the end of its little period expired; we cannot think that we venture too far when we say that he has only to persevere in the faith and in the following of the Gospel, and that very light will again shine upon him in heaven. The blossom which withered here upon its stalk has been transplanted there to a place of endureye which now weeps out the agony ance; and it will then gladden that of an affection that has been sorely wounded; and in the name of Him who if on earth would have wept along with them, do we bid all believers present to sorrow not even as others which have no hope; but to take comfort in the thought of that country where there is no sorrow and no separation. "O when a mother meets on high We have put forth these remarks, the children of darkness, which can never be moved away; and it were well that the habit of professing Christians was more formed on the principle of keeping up that limit of separation which obtains between the church and the world; so that they who fear God should talk often together; and when they do go forth by any voluntary movement of their own on those who fear Him not, they should do it in the spirit and with the compassionate purpose of Missionaries. But while we hold it necessary to raise and to strengthen the wall by which the fold is surrounded; and that not for the purpose of intercepting the flow of kindness and of Christian philanthropy from within, but for the purpose of intercepting the streams of contamination from without; we should like to see all the lines of partition that have been drawn in the fold itself utterly swept away. This is fair ground for the march of latitudinarianism; and that, not for the object of thereby putting down the signals of distinction between one party of Christians and another, but, allowing each to wear its own, for the object of associating them by all the ties and the recognitions of Christian fellowship. In this way, we apprehend that there will come at length to be the voluntary surrender of many of our existing distinctions, which will far more readily give way by being tolerated than by being fought against. And this is just the feeling in which we regard the difference that obtains on the subject of baptism. It may subside into one and the same style of observation, or it may not. It is one of those inner partitions which may at length be overthrown by mutual consent: but, in the meantime, let the portals of a free admittance upon both sides be multiplied as fast as they may along the whole extent of it; and let it no longer be confounded with the outer wall of the great Christian temple, but be instantly recognised as the slender partition of one of its apartments, and the door of which is opened for the visits of welcome and kind intercourse to all the other members of the Christian family. Let it never be forgotten of the Particular Baptists of England, that they form the denomination of Fuller, and Carey, and Ryland, and Hall, and Foster; that they have originated among the greatest of all Missionary enterprises; that they have enriched the Christian literature of our country with authorship of the most exalted piety, as well as of the first talent, and the first eloquence; that they have waged a very noble and successful war with the hydra of Antinomianism; that perhaps there is not a more intellectual community of Ministers in our island, or who have put forth to their number a greater amount of mental power and mental activity in the defence and illustration of our common faith; and, what is better than all the triumphs of genius or understanding, who, by their zeal, and fidelity, and pastoral labour, among the congregations which they have reared, have done more to swell the lists of genuine discipleship in the walks of private society; and thus both to uphold and to extend the living Christianity of our nation. -Chalmers. REVIEW. The Works of the Rev. Richard Watson. With his Life, by Thomas WERE the works of Mr. Watson different from what they really are, there might be an impropriety in review ing them in the Wesleyan-Methodist Magazine, the editor of which is so well known to have been likewise |