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month for a year to all social ordinances, I can for life or good behaviour. When I say, I can do so, I mean that all precepts, and scriptural reasons, authorize such a course. "But Iobject to making it a rule, in any case, to receive unimmersed persons to church ordinances :

1. Because it is no where commanded.

2. Because it is no where precedented in the New Testa

ment.

3. Because it necessarily corrupts the simplicity and uniformity of the whole genius of the new institution.

4. Because it not only deranges the order of the kingdom, but makes void one of the most important institutions ever given to man. It necessarily makes immersion of non-effect. For, with what consistency or propriety can a congregation hold up to the world either the authority or utility of an institution which they are in the habit of making as little of, as any human opinion?

5. Because, in making a canon to dispense with a divine institution of momentous import, they who do so assume the very same dispensing power, which issued in that tremendous apostacy which we and all Christians are praying and labouring to destroy. If a Christian community puts into its magna charta, covenant, or constitution, an assumption to dispense with an institution of the Great King, who can tell where this power of granting license to itself may terminate? For these five reasons I must object to the aforesaid constitution, however much I respect the benevolence and intelligence of those who framed it.

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Query. But will you not be considered uncharitable in so deciding?

"Answer. Yes. In the current use of the term I must be so considered. But if we are to be governed by the censures of our worst informed brethren, where is our courage? And besides we will still be considered uncharitable by some, if we do not go the whole way with them in their superstitious or enthusiastic notions and practices. Go with the Presbyterian until he calls you charitable, and then the Methodist will exclaim against you; or go with the Methodist until he calls you charitable, and then the Presbyterian will exclaim, How uncharitable !

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Query. But do you not expect to sit down in heaven with all the Christians of all sects, and why not sit down at the same table with them on earth?

"Answer. It is time enough to behave as they do in heaven when we meet there. I expect to meet with those whom we call -Patriarchs, Jews, and Pagans, in heaven. But this is no reason why I should offer sacrifice like Abel or Abimelech ; circumcise my children, like Reuben or Gad; or pray to the Great Spirit, as an Indian; because some of all these sort of people may be fellow-citizens in heaven. Perhaps I am too charitable now, for some. Be this as it may. I do expect to meet with some of 'all nations, tribes, and tongues,' in the heavenly country. But while on earth I must live and behave according to the order of things under which I am placed. If we are now to be governed by the manners and customs in heaven, why was any other than the heavenly order of society instituted on earth? There will be neither bread, wine, nor water, in heaven. Why, then, use them on earth? But if those who propose this query would reflect, that all the parts of the Christian institution are necessary to its present state, and only preparatory to the heavenly, by giving us a taste for the purity and joys of that state, they could not propose such a question.

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Query. What, then, will we do with all our Pedobaptist fellow disciples ?

"Answer. Teach them the way of the Lord more perfectly; and tell them if they greatly desire our society, it can be had just on being born of water and Spirit, as the Lord told Nicodemus. Our society cannot be worth much if it is not worth one immersion.

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Query. But do you not make schisms by so doing?

"Answer. No. He makes no schism who does no more than the Lord commands; and all know that Christian immersion is a divine institution. It is he who makes a new institution, such as the sprinkling of an infant, and contends for it, that makes the schism. It was not he that obeyed the first commandment, but he that made the golden calf, who made confusion in Israel."

IT is said by some that A. Campbell's views have changed sinced he wrote the above answers in the Christian Baptist and who, after professing to maintain for so many years that pardon in Christ is only proposed to man through immersing of believing penitents, has so wheeled about the religious

compass, as now to hold fellowship with those who have never received pardon in this way, and to acknowledge in communion as being one bread and one body with Christ and himself, the besprinkled, the bepoured, the thoughtless, and the profane!! Now, although this, and much more, has been said of A. Campbell, both in public and in private, still there is abundant proof to the contrary, both in the Debate, the Millennial Harbinger, as well as from the personal testimony of those who for some months have had personal intercourse and fellowship with him in the gospel. The following extract is taken from the Millennial Harbinger for September, 1844:

"None from the Methodists or any other denomination are received by our churches, so far as known to me, unless by immersion. Baptists, who have been immersed, are generally received on application, on the testimony of credible witnesses. Those who did not confess their faith before baptism, or who are not conscious that they were immersed into the faith of Christ, are sometimes immersed on a confession of that faith. Those who have not first believed and professed their faith, are indeed in need of Christian baptism. And in all cases when there is any reason to doubt, it is better to immerse and wash away the doubts, and place one's self on satisfactory grounds." A. CAMPBELL.

"YE ARE THE SALT OF THE EARTH."

ONE of the most valuable and peculiar properties of salt is, its preserving quality. So Christians should be highly conservative. Christianity is not acid which sours and destroys, but salt which preserves. It is not alkali which consumes and corrodes, but salt which saves from destruction.

Salt is to preserve only what is worth preserving. So with Christians. Whatever is worth preserving they should preserve. But whatever is in its own nature worthless, they may leave to perish. Whatever is in its very nature hastening to decay, if it be valueless, they may permit to destroy itself.

Again, to be of any effect, salt must be brought into contact with the thing to be saved. Christians are to live in the world, to mingle with it. They are not to shut themselves up in a monastery or a convent, they are not to hide themselves in their closet, but they must diffuse their good influence throughout the whole of society. Unless for the conservative spirit of Christianity, the world would by its own wickedness destroy itself. But Christianity is designed to preserve it. The more extensively it is disseminated, the purer society will become. The wicked do not live out half their days. Their own wickedness destroys them. But the righteous may be said to double their days. Hence the righteous will be continually multiplying while the wicked pass away. Christianity, then, is to preserve the world.

The efficacy of salt depends on its purity. All salt is not alike good. Some is worthless; good only to be trodden underfoot of men. Christian, what is your character? Is it of that pure and exalted kind which refines and elevates, or is it of that baser sort, which exerts no purifying influence over the world?

LETTER FROM NEW YORK.

172, Spring Street, November 7, 1844. MY DEAR BROTHER WALLIS.-Your letter of January 2nd, we received, not so soon as we ought perhaps, for which we thank you; and here allow us to express our pleasure, that your tour into North Britain was the means of restoring your health, and that you can leave home on such occasions with so much comfort and safety.

For the increase of the various churches around Nottingham, respecting which you tell us, we feel grateful. What a crown of rejoicing brother Wallis will yours be on that glorious morning when awoke by the archangel's trumpet, you rise to immortality, exclaiming with your native promptitude," Here Lord am I with the children thou hast given me!"* Shall I share in the triumphs of that day, is

«Behold I and the children whom thou hast given me." This passage, in my judgment, can refer to none but the Saviour, when presenting to his Father, in the presence of an admiring universe, the

a question I often ask myself, and I think, may answer in the affirmative, such is my intention-my mind seems fully made up to work out my salvation. I do not know what is the determination of my brethren at Nottingham, but mine is to make such preparations, that when my Lord comes, I shall not be obliged to run for fear of the door being shut; nor do I wish to enter sheltered by the wings or folded in the robes of some more deserving spirit, it has been my ambition for some time to have an abundant entrance, to enter in triumph under a palm of victory. Now, to secure such a victory, a great deal more is necessary then disciples in general are found doing, for by their conduct might we not conclude that they fondly cherish the notion that baptism was instituted for the remission of not only past sins, but also of all future sins, of which carelessness or the gratification of unsanctified desires may be the parents? How many of us, like the blinded slaves of the "whore of Babylon," who hasten to their sins the moment they leave the confessional? What number of disciples, almost before the taste of the bread and wine of the Lord's table is vanished, sink into unwatchfulness, mingle with the infidel world, without, indeed, the "mark of the beast," but equally, alas! without the "new name," an indistinguishable mass of carnality and sin, trusting, I suppose, to the "bath of regeneration" for the pardon of all past, and to the mediatorial efficacy of Christ, for the wholesale pardon of all future sins and a final admittance into the kingdom of glory? Numbers act thus through ignorance, but many have to drown the voice of enlightened conscience, and to sophisticate the conclusions of enlightened reason, and thus having partially succeeded in blinding themselves, they proceed to crucify again the Son of God, and again to expose him to open shame, and again to expose themselves to damnation, a double damnation! one for rebellion before reconciliation, and a damnation more awful for apostatizing after reconciliation, in the face of the church and the world, conscience and knowledge. As respects my brethren in Nottingham, I hope better things-if, however, any are making shipwreck of faith and a good conscience; whole congregation of saints redeemed from sin and death by his precious blood. See Heb. ii. 10-14. The saints will exclaim, "Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us, but unto thy name be all the glory." Psalm cxv. 1; Rev. i. 5, 6; iv. 2; v, 13.-J. W.

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