Bertha and Her Baptism Part 3

"Now, suppose so impossible a thing as this, that hereafter baptism should, by divine revelation, be changed for anointing with oil, and nothing were said about children. I would anoint the child with oil, instead of baptizing it with water. We are to use the initiatory rite of the church for the time being."

"But," said Mrs. Benson, "is there any resemblance between circ.u.mcision and baptism?"

"There need be none," said I. "Resemblance does not give it efficacy, but G.o.d's appointment of it. If marking the flesh in some way should be appointed to succeed baptism, we need not look for a likeness between it and baptism before we complied with the divine requirement."

"I do wish," said Mrs. Benson, "that the authority to baptize children were more expressly stated in the Bible, to satisfy all who were not brought up as we have been."

_Pastor._ The overwhelming majority of those who now receive the Bible as the word of G.o.d find it there.

_Mrs. Benson._ But why did not Paul receive a revelation about it, as he did about the Lord's Supper?

_Pastor._ Did that make the thing any more authoritative with us than the original appointment? We will not prescribe to G.o.d how to teach us.

We will not make up our minds how he ought to have made a revelation, but we will take that revelation and try to understand it.

"I agree to that," said they all.

_Pastor._ It appears to me that G.o.d prefers, on certain subjects, that the world shall reason by inferences. It is a wise way of educating children and youth, to leave some things to be learned in this way, and not by setting everything before them, like too many examples in the arithmetic wrought out.

We have changed the Sabbath from the seventh to the first day in the week. It gives me a sublime idea of our Sabbath, that by some great, silent alteration, it has come to pa.s.s that all the world keep the day of Christ's resurrection, instead of the day which commemorated the work of creation. I feel toward it as I do with regard to the noiseless changes of the seasons, and the conformity of our habits and practices to them. I left New York late in winter for the Azores, and, before I expected it, the warm southern airs came one morning into my cabin window. So the Christian Sabbath, with its beautiful a.s.sociations, flowed in upon the world without a formal proclamation. I feel thankful to G.o.d for so regarding our intelligent natures, as to leave some things, relating to ordinances, modes, and forms, to be inferred, bringing great changes over the moral and spiritual world, and leaving us to adjust ourselves and the administration of the appointed ordinances to them. We can add nothing, we take nothing away from an express, divine command; but, as the first disciples were left to infer that a Sabbath was as necessary after Christ brought in the new creation as before, and adjusted it to the celebration of the Saviour's rising from the dead, so we infer that G.o.d's covenant with believing parents for their children is as desirable now as ever; that all the original reasons for it now exist; and, therefore, we take the initiating ordinance of religion now, as the church in former ages did, and apply it to the children. All church-members did it before Christ; all church-members may do it now. G.o.d saw fit to make every adult member, at least, of the Jewish family, a church-member; if he has changed and restricted the terms of church-membership now, that is a sufficient reason for not making the sealing of children as universal now as it was before. That is to say, in both cases, it is a church-member's privilege.

Without detailing the conversation at this point, let me say, I take it for granted that Abraham, as my great spiritual ancestor, my representative before G.o.d, my commissioner to receive for me and transmit my privileges and blessings, continues in that relation unless expressly set aside. Christ did not set him aside. How wonderfully he is brought forward under the new dispensation, when it is said to us, "And if ye be Christ's, then are ye Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise." But, pray, why should Abraham be intruded in connection with Christ, if he with his covenant is like a lapsed legacy, or a superseded act of Congress? Why comes he here, in connection with the Saviour, and tells me that if I am Christ's, then am I his, Abraham's, seed? Hear this: "Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us, that the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ." Wonderful elevation of Abraham and his blessing, as the great type of all that Christ was to procure for us! If Abraham and his covenant ceased with the Jewish people, how does the blessing of Abraham fully come upon us, the Gentiles? But give me his covenant for my children; then I see that Christ is executor of the testament made with Abraham for his children; and I am one of the heirs; as indeed I am, even if I have no children, but if I have, all of Abraham's privileges and his covenanting G.o.d are mine and theirs.

So that, I said to my friends, I go to the Bible not to say, "Must I baptize my children?" but, "Am I forbidden to baptize them?"

All my predecessors in the church of G.o.d, before Christ, had the privilege of bringing their children into the bonds of the covenant with themselves. If they felt as we do about it (and strict usage, and the rich experience which they had had of its benefits, must have made it inestimably precious to them), it is incredible that a sudden and total discontinuance of it, at the beginning of Christianity, should not have occasioned great clamor. The formalists, at least, would have remonstrated at the seeming violation, by this new order of things, of natural affection. For, as Doddridge well observes, "What would have been done with the infants, or male children, of Christians?"--that is, of converted Jews, as well as others. They could not circ.u.mcise them; but their teachers, being spiritually-minded men, knew that circ.u.mcision was a seal of faith, not merely of nationality, and must not the converts have required some sign and symbol still for their children?

Now they had long been used to the baptism of proselytes and their children; so that baptizing their own children, as a subst.i.tute for circ.u.mcising them, could not have been a violent change with those whom Peter's vision of the sheet had taught that the Gentiles should be fellow-heirs. And when he, in one of his first sermons, said to the whole house of Israel, "Ye are the children of the covenant," and "The promise is unto you and to your children," we can account for their utter silence as to any revocation by Christianity of the right and privilege of applying the initiatory ordinance of religion, for the time being, to a believer's child.

"But," said Mr. Benson, "the Saviour said, 'He that believeth, and is baptized, shall be saved.' The apostles said, 'Repent and be baptized, every one of you.' Show us, now, why this does not prove that repentance and faith were not thus made essential to baptism. According to these pa.s.sages, none could be baptized who had not repented and believed.

This would exclude infants. 'Believe, and be baptized;' how do you dispose of that, sir?"

"Very easily," said I.

Mrs. Benson exclaimed, "O, sir, if you can, all my difficulty is at an end!"

"Well, then," said I, "in the first place, there is no such requirement in the Bible. You see the expression very often, but it is not found in Scripture. But tell me exactly what your difficulty is."

"Why," said she, "my husband has just stated it. People tell us the Bible says, 'He that believeth, and is baptized, shall be saved.' So they insist that no one should be baptized who is not old enough to believe."

I told her that I could remove her difficulty in very few words.

"Suppose," said I, "that Abraham is preaching to full-grown men in Canaan, and is trying to proselyte them from their idolatry to the worship of G.o.d. He would say to them, 'Believe and be circ.u.mcised,'

would he not? for G.o.d ordained that certain proselytes should be circ.u.mcised."

"Yes, sir," said two or three voices at once.

"Well, then," said I, "must it follow that children could not be circ.u.mcised because Abraham said to men, 'Believe and be circ.u.mcised'?

How will that reasoning answer? Is it true? No. Little Isaac refuted it, for he was circ.u.mcised even when his father was saying to his pagan neighbors, 'Believe and be circ.u.mcised.'"

"True enough, all who believed, in Christ's day and the apostles', needed to be baptized, because they were not children, but were grown up, when Christian baptism began. Had an apostle, however, lived to see the jailer's family, and that of Lydia, and of Stephanas, grown up, and any in those families had remained unconverted, and then he had said to them, 'Believe and be baptized,' there would be some force in saying that believing and baptism must always go together."

"One other thing always troubled me," said Mr. Benson, "and that is, that there was no seal of the covenant for any but male children. Now, if the initiatory rite of Christianity be used for the same purpose as that given to Abraham, why not confine it, as formerly, to males?"

"How interesting it is," said I, "and it is full of instruction, to see G.o.d paying regard to the world's knowledge and progress, in all his measures, and doing nothing prematurely. There is a very striking ill.u.s.tration of this in the account of the fall.

"G.o.d knew the history of the tempter during his agency in Paradise; for angels had sinned and fallen from heaven. But the existence and agency of fallen spirits had not been disclosed in the Bible,--the time for the disclosure had not come,--and therefore it is said, with beautiful simplicity, 'Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the Lord G.o.d had made;' and the narrative has respect only to the external appearance of the tempter, the serpent, because it would have been premature as yet to bring in the story of fallen angels, or make allusion to them.

"So, for reasons belonging to the early ages of the world, woman was included in man, who acted for her.[1]

"But, however the arrangement began, G.o.d regarded that organic law of society, and, in giving Abraham a seal of a covenant for his children, he restricted it to the sons, they in all things standing and acting as the representatives of the house, according to the existing custom. G.o.d did not go far beyond the world's advancement, in his ordinances, but, with condescension and in wisdom, suited the one to the other. But, as things were then generally represented by types, so the male child was a type and representative of the more full and complete form, which was reserved till the fulness of time, and till the world should know the fulness of Him that filleth all in all. For 'in Christ Jesus there is neither Jew nor Greek, male nor female.'"

[Footnote 1: A curious reason for this, in the minds of some, appears to be that, when man was created, woman was included in him. For, they say, in the first chapter of Genesis, and in the account of the sixth day, before woman was made, the plural word _them_ is used: "male and female created he them." They say that the blessing was p.r.o.nounced on the man and woman in Adam. For they think it improbable that Moses would antic.i.p.ate his history so much as to bring in woman, and, withal, her blessing, too, at the sixth day, when the narrative teaches that she was made some time afterwards. Hence, they say, it was that woman was for ages treated as included in man. There is something pleasing in this fancy, but it seems like one of Origen's allegories, he being the father of allegorical interpretation. It had its origin in an ancient Rabbinical sentiment.]

So I discoursed with my visitors till between ten and eleven o'clock, and when they rose to go, we all stood up together and joined in prayer. We commended Janette to her covenant-keeping G.o.d, whose name had been inscribed upon her. We remembered the little boy who had been the occasion of all this pleasant conversation, and prayed that his consecration might be accepted, and the sign and seal of it be owned and blessed to him and his parents. As I walked down to the gate with my friends, I said to them, that, when G.o.d was covenanting with Abraham, he bade him look up into the heavens, and count the stars, and told him that his seed, like them, should be innumerable. So I told them frequently to look up to those old heavens, and remember that the covenant-keeping G.o.d is there, the same who, in blessing Abraham, included his seed; and that, because Abraham was so good a man, G.o.d calls his posterity "the seed of Abraham my friend." And so we said good-night.

In reading over what I have written, there are a few things more which I feel disposed to add, because I know that Percival will make good use of them in talking with others in your congregation.

I feel, more than I can express, that the state of mind in parents which will make them prize and use the ordinance of baptism for their children is the great want of our day. Bringing children to church, and baptizing them, unless the parents are themselves in covenant with G.o.d, is as wrong as it was for those earthly-minded Corinthians, whom Paul rebukes, to eat the Lord's Supper. They made a feast, or a meal, of the supper; and some use baptism just to give a child a name,--to "christen"

it, as they say,--in mere compliance with a custom. But the abuse of a thing is no valid argument against it. The last supper is the subject of far more perversion; it gives occasion to a vast amount of superst.i.tion and folly. The procession of the host, the elevation of the host, the laying of the wafer on the tongue, the solemn injunctions against spitting for a certain time after receiving it, are no valid arguments against the Lord's Supper, and no Christian is led by them to disregard the words of the Lord Jesus, "This do in remembrance of me." Much of the practical benefit of the Supper comes through the feelings which it awakens, the conduct which it promotes. So with infant baptism. The child must be truly consecrated to G.o.d, beforehand, and afterwards; and the ordinance must be used as a sign and seal on our part, as it is on the part of G.o.d,--an act and testimony, a memorial, a vow. Hannah lent her child to the Lord from the beginning, and then brought him to the temple, with her offerings. We must take the child from baptism as though G.o.d had placed it a second time in our hands, to be trained up for him.

But, still, the ordinance is G.o.d's, and not man's. He has a work to do in us by means of it, while it also helps our feelings, fixes them, makes them vivid, and imposes solemn obligations upon us by its signified vow. So it is with the Lord's Supper. In each case it is G.o.d's memorial, and not ours; and its benefit does not consist so much in showing forth the state of our hearts at the time of administration, as in sealing to us the promises of G.o.d.

True, our feelings are awakened and strengthened, ordinarily, by the ordinances; but that neither explains nor limits the meaning of them. We are wrong if we suppose that the Lord's Supper has done no good unless our feelings are vivid at the time of partaking. If we were sincere, our act had the effect to engage and seal blessings from G.o.d of which we were not aware, and may never be able to trace them back to that transaction. So with regard to baptism.

Some call this sacerdotalism, and are afraid to allow that the sacraments have any influence or use, except as a testimony from us to G.o.d. Romanism has driven us to the opposite extreme in our ideas of sacraments. We do not vibrate back again too far toward Romanism, if now we conclude that G.o.d employs his sacraments, properly received by us, as seals from him of love and promises. Many Christians derive less comfort and help from the Lord's Supper than they may, because they regard it as profitable only so far as they can offer it to G.o.d with vivid feelings on their part; and, when their frames are not as they desire, they conclude that the ordinance is unprofitable. But let us also consider who appointed this ordinance. It is the appointment of Christ, not ours; and at his table we are his guests, not he ours. The Saviour is well represented as saying to us,

"Thou canst not entertain a king!

Unworthy thou of such a guest; But I my own provision bring, To make thy soul a heavenly feast."

There is a divine side to sacraments, as there is a divine side in conversion. While we are active in regeneration, there is a work of G.o.d wrought in us, distinct from our faith and repentance, yet inseparable from it. So, while sacraments are vows on our part to G.o.d, they are, primarily, gifts, pledges, seals, on his part to us. Therefore, when one says, "I can bring up my children, I can be a Christian, without the use of sacraments," it is a proper reply, "But can G.o.d do his part toward your children, and toward you, without them?" For, not only is prayer "the offering up of our desires to G.o.d for things agreeable to his will," but there is the additional truth, which is well expressed in those lines of a hymn:

"Prayer is appointed to convey The blessings G.o.d designs to give."

So with sacraments; they convey gifts from G.o.d, not primarily gifts from us to G.o.d.

He, then, who declines to have his children baptized, on the ground that it is useless, may, in so doing, interrupt the communication of a divinely-appointed medium between G.o.d and his child. For he need not be told that the faith of parents brought blessings from the Saviour, when on earth, to their children, nor be reminded that the benefits of circ.u.mcision were bestowed on the ground of the parental relation to G.o.d.

One further ill.u.s.tration occurs to me of the power which resides in the sacraments themselves, in distinction from their being a testimony from us to G.o.d. Let me call to your remembrance notices which you sometimes see, of young people going, in a frolic, before a clergyman or justice of the peace, to be married, when they intended nothing but sport, and found, afterward, that they had brought themselves into difficulty, and were legally held to be married.

You see by this that covenants do not, by any means, derive all their efficacy from the feelings of a contracting party. Covenants and their seals are the most sacred of all human transactions, and cannot be lightly regarded, or trifled with. G.o.d reveals himself often under the name of the G.o.d that keepeth covenant. So that we may not set aside the sacraments, nor undervalue them. This leads me to say, furthermore, that children, who doubt whether their parents sincerely and truly offered them to G.o.d in baptism, the parents being in an unregenerate state, as it afterward appeared, when they came with their children to the ordinance, may be greatly comforted and encouraged by taking this view of the divine sacrament of baptism as having a force and application in their behalf, by the goodness of G.o.d, irrespective of their parents'

character. G.o.d will not let his sacraments depend, for their efficacy, on the character either of the administrator or of the parents. For, if the character of an administrator affected the baptism, it might so happen that one could never really be baptized, since every successive hand which applied it might prove, in turn, to be that of an unworthy person. If a child is baptized on the profession of parents who afterward show that they were not sincere, the child shall not suffer thereby, if he recognizes the transaction, and makes it his own act. In the case of a converted husband or wife, while one companion remained a heathen, the children were, nevertheless, counted "holy," because the Gospel leaned to the side of mercy, and gave the children the benefit of the believing parent's faith, instead of attainting them through the heathen parent. So, when a child is baptized in error, he shall not suffer, nor even lose anything, if he will accept the covenant with its seal. No one can justly reply to all this, that, therefore, every one even though not of the church, may offer his child for baptism. No; for these are exceptional cases, in which it is true that a covenant, even if it be not fulfilled, has force, and things may enure under it which one who does not make the required profession cannot receive. The covenant, if but the outward conditions be complied with, places all, who are in any way related to it, under various contingencies, which sometimes, to some of the parties, may be productive of good. We see ill.u.s.trations of this in the great tenderness and love which we feel toward a child whose parent has brought a stain upon himself and his family. We find an echo, in our hearts, of those kind words of the Most High, "The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father;" and, if that son behaves himself worthily, every good man is doubly careful to protect and help him. In this way the broken, or unfulfilled, covenant operates, with G.o.d and with man, to the good of some related to it. But shall we, therefore, break our covenant? Shall the unworthy be promiscuously admitted to its privileges? "Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound?"

In speaking of the influence of sacraments, I am aware that we approach enchanted ground. The human heart loves a religion of forms and ceremonies, which professes to renew and save without self-denial, breathing around us the quietism of ordinances, and lulling us to drowsy forgetfulness of duty in the luxurious enjoyment of an irresponsible religion. While, therefore, we cannot too carefully guard against the abuse of ordinances, we must not forget that G.o.d, who made man, body and soul, chooses to convey some of his gracious operations to us by the help of the two simple sacraments, and that they are intended to act upon us, in the hands of his Spirit, in the first instance; not merely serving as offerings to G.o.d.

It is not that there are fewer children baptized now than formerly (if such indeed be the case), that awakens sorrow and apprehension; but that parents are deficient in the feelings which make us prize and use baptism. This is the evil sign, and it is greatly to be deplored. One must have intelligent views of the Scriptures as a whole,--of both Testaments,--most fully to understand and value infant baptism; for its roots were planted in the Old Testament. I always feel deep respect for a church-member who comprehends this subject in its wide relations, and is not swayed by the popular demand for an express sign at every step, but can reason inferentially as well as when proofs are demonstrative and palpable; and who has in his mind the whole system of redemption, with its various economies, interdependent, and none made perfect without the rest. When all our church-members come to understand and feel the power of this subject in this manner, what times of enlightened religious prosperity, and a high state of religious culture, it will indicate. I pray and wait for the time when all our Paedobaptist churches, of every name, will conspire to promote spiritual views of children's baptism, holding it forth as the expression of spiritual feelings, and discountenancing formalism in connection with it. Though I was never an Episcopalian in my preferences, and though the appointment of G.o.dfathers and G.o.dmothers may, like every good thing, relapse into mere form, I honor it for its excellent and pious design of surrounding the parents and the children with admonition and help. For there are sponsors, I am happy to know, who are not mere formalists, but who make it a rule to have an interview with their G.o.dchildren on or near their birthdays, or the anniversaries of their baptisms, and, in an affectionate, faithful manner, they endeavor to fulfil the vows which they took upon themselves at the baptism. Blessings on such faithful Christian friends! Happy the children who have them for helpers of their faith and piety. Let us all, as church-members, be sponsors, at least by prayers and a kind interest for it, to every child of a Christian brother or sister, when we witness its baptism. Suppose a church-member, after witnessing the baptism of an infant, its parents, perhaps, entire strangers, goes to his place of private prayer, and, moved with disinterested love toward those parents and the child, supplicates the blessing of G.o.d upon them. Could Christian love be more pure than this, or prayer more pleasing to G.o.d? In the revelations of eternity such prayers will not only be rewarded openly by Him who saw those doors shut with that secret love and piety, but blessings upon parents and child without measure may be traced to such pet.i.tions as their procuring cause. How good it is to perform such acts, knowing that they can never come abroad in this world! Should every Christian who witnesses the baptism of a child, afterward pray for that immortal soul in secret, with special pet.i.tions, what an increased privilege and blessing it would be esteemed to offer a child in baptism, and in G.o.d's house, before a witnessing church, rather than at home! I hope, my dear daughter, that you and Percival, as private Christians, will do good to your own souls, and to the souls of baptized children, and to their parents, by making it one of your private rules to pray in secret, on the Sabbath, for every child whose baptism you witness.

The effort to promote and enforce infant baptism, by ecclesiastical enactments merely, is absurd. We must fertilize the soil, not spread gla.s.s sashes over the plants. Give Christians right views and feelings about their covenant privileges and duties; disabuse them of their mistakes about the severance of the Old Testament from the New; teach them to look at Abraham, not as a decayed peer, or an old Jew, but as the founder of the church of all ages, to whom Almighty G.o.d virtually said, 'On this rock I will build my church,'--Abraham being the first foundation stone, waiting for apostles to be added with him, and, as our great representative, bearing in his hand the covenant made with him for us, as well, as for the other great branch of the family of G.o.d; show them that baptism is now the initiating ordinance, and that the old covenant was never repealed, though the seal be changed; let them see what it is to have G.o.d in covenant with them to be the G.o.d of their seed; and, withal, let us correct, or modify, the intense anti-papal jealousy of the Christian rites, which makes us all, unconsciously, verge to the opposite extreme, thus missing the divinely-appointed intention and use which there is in our two simple ordinances; and then, with the revival of such spiritual views and feelings, and, as a consequence, with greater reference in the prayers of Christians, public and private, to the subject, the practice of children's baptism will increase, as surely as accessions to the Lord's table increase when people come to have Christ in them the hope of glory.

We, ministers, can do very much to promote a love for the ordinance in many ways. We ought to make it convenient and pleasant by all the expedients within our power. I like the practice which you speak of, in your church, of the mother remaining with the child in the anteroom till the introductory services and the loud organ-playing are over. Does your pastor pour water into the child's face and eyes, and then begin the words of baptism? I presume not; but I have seen it done. We should not touch the child's head till near the close of the baptismal formula; and then so that the child will not see the arm move toward it.