Christian Baptism is the immersion of a believer in water, in token of his previous entrance into the communion of Christ’s death and resurrection,—or, in other words, in token of his regeneration through union with Christ.

1. Baptism an Ordinance of Christ.

A. Proof that Christ instituted an external rite called baptism.

(a) From the words of the great commission; (b) from the injunctions of the apostles; (c) from the fact that the members of the New Testament churches were baptized believers; (d) from the universal practice of such a rite in Christian churches of subsequent times.

(a) Mat. 28:19—“Go ye therefore, and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit”; Mark 16:16—“He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved”—we hold, with Westcott and Hort, that Mark 16:9‐20 is of canonical authority, though probably not written by Mark himself. (b) Acts 2:38—“And Peter said unto them, Repent ye, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ unto the remission of your sins”; (c) Rom. 6:3‐5—“Or are ye ignorant that all we who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him through baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we also might walk in newness of life. For if we have become united with him in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection”; Col. 2:11, 12—“in whom ye were also circumcised with a circumcision not made with hands, in the putting off of the body of the flesh, in the circumcision of Christ; having been buried with him in baptism, wherein ye were also raised with him through faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead.” (d) The only marked exceptions to the universal requisition of baptism are found in the Society of Friends, and in the Salvation Army. The Salvation Army does not regard the ordinance as having any more permanent obligation than feet‐washing. General Booth: “We teach our soldiers that every time they break bread, they are to remember the broken body of the Lord, and every time they wash the body, they are to remind themselves of the cleansing power of the blood of Christ and of the indwelling Spirit.” The Society of Friends regard Christ’s commands as fulfilled, not by any outward baptism of water, but only by the inward baptism of the Spirit.

B. This external rite intended by Christ to be of universal and perpetual obligation.

(a) Christ recognized John the Baptist’s commission to baptize as derived immediately from heaven.

Mat. 21:25—“The baptism of John, whence was it? from heaven or from men?”—here Jesus clearly intimates that John’s commission to baptize was derived directly from God; cf. John 1:25—the delegates sent to the Baptist by the Sanhedrin ask him: “Why then baptizest thou, if thou art not the Christ, neither Elijah, neither the prophet?” thus indicating that John’s baptism, either in its form or its application, was a new ordinance that required special divine authorization. Broadus in his American Com. on Mat. 3:6, claims that John’s baptism was no modification of an existing rite. Proselyte baptism is not mentioned in the Mishna (A. D. 200); the first distinct account of it is in the Babylonian Talmud (Gemara) written in the fifth century; it was not adopted from the Christians, but was one of the Jewish purifications which came to be regarded, after the destruction of the Temple, as a peculiar initiatory rite. There is no mention of it, as a Jewish rite, in the O. T., N. T., Apocrypha, Philo, or Josephus. For the view that proselyte‐baptism did not exist among the Jews before the time of John, see Schneckenburger, Ueber das Alter der jüdischen Proselytentaufe; Stuart, in Bib. Repos., 1833:338‐355; Toy, In Baptist Quarterly, 1872:301‐332. Dr. Toy, however, in a private note to the author (1884), says: “I am disposed now to regard the Christian rite as borrowed from the Jewish, contrary to my view in 1872.” So holds Edersheim, Life and Times of Jesus, 2:742‐744—“We have positive testimony that the baptism of proselytes existed in the times of Hillel and Shammai. For, whereas the school of Shammai is said to have allowed a proselyte who was circumcised on the eve of the Passover, to partake, after baptism, of the Passover, the school of Hillel forbade it. This controversy must be regarded as proving that at that time [previous to Christ] the baptism of proselytes was customary.” Porter, on Proselyte Baptism, Hastings’ Bible Dict., 4:132—“If circumcision was the decisive step in the case of all male converts, there seems no longer room for serious question that a bath of purification must have followed, even though early mention of such proselyte baptism is not found. The law (Lev. 11‐15; Num. 19) prescribed such baths in all cases of impurity, and one who came with the deep impurity of a heathen life behind him could not have entered the Jewish community without such cleansing.” Plummer, on Baptism, Hastings’ Bible Dict., 1:239—“What is wanted is direct evidence that, before John the Baptist made so remarkable a use of the rite, it was the custom to make all proselytes submit to baptism; and such evidence is not forthcoming. Nevertheless the fact is not really doubtful. It is not credible that the baptizing of proselytes was instituted and made essential for their admission to Judaism at a period subsequent to the institution of Christian baptism; and the supposition that it was borrowed from the rite enjoined by Christ is monstrous.” Although the O. T. and the Apocrypha, Josephus and Philo, are silent with regard to proselyte baptism, it is certain that it existed among the Jews in the early Christian centuries; and it is almost equally certain that the Jews could not have adopted it from the Christians. It is probable, therefore, that the baptism of John was an application to Jews of an immersion which, before that time, was administered to proselytes from among the Gentiles; and that it was this adaptation of the rite to a new class of subjects and with a new meaning, which excited the inquiry and criticism of the Sanhedrin. We must remember, however, that the Lord’s Supper was likewise an adaptation of certain portions of the old Passover service to a new use and meaning. See also Kitto, Bib. Cyclop., 3:593.

(b) In his own submission to John’s baptism, Christ gave testimony to the binding obligation of the ordinance (Mat. 3:13‐17). John’s baptism was essentially Christian baptism (Acts 19:4), although the full significance of it was not understood until after Jesus’ death and resurrection (Mat. 20:17‐23; Luke 12:50; Rom. 6:3‐6).

Mat. 3:13‐17—“Suffer it now: for thus it becometh us to fulfill all righteousness”; Acts 19:4—“John baptized with the baptism of repentance, saying unto the people that they should believe on him that should come after him, that is, on Jesus”; Mat. 20:18, 19, 22—“the Son of man shall be delivered unto the chief priests and scribes; and they shall condemn him to death, and shall deliver him unto the Gentiles to mock, and to scourge, and to crucify.... Are ye able to drink the cup that I am about to drink?” Luke 12:50—“But I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how am I straitened till it be accomplished!” Rom. 6:3, 4—“Or are ye ignorant that all we who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him through baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we also might walk is newness of life.” Robert Hall, Works, 1:367‐399, denies that John’s baptism was Christian baptism, and holds that there is not sufficient evidence that all the apostles were baptized. The fact that John’s baptism was a baptism of faith in the coming Messiah, as well as a baptism of repentance for past and present sin, refutes this theory. The only difference between John’s baptism, and the baptism of our time, is that John baptized upon profession of faith in a Savior yet to come; baptism is now administered upon profession of faith in a Savior who has actually and already come. On John’s baptism as presupposing faith in those who received it, see treatment of the Subjects of Baptism, page 950.

(c) In continuing the practice of baptism through his disciples (John 4:1, 2), and in enjoining it upon them as part of a work which was to last to the end of the world (Mat. 28:19, 20), Christ manifestly adopted and appointed baptism as the invariable law of his church.

John 4:1, 2—“When therefore the Lord knew that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus was making and baptizing more disciples than John (although Jesus himself baptized not, but his disciples)”; Mat. 28:19, 20—“Go ye therefore, and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit: teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I commanded you: and lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.”

(d) The analogy of the ordinance of the Lord’s Supper also leads to the conclusion that baptism is to be observed as an authoritative memorial of Christ and his truth, until his second coming.

1 Cor. 11:26—“For as often as ye eat this bread, and drink the cup, ye proclaim the Lord’s death till he come.” Baptism, like the Lord’s Supper, is a teaching ordinance, and the two ordinances together furnish an indispensable witness to Christ’s death and resurrection.

(e) There is no intimation whatever that the command of baptism is limited, or to be limited, in its application,—that it has been or ever is to be repealed; and, until some evidence of such limitation or repeal is produced, the statute must be regarded as universally binding.

On the proof that baptism is an ordinance of Christ, see Pepper, in Madison Avenue Lectures, 85‐114; Dagg, Church Order, 9‐21.

2. The Mode of Baptism.

This is immersion, and immersion only. This appears from the following considerations:

A. The command to baptize is a command to immerse.

We show this:

(a) From the meaning of the original word βαπτίζω. That this is to immerse, appears:

First,—from the usage of Greek writers—including the church Fathers, when they do not speak of the Christian rite, and the authors of the Greek version of the Old Testament.

Liddell and Scott, Greek Lexicon: “βαπτίζω, to dip in or under water; Lat. immergere.” Sophocles, Lexicon of Greek Usage in the Roman and Byzantine Periods, 140 B. C. to 1000 A. D.—“βαπτίζω, to dip, to immerse, to sink ... There is no evidence that Luke and Paul and the other writers of the N. T. put upon this verb meanings not recognized by the Greeks.” Thayer, N. T. Lexicon: “βαπτίζω, literally to dip, to dip repeatedly, to immerse, to submerge, ... metaphorically, to overwhelm.... βάπτισμα, immersion, submersion ... a rite of sacred immersion commanded by Christ.” Prof. Goodwin of Harvard University, Feb. 13, 1895, says: “The classical meaning of βαπτίζω, which seldom occurs, and of the more common βάπτω, is dip (literally or metaphorically), and I never heard of its having any other meaning anywhere. Certainly I never saw a lexicon which gives either sprinkle or pour, as meanings of either. I must be allowed to ask why I am so often asked this question, which seems to me to have but one perfectly plain answer.” In the International Critical Commentary, see Plummer on Luke, p. 86—“It is only when baptism is administered by immersion that its full significance is seen”; Abbott on Colossians, p. 251—“The figure was naturally suggested by the immersion in baptism”; see also Gould on Mark, p. 127; Sanday on Romans, p. 154‐157. No one of these four Commentaries was written by a Baptist. The two latest English Bible Dictionaries agree upon this point. Hastings, Bib. Dict., art.: Baptism, p. 243 a—“The mode of using was commonly immersion. The symbolism of the ordinance required this”; Cheyne, Encyc. Biblica, 1:473, while arguing from the Didache that from a very early date “a triple pouring was admitted where a sufficiency of water could not be had,” agrees that “such a method [as immersion] is presupposed as the ideal, at any rate, in Paul’s words about death, burial and resurrection in baptism (Rom. 6:3‐5).” Conant, Appendix to Bible Union Version of Matthew, 1‐64, has examples “drawn from writers in almost every department of literature and science; from poets, rhetoricians, philosophers, critics, historians, geographers; from writers on husbandry, on medicine, on natural history, on grammar, on theology; from almost every form and style of composition, romances, epistles, orations, fables, odes, epigrams, sermons, narratives: from writers of various nations and religions, Pagan, Jew, and Christian, belonging to many countries and through a long succession of ages. In all, the word has retained its ground‐meaning without change. From the earliest age of Greek literature down to its close, a period of nearly two thousand years, not an example has been found in which the word has any other meaning. There is no instance in which it signifies to make a partial application of water by affusion or sprinkling, or to cleanse, to purify, apart from the literal act of immersion as the means of cleansing or purifying.” See Stuart, in Bib. Repos., 1833:313; Broadus on Immersion, 57, note. Dale, in his Classic, Judaic, Christic, and Patristic Baptism, maintains that βάπτω alone means “to dip,” and that βαπτίζω never means “to dip,” but only “to put within,” giving no intimation that the object is to be taken out again. But see Review of Dale, by A. C. Kendrick, in Bap. Quarterly, 1869:129, and by Harvey, in Bap. Review, 1879:141‐163. “Plutarch used the word βαπτίζω, when he describes the soldiers of Alexander on a riotous march as by the roadside dipping (lit.: baptizing) with cups from huge wine jars and mixing bowls, and drinking to one another. Here we have βαπτίζω used where Dr. Dale’s theory would call for βάπτω. The truth is that βαπτίζω, the stronger word, came to be used in the same sense with the weaker; and the attempt to prove a broad and invariable difference of meaning between them breaks down. Of Dr. Dale’s three meanings of βαπτίζω—(1) intusposition without influence (stone in water), (2) intusposition with influence (man drowned in water), (3) influence without intusposition,—the last is a figment of Dr. Dale’s imagination. It would allow me to say that when I burned a piece of paper, I baptized it. The grand result is this: Beginning with the position that baptize means immerse, Dr. Dale ends by maintaining that immersion is not baptism. Because Christ speaks of drinking a cup, Dr. Dale infers that this is baptism.” For a complete reply to Dale, see Ford, Studies on Baptism.

Secondly,—every passage where the word occurs in the New Testament either requires or allows the meaning “immerse.”

Mat. 3:6, 11—“I indeed baptize you in water unto repentance ... he shall baptize you in the holy Spirit and in fire”; cf. 2 Kings 5:14—“Then went he [Naaman] down, and dipped himself ἐβαπτίσατο seven times in the Jordan”; Mark 1:5, 9—“they were baptized of him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.... Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee, and was baptized of John into the Jordan”; 7:4—“and when they come from the market‐place, except they bathe [lit.: ‘baptize’] themselves, they eat not: and many other things there are, which they have received to hold, washings [lit.: ‘baptizings’] of cups, and pots, and brasen vessels”—in this verse, Westcott and Hort, with א and B, read ῥαντίσωνται, instead of βαπτίσωνται; but it is easy to see how subsequent ignorance of Pharisaic scrupulousness might have changed βαπτίσωνται into ῥαντίσωνται; but not easy to see how ῥαντίσωνται should have been changed into βαπτίσωνται. On Mat. 15:2 (and the parallel passage Mark 7:4), see Broadus, Com. on Mat., pages 332, 333. Herodotus, 2:47, says that if any Egyptian touches a swine in passing, with his clothes, he goes to the river and dips himself from it. Meyer, Com. in loco—“ἐὰν μὴ βαπτίσωνται is not to be understood of washing the hands (Lightfoot, Wetstein), but of immersion, which the word in classic Greek and in the N. T. everywhere means; here, according to the context, to take a bath.” The Revised Version omits the words “and couches,” although Maimonides speaks of a Jewish immersion of couches; see quotation from Maimonides in Ingham, Handbook of Baptism, 373—“Whenever in the law washing of the flesh or of the clothes is mentioned, it means nothing else than the dipping of the whole body in a laver; for if any man dip himself all over except the tip of his little finger, he is still in his uncleanness.... A bed that is wholly defiled, if a man dip it part by part, it is pure.” Watson, in Annotated Par. Bible, 1126. Luke 11:38—“And when the Pharisee saw it, he marvelled that he had not first bathed [lit.: ‘baptized’] himself before dinner”; cf. Ecclesiasticus 31:25—“He that washeth himself after the touching of a dead body” (βαπτιζόμενος ἀπὸ νεκροῦ); Judith 12:7—“washed herself ἐβαπτίζετο in a fountain of water by the camp”; Lev. 22:4‐6—“Whoso toucheth anything that is unclean by the dead ... unclean until the even ... bathe his flesh in water.” Acts 2:41—“They then that received his word were baptized: and there were added unto them in that day about three thousand souls.” Although the water supply of Jerusalem is naturally poor, the artificial provision of aqueducts, cisterns, and tanks, made water abundant. During the siege of Titus, though thousands died of famine, we read of no suffering from lack of water. The following are the dimensions of pools in modern Jerusalem: King’s Pool, 15 feet x 16 x 3; Siloam, 53 x 18 x 19; Hezekiah, 240 x 140 x 10; Bethesda (so‐called), 360 x 130 x 75; Upper Gihon, 316 x 218 x 19; Lower Gihon, 592 x 260 x 18; see Robinson, Biblical Researches, 1:323‐348, and Samson, Water‐supply of Jerusalem, pub. by Am. Bap. Pub. Soc. There was no difficulty in baptizing three thousand in one day; for, in the time of Chrysostom, when all candidates of the year were baptized in a single day, three thousand were once baptized; and, on July 3, 1878, 2222 Telugu Christians were baptized by two administrators in nine hours. These Telugu baptisms took place at Velumpilly, ten miles north of Ongole. The same two men did not baptize all the time. There were six men engaged in baptizing, but never more than two men at the same time. Acts 16:33—“And he took them the same hour of the night, and washed their stripes; and was baptized, he and all his, immediately”—the prison was doubtless, as are most large edifices in the East, whether public or private, provided with tank and fountain. See Cremer, Lexicon of N. T. Greek, sub voce—“βαπτίζω, immersion or submersion for a religious purpose.” Grimm’s ed. of Wilke—“βαπτίζω, 1. Immerse, submerge; 2. Wash or bathe, by immersing or submerging (Mark 7:4, also Naaman and Judith); 3. Figuratively, to overwhelm, as with debts, misfortunes, etc.” In the N. T. rite, he says it denotes “an immersion in water, intended as a sign of sins washed away, and received by those who wished to be admitted to the benefits of Messiah’s reign.” Döllinger, Kirche und Kirchen, 337—“The Baptists are, however, from the Protestant point of view, unassailable, since for their demand of baptism by submersion they have the clear Bible text; and the authority of the church and of her testimony is not regarded by either party”—i. e., by either Baptists or Protestants, generally. Prof. Harnack, of Giessen, writes in the Independent, Feb. 19, 1885—“1. Baptizein undoubtedly signifies immersion (eintauchen). 2. No proof can be found that it signifies anything else in the N. T. and in the most ancient Christian literature. The suggestion regarding a ‘sacred sense’ is out of the question. 3. There is no passage in the N. T. which suggests the supposition that any New Testament author attached to the word baptizein any other sense than eintauchen = untertauchen (immerse, submerge).” See Com. of Meyer, and Cunningham, Croall lectures.

Thirdly,—the absence of any use of the word in the passive voice with “water” as its subject confirms our conclusion that its meaning is “to immerse.” Water is never said to be baptized upon a man.

(b) From the use of the verb βαπτίζω with prepositions:

First,—with εἰς (Mark 1:9—where Ἰορδάνην is the element into which the person passes in the act of being baptized).

Mark 1:9, marg.—“And it came to pass in those days, that Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee, and was baptized of John into the Jordan.”

Secondly,—with ἐν (Mark 1:5, 8; cf. Mat. 3:11. John 1:26, 31, 33; cf. Acts 2:2, 4). In these texts, ἐν is to be taken, not instrumentally, but as indicating the element in which the immersion takes place.

Mark 1:5, 8—“they were baptized of him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.... I baptized you in water; but he shall baptize you in the Holy Spirit”—here see Meyer’s Com. on Mat. 3:11—“ἐν is in accordance with the meaning of βαπτίζω (immerse), not to be understood instrumentally, but on the contrary, in the sense of the element in which the immersion takes place.” Those who pray for a “baptism of the Holy Spirit” pray for such a pouring out of the Spirit as shall fill the place and permit them to be flooded or immersed in his abundant presence and power; see C. E. Smith, Baptism of Fire, 1881:305‐311. Plumptre: “The baptism with the Holy Ghost would imply that the souls thus baptized would be plunged, as it were, in that creative and informing Spirit, which was the source of light and holiness and wisdom.” A. J. Gordon, Ministry of the Spirit, 67—“The upper room became the Spirit’s baptistery. His presence ‘filled all the house where they were sitting’ (Acts 2:2).... Baptism in the Holy Spirit was given once for all on the day of Pentecost, when the Paraclete came in person to make his abode in the church. It does not follow that every believer has received this baptism. God’s gift is one thing,—our appropriation of that gift is quite another thing. Our relation to the second and to the third persons of the Godhead is exactly parallel in this respect. ‘God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son’ (John 3:16). ‘But as many as received him, to them gave he the right to become children of God, even to them that believe on his name’ (John 1:12). We are required to appropriate the Spirit as sons, in the same way that we are required to appropriate Christ as sinners.... ‘He breathed on them, and saith unto them, Receive ye’—take ye, actively—‘the Holy Spirit’ (John 20:22).”

(c) From circumstances attending the administration of the ordinance (Mark 1:10—ἀναβαίνων ἐκ τοῦ ὕδατος; John 3:23—ὕδατα πολλά; Acts 8:38, 39—κατέβησαν εἰς τὸ ὕδωρ ... ἀνέβησαν ἐκ τοῦ ὕδατος).

Mark 1:10—“coming up out of the water”; John 3:23—“And John also was baptizing in Ænon near to Salim, because there was much water there”—a sufficient depth of water for baptizing; see Prof. W. A. Stevens, on Ænon near to Salim, in Journ. Soc. of Bib. Lit. and Exegesis, Dec. 1883. Acts 8:38, 39—“and they both went down into the water, both Philip and the eunuch; and he baptized him. And when they came up out of the water....” In the case of Philip and the eunuch, President Timothy Dwight, in S. S. Times, Aug. 27, 1892, says: “The baptism was apparently by immersion.” The Editor adds that “practically scholars are agreed that the primitive meaning of the word ’baptize’ was to immerse.”

(d) From figurative allusions to the ordinance.

Mark 10:38—“Are ye able to drink the cup that I drink? or to be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?”—here the cup is the cup of suffering in Gethsemane; cf. Luke 22:42—“Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me”; and the baptism is the baptism of death on Calvary, and of the grave that was to follow; cf. Luke 12:50—“I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how am I straitened till it be accomplished!” Death presented itself to the Savior’s mind as a baptism, because it was a sinking under the floods of suffering. Rom. 6:4—“We were buried therefore with him through baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we also might walk in newness of life”—Conybeare and Howson, Life and Epistles of St. Paul, say, on this passage, that “it cannot be understood without remembering that the primitive method of baptism was by immersion.” On Luke 12:49, marg.—“I came to cast fire upon the earth, and how would I that it were already kindled!”—see Wendt, Teaching of Jesus, 2:225—“He knew that he was called to bring a new energy and movement into the world, which mightily seizes and draws everything towards it, as a hurled firebrand, which whereever it falls kindles a flame which expands into a vast sea of fire”—the baptism of fire, the baptism in the Holy Spirit? 1 Cor. 10:1, 2—“our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea; and were all baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea”; Col. 2:12—“having been buried with him in baptism, wherein ye were also raised with him”; Heb. 10:22—“having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and having our body washed [λελουμένοι] with pure water”—here Trench, N. T. Synonyms, 216, 217, says that “λούω implies always, not the bathing of a part of the body, but of the whole.” 1 Pet 3:20, 21—“saved through water: which also after a true likeness doth now save you, even baptism, not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the interrogation of a good conscience toward God, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ”—as the ark whose sides were immersed in water saved Noah, so the immersion of believers typically saves them; that is, the answer of a good conscience, the turning of the soul to God, which baptism symbolizes. “In the ritual of Moses and Aaron, three things were used: oil, blood, and water. The oil was poured, the blood was sprinkled, the water was used for complete ablution first of all, and subsequently for partial ablution to those to whom complete ablution had been previously administered” (Wm. Ashmore).

(e) From the testimony of church history as to the practice of the early church.

Tertullian, De Baptismo, chap. 12—“Others make the suggestion (forced enough, clearly) that the apostles then served the turn of baptism when in their little ship they were sprinkled and covered with the waves; that Peter himself also was immersed enough when he walked on the sea. It is however, as I think, one thing to be sprinkled or intercepted by the violence of the sea; another thing to be baptized in obedience to the discipline of religion.” Fisher, Beginnings of Christianity, 565—“Baptism, it is now generally agreed among scholars, was commonly administered by immersion.” Schaff, History of the Apostolic Church, 570—“Respecting the form of baptism, the impartial historian is compelled by exegesis and history substantially to yield the point to the Baptists.” Elsewhere Dr. Schaff says: “The baptism of Christ in the Jordan, and the illustrations of baptism used in the N. T., are all in favor of immersion, rather than of sprinkling, as is freely admitted by the best exegetes, Catholic and Protestant, English and German. Nothing can be gained by unnatural exegesis. The persistency and aggressiveness of Baptists have driven pedobaptists to opposite extremes.” Dean Stanley, in his address at Eton College, March, 1879, on Historical Aspects of American Churches, speaks of immersion as “the primitive, apostolical, and, till the 13th century, the universal, mode of baptism, which is still retained throughout the Eastern churches, and which is still in our own church as positively enjoined in theory as it is universally neglected in practice.” The same writer, in the Nineteenth Century, Oct. 1879, says that “the change from immersion to sprinkling has set aside the larger part of the apostolic language regarding baptism, and has altered the very meaning of the word.” Neander, Church Hist., 1:310—“In respect to the form of baptism, it was, in conformity with the original institution and the original import of the symbol, performed by immersion, as a sign of entire baptism into the Holy Spirit, of being entirely penetrated by the same.... It was only with the sick, where exigency required it, that any exception was made. Then it was administered by sprinkling; but many superstitious persons imagined such sprinkling to be not fully valid, and stigmatized those thus baptized as clinics.” Until recently, there has been no evidence that clinic baptism, i. e., the baptism of a sick or dying person in bed by pouring water copiously around him, was practised earlier than the time of Novatian, in the third century; and in these cases there is good reason to believe that a regenerating efficacy was ascribed to the ordinance. We are now, however, compelled to recognize a departure from N. T. precedent somewhat further back. Important testimony is that of Prof. Harnack, of Giessen, in the Independent of Feb. 19, 1885—“Up to the present moment we possess no certain proof from the period of the second century, in favor of the fact that baptism by aspersion was then even facultatively administered; for Tertullian (De Pœnit., 6, and De Baptismo, 12) is uncertain; and the age of those pictures upon which is represented a baptism by aspersion is not certain. The ‘Teaching of the Twelve Apostles,’ however, has now instructed us that already, in very early times, people in the church took no offence when aspersion was put in place of immersion, when any kind of outward circumstances might render immersion impossible or impracticable.... But the rule was also certainly maintained that immersion was obligatory if the outward conditions of such a performance were at hand.” This seems to show that, while the corruption of the N. T. rite began soon after the death of the apostles, baptism by any other form than immersion was even then a rare exception, which those who introduced the change sought to justify upon the plea of necessity. See Schaff, Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, 29‐57, and other testimony in Coleman, Christian Antiquities, 275; Stuart, in Bib. Repos., 1883:355‐363. The “Teaching of the Twelve Apostles,” section 7, reads as follows: “Baptize ... in living water. And if thou have no living water, baptize in other water; and if thou canst not in cold, then in warm. And if thou have neither, pour water upon the head thrice.” Here it is evident that “baptize” means only “immerse,” but if water be scarce pouring may be substituted for baptism. Dr. A. H. Newman, Antipedobaptism, 5, says that “The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles” may possibly belong to the second half of the second century, but in its present form is probably much later. It does not explicitly teach baptismal regeneration, but this view seems to be implied in the requirement, in case of an absolute lack of a sufficiency of water of any kind for baptism proper, that pouring water on the head three times be resorted to as a substitute. Catechetical instruction, repentance, fasting, and prayer, must precede the baptismal rite. Dexter, in his True Story of John Smyth and Sebaptism, maintains that immersion was a new thing in England in 1641. But if so, it was new, as Congregationalism was new—a newly restored practice and ordinance of apostolic times. For reply to Dexter, see Long, in Bap. Rev., Jan. 1883:12, 13, who tells us, on the authority of Blunt’s Ann. Book of Com. Prayer, that from 1085 to 1549, the “Salisbury Use” was the accepted mode, and this provided for the child’s trine immersion. “The Prayerbook of Edward VI succeeded to the Salisbury Use in 1549; but in this too immersion has the place of honor—affusion is only for the weak. The English church has never sanctioned sprinkling (Blunt, 226). In 1664, the Westminster Assembly said ’sprinkle or pour,’ thus annulling what Christ commanded 1600 years before. Queen Elizabeth was immersed in 1533. If in 1641 immersion had been so generally and so long disused that men saw it with wonder and regarded it as a novelty, then the more distinct, emphatic, and peculiarly their own was the work of the Baptists. They come before the world, with no partners, or rivals, or abettors, or sympathizers, as the restorers and preservers of Christian baptism.”

(f) From the doctrine and practice of the Greek church.

DeStourdza, the greatest modern theologian of the Greek church, writes; “βαπτίζω signifies literally and always ‘to plunge.’ Baptism and immersion are therefore identical, and to say ‘baptism by aspersion’ is as if one should say ‘immersion by aspersion,’ or any other absurdity of the same nature. The Greek church maintain that the Latin church, instead of a βαπτισμός, practice a mere ῥαντισμός,—instead of baptism, a mere sprinkling”—quoted in Conant on Mat., appendix, 99. See also Broadus on Immersion, 18. The evidence that immersion is the original mode of baptism is well summed up by Dr. Marcus Dods, in his article on Baptism in Hastings’ Dictionary of Christ and the Apostles. Dr. Dods defines baptism as “a rite wherein by immersion in water the participant symbolizes and signalizes his transition from an impure to a pure life, his death to a past he abandons, and his birth to a future he desires.” As regards the “mode of baptism,” he remarks: “That the normal mode was by immersion of the whole body may be inferred (a) from the meaning of baptizo, which is the intensive or frequentative form of bapto, ‘I dip,’ and denotes to immerse or submerge—the point is, that ‘dip’ or ‘immerse’ is the primary, ‘wash’ the secondary meaning of bapto or baptizo. (b) The same inference may be drawn from the law laid down regarding the baptism of proselytes: ‘As soon as he grows whole of the wound of circumcision, they bring him to baptism, and being placed in the water, they again instruct him in some weightier and in some lighter commands of the Law, which being heard, he plunges himself and comes up, and behold, he is an Israelite in all things’ (Lightfoot’s Horæ Hebraicæ). To use Pauline language, his old man is dead and buried in water, and he rises from this cleansing grave a new man. The full significance of the rite would have been lost had immersion not been practised. Again, it was required in proselyte baptism that ‘every person baptized must dip his whole body, now stripped and made naked, at one dipping. And wheresoever in the Law washing of the body or garments is mentioned, it means nothing else than the washing of the whole body.’ (c) That immersion was the mode of baptism adopted by John is the natural conclusion from his choosing the neighborhood of the Jordan as the scene of his labors; and from the statement of John 3:23 that he was baptizing in Enon ‘because there was much water there.’ (d) That this form was continued in the Christian Church appears from the expression Loutron palingenesias (bath of regeneration, Titus 3:5), and from the use made by St. Paul in Romans 6 of the symbolism. This is well put by Bingham (Antiquities xi.2).” The author quotes Bingham to the effect that “total immersion under water” was the universal practice during the early Christian centuries “except in some particular cases of exigence, wherein they allow of sprinkling, as in the case of a clinic baptism, or where there is a scarcity of water.” Dr. Dods continues: “This statement exactly reflects the ideas of the Pauline Epistles and the ’Didache’” (Teaching of the Twelve Apostles).

The prevailing usage of any word determines the sense it bears, when found in a command of Christ. We have seen, not only that the prevailing usage of the Greek language determines the meaning of the word “baptize” to be “immerse,” but that this is its fundamental, constant, and only meaning. The original command to baptize is therefore a command to immerse.

As evidence that quite diverse sections of the Christian world are coming to recognize the original form of baptism to be immersion, we may cite the fact that a memorial to the late Archbishop of Canterbury has recently been erected in the parish church of Lambeth, and that it is in the shape of a “font‐grave,” in which a believer can be buried with Christ in baptism; and also that the Rev. G. Campbell Morgan has had a baptistery constructed in the newly renovated Westminster Congregational Church in London. Pfleiderer, Philos. Religion, 2:211—“As in the case of the Lord’s Supper, so did Baptism also first receive its sacramental significance through Paul. As he saw in the immersing under water the symbolical repetition of the death and resurrection of Christ, baptism appeared to him as the act of spiritual dying and renovation, or regeneration, of incorporation into the mystical body of Christ, that ’new creation.’ As for Paul the baptism of adults only was in question, faith in Christ is already of course presupposed by it, and baptism is just the act in which faith realizes the decisive resolution of giving one’s self up actually as belonging to Christ and his community. Yet the outward act is not on that account a mere semblance of what is already present in faith, but according to the mysticism common to Paul with the whole ancient world, the symbolical act effectuates what it typifies, and therefore in this case the mortification of the carnal man and the animation of the spiritual man.” For the view that sprinkling or pouring constitutes valid baptism, see Hall, Mode of Baptism. Per contra, see Hovey, in Baptist Quarterly, April, 1875; Wayland, Principles and Practices of Baptists, 85; Carson, Noel, Judson, and Pengilly, on Baptism; especially recent and valuable is Burrage, Act of Baptism.

B. No church has the right to modify or dispense with this command of Christ.

This is plain:

(a) From the nature of the church. Notice:

First,—that, besides the local church, no other visible church of Christ is known to the New Testament. Secondly,—that the local church is not a legislative, but is simply an executive, body. Only the authority which originally imposed its laws can amend or abrogate them. Thirdly,—that the local church cannot delegate to any organization or council of churches any power which it does not itself rightfully possess. Fourthly,—that the opposite principle puts the church above the Scriptures and above Christ, and would sanction all the usurpations of Rome.

Mat. 5:19—“Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven”; cf. 2 Sam. 6:7—“And the anger of Jehovah was kindled against Uzzah; and God smote him there for his error; and there he died by the ark of God.” Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part I, 2:4—“Faith, I have been a truant in the law, And never yet could frame my will to it, And therefore frame the law unto my will.” As at the Reformation believers rejoiced to restore communion in both kinds, so we should rejoice to restore baptism as to its subjects and as to its meaning. To administer it to a wailing and resisting infant, or to administer it in any other form than that prescribed by Jesus’ command and example, is to desecrate and destroy the ordinance.

(b) From the nature of God’s command:

First,—as forming a part, not only of the law, but of the fundamental law, of the church of Christ. The power claimed for a church to change it is not only legislative but constitutional. Secondly,—as expressing the wisdom of the Lawgiver. Power to change the command can be claimed for the church, only on the ground that Christ has failed to adapt the ordinance to changing circumstances, and has made obedience to it unnecessarily difficult and humiliating. Thirdly,—as providing in immersion the only adequate symbol of those saving truths of the gospel which both of the ordinances have it for their office to set forth, and without which they become empty ceremonies and forms. In other words, the church has no right to change the method of administering the ordinance, because such a change vacates the ordinance of its essential meaning. As this argument, however, is of such vital importance, we present it more fully in a special discussion of the Symbolism of Baptism.

Abraham Lincoln, in his debates with Douglas, ridiculed the idea that there could be any constitutional way of violating the Constitution. F. L. Anderson: “In human governments we change the constitution to conform to the will of the people; in the divine government we change the will of the people to conform to the Constitution.” For advocacy of the church’s right to modify the form of an ordinance, see Coleridge, Aids to Reflection, in Works, 1:333‐348—“Where a ceremony answered, and was intended to answer, several purposes which at its first institution were blended in respect of the time, but which afterward, by change of circumstances, were necessarily disunited, then either the church hath no power or authority delegated to her, or she must be authorized to choose and determine to which of the several purposes the ceremony should be attached.” Baptism, for example, at the first symbolized not only entrance into the church of Christ, but personal faith in him as Savior and Lord. It is assumed that entrance into the church and personal faith are now necessarily disunited. Since baptism is in charge of the church, she can attach baptism to the former, and not to the latter. We of course deny that the separation of baptism from faith is ever necessary. We maintain, on the contrary, that thus to separate the two is to pervert the ordinance, and to make it teach the doctrine of hereditary church membership and salvation by outward manipulation apart from faith. We say with Dean Stanley (on Baptism, in the Nineteenth Century, Oct. 1879), though not, as he does, with approval, that the change in the method of administering the ordinance shows “how the spirit that lives and moves in human society can override the most sacred ordinances.” We cannot with him call this spirit “the free spirit of Christianity,”—we regard it rather as an evil spirit of disobedience and unbelief. “Baptists are therefore pledged to prosecute the work of the Reformation until the church shall return to the simple forms it possessed under the apostles” (G. M. Stone). See Curtis, Progress of Baptist Principles, 234‐245. Objections: 1. Immersion is often impracticable.—We reply that, when really impracticable, it is no longer a duty. Where the will to obey is present, but providential circumstances render outward obedience impossible, Christ takes the will for the deed. 2. It is often dangerous to health and life.—We reply that, when it is really dangerous, it is no longer a duty. But then, we have no warrant for substituting another act for that which Christ has commanded. Duty demands simple delay until it can be administered with safety. It must be remembered that ardent feeling nerves even the body. “Brethren, if your hearts be warm, Ice and snow can do no harm.” The cold climate of Russia does not prevent the universal practice of immersion by the Greek church of that country. 3. It is indecent.—We reply, that there is need of care to prevent exposure, but that with this care there is no indecency, more than in fashionable sea‐bathing. The argument is valid only against a careless administration of the ordinance, not against immersion itself. 4. It is inconvenient.—We reply that, in a matter of obedience to Christ, we are not to consult convenience. The ordinance which symbolizes his sacrificial death, and our spiritual death with him, may naturally involve something of inconvenience, but joy in submitting to that inconvenience will be a test of the spirit of obedience. When the act is performed, it should be performed as Christ enjoined. 5. Other methods of administration have been blessed to those who submitted to them.—We reply that God has often condescended to human ignorance, and has given his Spirit to those who honestly sought to serve him, even by erroneous forms, such as the Mass. This, however, is not to be taken as a divine sanction of the error, much less as a warrant for the perpetuation of a false system on the part of those who know that it is a violation of Christ’s commands. It is, in great part, the position of its advocates, as representatives of Christ and his church, that gives to this false system its power for evil.

3. The Symbolism of Baptism.

Baptism symbolizes the previous entrance of the believer into the communion of Christ’s death and resurrection,—or, in other words, regeneration through union with Christ.

A. Expansion of this statement as to the symbolism of baptism.

Baptism, more particularly, is a symbol:

(a) Of the death and resurrection of Christ.

Rom. 6:3—“Or are ye ignorant that all we who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?” cf. Mat 3:13—“Then cometh Jesus from Galilee to the Jordan unto John, to be baptized of him”; Mark 10:38—“Are ye able to drink the cup that I drink? or to be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?”; Luke 12:50—“But I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how am I straitened till it be accomplished!” Col. 2:12—“buried with him in baptism, wherein ye were also raised with him through faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead.” For the meaning of these passages, see note on the baptism of Jesus, under B. (a), pages 942, 943. Denney, in Expositor’s Greek Testament, on Rom. 6:3‐5—“The argumentative requirements of the passage ... demand the idea of an actual union to, or incorporation in Christ.... We were buried with him [in the act of immersion] through that baptism into his death.... If the baptism, which is a similitude of Christ’s death, has had a reality answering to its obvious import, so that we have really died in it as Christ died, then we shall have a corresponding experience of resurrection. Baptism, inasmuch as one emerges from the water after being immersed, is a similitude of resurrection as well as of death.”

(b) Of the purpose of that death and resurrection,—namely, to atone for sin, and to deliver sinners from its penalty and power.

Rom. 6:4—“We were buried therefore with him through baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we also might walk in newness of life”; cf. 7, 10, 11—“for he that hath died is justified from sin.... For the death that he died, he died unto sin once: but the life that he liveth, he liveth unto God. Even so reckon ye also yourselves to be dead unto sin, but alive unto God in Christ Jesus”; 2 Cor. 5:14—“we thus judge, that one died for all, therefore all died.” Baptism is therefore a confession of evangelical faith both as to sin, and as to the deity and atonement of Christ. No one is properly a Baptist who does not acknowledge these truths which baptism signifies. T. W. Chambers, in Presb. and Ref. Rev., Jan. 1890:113‐118, objects that this view of the symbolism of baptism is based on two texts, Rom. 6:4 and Col. 2:12, which are illustrative and not explanatory, while the great majority of passages make baptism only an act of purification. Yet Dr. Chambers concedes: “It is to be admitted that nearly all modern critical expositors (Meyer, Godet, Alford, Conybeare, Lightfoot, Beet) consider that there is a reference here [in Rom. 6:4] to the act of baptism, which, as the Bishop of Durham says, ‘is the grave of the old man and the birth of the new—an image of the believer’s participation both in the death and in the resurrection of Christ.... As he sinks beneath the baptismal waters, the believer buries there all his corrupt affections and past sins; as he emerges thence, he rises regenerate, quickened to new hopes and a new life.’ ”

(c) Of the accomplishment of that purpose in the person baptized,—who thus professes his death to sin and resurrection to spiritual life.

Gal. 3:27—“For as many of you as were baptized into Christ did put on Christ”; 1 Pet. 3:21—“which [water] also after a true likeness doth now save you, even baptism, not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the interrogation of a good conscience toward God, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ”; cf. Gal. 2:19, 20—“For I through the law died unto the law, that I might live unto God. I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I that live, but Christ liveth in me: and that life which I now live in the flesh I live in faith, the faith which is in the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself up for me”; Col. 3:3—“For ye died, and your life is hid with Christ in God.” C. H. M.: “A truly baptized person is one who has passed from the old world into the new.... The water rolls over his person, signifying that his place in nature is ignored, that his old nature is entirely set aside, in short, that he is a dead man, that the flesh with all that pertained thereto—its sins and its liabilities—is buried in the grave of Christ and can never come into God’s sight again.... When the believer rises up from the water, expression is given to the truth that he comes up as the possessor of a new life, even the resurrection life of Christ, to which divine righteousness inseparably attaches.”

(d) Of the method in which that purpose is accomplished,—by union with Christ, receiving him and giving one’s self to him by faith.

Rom. 6:5—“For if we have become united [σύμφυτοι] with him in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection”—σύμφυτοι, or συμπεφυκώς, is used of the man and the horse as grown together in the Centaur, by Lucian, Dial. Mort., 16:4, and by Xenophon, Cyrop., 4:3:18. Col. 2:12—“having been buried with him in baptism, wherein ye were also raised with him through faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead.” Dr. N. S. Burton: “The oneness of the believer and Christ is expressed by the fact that the one act of immersion sets forth the death and resurrection of both Christ and the believer.” As the voluntary element in faith has two parts, a giving and a taking, so baptism illustrates both. Submergence = surrender to Christ; emergence = reception of Christ; see page 839, (b). “Putting on Christ” (Gal. 3:27) is the burying of the old life and the rising to a new. Cf. the active and the passive obedience of Christ (pages 749, 770), the two elements of justification (pages 854‐859), the two aspects of formal worship (page 23), the two divisions of the Lord’s Prayer. William Ashmore holds that incorporation into Christ is the root idea of baptism, union with Christ’s death and resurrection being only a part of it. We are “baptized into Christ” (Rom. 6:3), as the Israelites were “baptized into Moses” (1 Cor. 10:2). As baptism symbolizes the incorporation of the believer into Christ, so the Lord’s Supper symbolizes the incorporation of Christ into the believer. We go down into the water, but the bread goes down into us. We are “in Christ,” and Christ is “in us.” The candidate does not baptize himself, but puts himself wholly into the hands of the administrator. This seems symbolic of his committing himself entirely to Christ, of whom the administrator is the representative. Similarly in the Lord’s Supper, it is Christ who through his representative distributes the emblems of his death and life. E. G. Robinson regarded baptism as implying: 1. death to sin; 2. resurrection to new life in Christ; 3. entire surrender of ourselves to the authority of the triune God. Baptism “into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Mat 28:19) cannot imply supreme allegiance to the Father, and only subordinate allegiance to the Son. Baptism therefore is an assumption of supreme allegiance to Jesus Christ. N. E. Wood, in The Watchman, Dec. 3, 1896, 15—“Calvinism has its five points; but Baptists have also their own five points: the Trinity, the Atonement, Regeneration, Baptism, and an inspired Bible. All other doctrines gather round these.”

(e) Of the consequent union of all believers in Christ.

Eph. 4:5—“one Lord, one faith, one baptism”; 1 Cor. 12:13—“For in one Spirit were we all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether bond or free; and were all made to drink of one Spirit”; cf. 10:3, 4—“and did all eat the same spiritual food; and did all drink the same spiritual drink: for they drank of a spiritual rock that followed them: and the rock was Christ.” In Eph. 4:5, it is noticeable that, not the Lord’s Supper, but baptism, is referred to as the symbol of Christian unity. A. H. Strong, Cleveland Sermon, 1904—“Our fathers lived in a day when simple faith was subject to serious disabilities. The establishments frowned upon dissent and visited it with pains and penalties. It is no wonder that believers in the New Testament doctrine and polity felt that they must come out from what they regarded as an apostate church. They could have no sympathy with those who held back the truth in unrighteousness and persecuted the saints of God. But our doctrine has leavened all Christendom. Scholarship is on the side of immersion. Infant baptism is on the decline. The churches that once opposed us now compliment us on our stedfastness in the faith and on our missionary zeal. There is a growing spirituality in these churches, which prompts them to extend to us hands of fellowship. And there is a growing sense among us that the kingdom of Christ is wider than our own membership, and that loyalty to our Lord requires us to recognize his presence and blessing even in bodies which we do not regard as organized in complete accordance with the New Testament model. Faith in the larger Christ is bringing us out from our denominational isolation into an inspiring recognition of our oneness with the universal church of God throughout the world.”

(f) Of the death and resurrection of the body,—which will complete the work of Christ in us, and which Christ’s death and resurrection assure to all his members.

1 Cor. 15:12, 22—“Now if Christ is preached that he hath been raised from the dead, how say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead?... For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.” In the Scripture passages quoted above, we add to the argument from the meaning of the word βαπτίζω the argument from the meaning of the ordinance. Luther wrote, in his Babylonish Captivity of the Church, section 103 (English translation in Wace and Buchheim, First Principles of the Reformation, 192): “Baptism is a sign both of death and resurrection. Being moved by this reason, I would have those that are baptized to be altogether dipped into the water, as the word means and the mystery signifies.” See Calvin on Acts 8:38; Conybeare and Howson on Rom. 6:4; Boardman, in Madison Avenue Lectures, 115‐135.

B. Inferences from the passages referred to.

(a) The central truth set forth by baptism is the death and resurrection of Christ,—and our own death and resurrection only as connected with that.

The baptism of Jesus in Jordan, equally with the subsequent baptism of his followers, was a symbol of his death. It was his death which he had in mind, when he said: “Are ye able to drink the cup that I drink? or to be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?” (Mark 10:38); “But I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how am I straitened till it be accomplished!” (Luke 12:50). The being immersed and overwhelmed in waters is a frequent metaphor in all languages to express the rush of successive troubles; compare Ps. 69:2—“I am come into deep waters, where the floods overflow me”; 42:7—“All thy waves and thy billows are gone over me”; 124:4, 5—“Then the waters had overwhelmed us, The stream had gone over our soul; Then the proud waters had gone over our soul.” So the suffering, death, and burial, which were before our Lord, presented themselves to his mind as a baptism, because the very idea of baptism was that of a complete submersion under the floods of waters. Death was not to be poured upon Christ,—it was no mere sprinkling of suffering which he was to endure, but a sinking into the mighty waters, and a being overwhelmed by them. It was the giving of himself to this, which he symbolized by his baptism in Jordan. That act was not arbitrary, or formal, or ritual. It was a public consecration, a consecration to death, to death for the sins of the world. It expressed the essential nature and meaning of his earthly work: the baptism of water at the beginning of his ministry consciously and designedly prefigured the baptism of death with which that ministry was to close. Jesus’ submission to John’s baptism of repentance, the rite that belonged only to sinners, can be explained only upon the ground that he was “made to be sin on our behalf” (2 Cor. 5:21). He had taken our nature upon him, without its hereditary corruption indeed, but with all its hereditary guilt, that he might redeem that nature and reunite it to God. As one with humanity, he had in his unconscious childhood submitted to the rites of circumcision, purification, and legal redemption (Luke 2:21‐24; cf. Ex. 13:2, 13; see Lange, Alford, Webster and Wilkinson on Luke 2:24)—all of them rites appointed for sinners. “Made in the likeness of men” (Phil. 2:7), “the likeness of sinful flesh” (Rom. 8:3), he was “to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself” (Heb. 9:26). In his baptism, therefore, he could say, “Thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness” (Mat. 3:15) because only through the final baptism of suffering and death, which this baptism in water foreshadowed, could he “make an end of sins” and “bring in everlasting righteousness” (Dan. 9:24) to the condemned and ruined world. He could not be “the Lord our Righteousness” (Jer. 23:6) except by first suffering the death due to the nature he had assumed, thereby delivering it from its guilt and perfecting it forever. All this was indicated in that act by which he was first “made manifest to Israel” (John 1:31). In his baptism in Jordan, he was buried in the likeness of his coming death, and raised in the likeness of his coming resurrection. 1 John 5:6—“This is he that came by water and blood, even Jesus Christ; not in the water only, but in the water and in the blood” = in the baptism of water at the beginning of his ministry, and in the baptism of blood with which that ministry was to close. As that baptism pointed forward to Jesus’ death, so our baptism points backward to the same, as the centre and substance of his redeeming work, the one death by which we live. We who are “baptized into Christ” are “baptized into his death” (Rom. 6:3), that is, into spiritual communion and participation in that death which he died for our salvation; in short, in baptism we declare in symbol that his death has become ours. On the Baptism of Jesus, see A. H. Strong, Philosophy and Religion, 226‐237.

(b) The correlative truth of the believer’s death and resurrection, set forth in baptism, implies, first,—confession of sin and humiliation on account of it, as deserving of death; secondly,—declaration of Christ’s death for sin, and of the believer’s acceptance of Christ’s substitutionary work; thirdly,—acknowledgment that the soul has become partaker of Christ’s life, and now lives only in and for him.

A false mode of administering the ordinance has so obscured the meaning of baptism that it has to multitudes lost all reference to the death of Christ, and the Lord’s Supper is assumed to be the only ordinance which is intended to remind us of the atoning sacrifice to which we owe our salvation. For evidence of this, see the remarks of President Woolsey in the Sunday School Times: “Baptism it [the Christian religion] could share in with the doctrine of John the Baptist, and if a similar rite had existed under the Jewish law, it would have been regarded as appropriate to a religion which inculcated renunciation of sin and purity of heart and life. But [in the Lord’s Supper] we go beyond the province of baptism to the very penetrale of the gospel, to the efficacy and meaning of Christ’s death.” Baptism should be a public act. We cannot afford to relegate it to a corner, or to celebrate it in private, as some professedly Baptist churches of England are said to do. Like marriage, the essence of it is the joining of ourselves to another before the world. In baptism we merge ourselves in Christ, before God and angels and men. The Mohammedan stands five times a day, and prays with his face toward Mecca, caring not who sees him. Luke 12:8—“Every one who shall confess me before men, him shall the Son of man also confess before the angels of God.”

(c) Baptism symbolizes purification, but purification in a peculiar and divine way,—namely, through the death of Christ and the entrance of the soul into communion with that death. The radical defect of sprinkling or pouring as a mode of administering the ordinance, is that it does not point to Christ’s death as the procuring cause of our purification.

It is a grievous thing to say by symbol, as those do say who practice sprinkling in place of immersion, that a man may regenerate himself, or, if not this, yet that his regeneration may take place without connection with Christ’s death. Edward Beecher’s chief argument against Baptist views is drawn from John 3:22‐25—“a questioning on the part of John’s disciples with a Jew about purifying.” Purification is made to be the essential meaning of baptism, and the conclusion is drawn that any form expressive of purification will answer the design of the ordinance. But if Christ’s death is the procuring cause of our purification, we may expect it to be symbolized in the ordinance which declares that purification; if Christ’s death is the central fact of Christianity, we may expect it to be symbolized in the initiatory rite of Christianity.

(d) In baptism we show forth the Lord’s death as the original source of holiness and life in our souls, just as in the Lord’s Supper we show forth the Lord’s death as the source of all nourishment and strength after this life of holiness has been once begun. As the Lord’s Supper symbolizes the sanctifying power of Jesus’ death, so baptism symbolizes its regenerating power.

The truth of Christ’s death and resurrection is a precious jewel, and it is given us in these outward ordinances as in a casket. Let us care for the casket lest we lose the gem. As a scarlet thread runs through every rope and cord of the British navy, testifying that it is the property of the Crown, so through every doctrine and ordinance of Christianity runs the red line of Jesus’ blood. It is their common reference to the death of Christ that binds the two ordinances together.

(e) There are two reasons, therefore, why nothing but immersion will satisfy the design of the ordinance: first,—because nothing else can symbolize the radical nature of the change effected in regeneration—a change from spiritual death to spiritual life; secondly,—because nothing else can set forth the fact that this change is due to the entrance of the soul into communion with the death and resurrection of Christ.

Christian truth is an organism. Part is bound to part, and all together constitute one vitalized whole. To give up any single portion of that truth is like maiming the human body. Life may remain, but one manifestation of life has ceased. The whole body of Christian truth has lost its symmetry and a part of its power to save. Pfleiderer, Philos. Religion, 2:212—“In the Eleusinian mysteries, the act of reception was represented as a regeneration, and the hierophant appointed to the temple service had to take a sacramental bath, out of which he proceeded as a ‘new man’ with a new name, which signifies that, as they were wont to say, ‘the first one was forgotten,’—that is, the old man was put off at the same time with the old name. The parallel of this Eleusinian rite with the thoughts which Paul has written about Baptism in the Epistle to the Romans, and therefore from Corinth, is so striking that a connection between the two may well be conjectured; and all the more that even in the case of the Lord’s Supper, Paul has brought in the comparison with the heathen festivals, in order to give a basis for his mystical theory.”

(f) To substitute for baptism anything which excludes all symbolic reference to the death of Christ, is to destroy the ordinance, just as substituting for the broken bread and poured out wine of the communion some form of administration which leaves out all reference to the death of Christ would be to destroy the Lord’s Supper, and to celebrate an ordinance of human invention.

Baptism, like the Fourth of July, the Passover, the Lord’s Supper, is a historical monument. It witnesses to the world that Jesus died and rose again. In celebrating it, we show forth the Lord’s death as truly as in the celebration of the Supper. But it is more than a historical monument. It is also a pictorial expression of doctrine. Into it are woven all the essential truths of the Christian scheme. It tells of the nature and penalty of sin, of human nature delivered from sin in the person of a crucified and risen Savior, of salvation secured for each human soul that is united to Christ, of obedience to Christ as the way to life and glory. Thus baptism stands from age to age as a witness for God—a witness both to the facts and to the doctrine of Christianity. To change the form of administering the ordinance is therefore to strike a blow at Christianity and at Christ, and to defraud the world of a part of God’s means of salvation. See Ebrard’s view of Baptism, in Baptist Quarterly, 1869:257, and in Olshausen’s Com. on N. T., 1:270, and 3:594. Also Lightfoot, Com. on Colossians 2:20, and 3:1. Ebrard: “Baptism = Death.” So Sanday, Com. on Rom. 6—“Immersion = Death; Submersion = Burial (the ratification of death); Emergence = Resurrection (the ratification of life).” William Ashmore: “Solomon’s Temple had two monumental pillars: Jachin, ‘he shall establish,’ and Boaz, ‘in it is strength.’ In Zechariah’s vision were two olive trees on either side of the golden candlestick. In like manner, Christ has left two monumental witnesses to testify concerning himself—Baptism and the Lord’s Supper.” The lady in the street car, who had inadvertently stuck her parasol into a man’s eye, very naturally begged his pardon. But he replied: “It is of no consequence, madame; I have still one eye left.” Our friends who sprinkle or pour put out one eye of the gospel witness, break down one appointed monument of Christ’s saving truth,—shall we be content to say that we have still one ordinance left? At the Rappahannock one of the Federal regiments, just because its standard was shot away, was mistaken by our own men for a regiment of Confederates, and was subjected to a murderous enfilading fire that decimated its ranks. Baptism and the Lord’s Supper are the two flags of Christ’s army,—we cannot afford to lose either one of them.

4. The Subjects of Baptism.

The proper subjects of baptism are those only who give credible evidence that they have been regenerated by the Holy Spirit,—or, in other words, have entered by faith into the communion of Christ’s death and resurrection.

A. Proof that only persons giving evidence of being regenerated are proper subjects of baptism.

(a) From the command and example of Christ and his apostles, which show:

First, that those only are to be baptized who have previously been made disciples.

Mat. 28:19—“Go ye therefore, and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit”; Acts 2:41—“They then that received his word were baptized.”

Secondly, that those only are to be baptized who have previously repented and believed.

Mat. 3:2, 3, 6—“Repent ye ... make ye ready the way of the Lord ... and they were baptized of him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins”; Acts 2:37, 38—“Now when they heard this, they were pricked in their heart, and said unto Peter and the rest of the apostles, Brethren, what shall we do? And Peter said unto them, Repent ye, and be baptized every one of you”; 8:12—“But when they believed Philip preaching good tidings concerning the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ, they were baptized, both men and women”; 18:8—“And Crispus, the ruler of the synagogue, believed in the Lord with all his house; and many of the Corinthians hearing believed, and were baptized”; 19:4—“John baptized with the baptism of repentance, saying unto the people that they should believe on him that should come after him, that is, on Jesus.”

(b) From the nature of the church—as a company of regenerate persons.

John 3:5—“Except one be born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God”; Rom. 6:13—“neither present your members unto sin as instruments of unrighteousness; but present yourselves unto God, as alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God.”

(c) From the symbolism of the ordinance,—as declaring a previous spiritual change in him who submits to it.

Acts 10:47—“Can any man forbid the water, that these should not be baptized, who have received the Holy Spirit as well as we?” Rom. 6:2‐5—“We who died to sin, how shall we any longer live therein? Or are ye ignorant that all we who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him through baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we also might walk in newness of life. For if we have become united with him in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection”; Gal. 3:26, 27—“For ye are all sons of God, through faith, in Christ Jesus. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ did put on Christ.” As marriage should never be solemnized except between persons who are already joined in heart and with whom the outward ceremony is only the sign of an existing love, so baptism should never be administered except in the case of those who are already joined to Christ and who signify in the ordinance their union with him in his death and resurrection. See Dean Stanley on Baptism, 24—“In the apostolic age and in the three centuries which followed, it is evident that, as a general rule, those who came to baptism came in full age, of their own deliberate choice. The liturgical service of baptism was framed for full‐grown converts, and is only by considerable adaptation applied to the case of infants”; Wayland, Principles and Practices of Baptists, 93; Robins, in Madison Avenue Lectures, 136‐159.

B. Inferences from the fact that only persons giving evidence of being regenerate are proper subjects of baptism.

(a) Since only those who give credible evidence of regeneration are proper subjects of baptism, baptism cannot be the means of regeneration. It is the appointed sign, but is never the condition, of the forgiveness of sins.

Passages like Mat. 3:11; Mark 1:4; 16:16; John 3:5; Acts 2:38; 22:16; Eph. 5:26; Titus 3:5; and Heb. 10:22, are to be explained as particular instances “of the general fact that, in Scripture language, a single part of a complex action, and even that part of it which is most obvious to the senses, is often mentioned for the whole of it, and thus, in this case, the whole of the solemn transaction is designated by the external symbol.” In other words, the entire change, internal and external, spiritual and ritual, is referred to in language belonging strictly only to the outward aspect of it. So the other ordinance is referred to by simply naming the visible “breaking of bread,” and the whole transaction of the ordination of ministers is termed the “imposition of hands” (cf. Acts 2:42; 1 Tim. 4:14).

Mat. 3:11—“I indeed baptize you in water unto repentance”; Mark 1:4—“the baptism of repentance unto remission of sins”; 16:16—“He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved”; John 3:5—“Except one be born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God”—here Nicodemus, who was familiar with John’s baptism, and with the refusal of the Sanhedrin to recognize its claims, is told that the baptism of water, which he suspects may be obligatory, is indeed necessary to that complete change by which one enters outwardly, as well as inwardly, into the kingdom of God; but he is taught also, that to “be born of water” is worthless unless it is the accompaniment and sign of a new birth of “the Spirit”; and therefore, in the further statements of Christ, baptism is not alluded to; see verses 6, 8—“that which is born of the Spirit is spirit ... so is every one that is born of the Spirit.” Acts 2:38—“Repent ye, and be baptized ... unto the remission of your sins”—on this passage see Hackett: “The phrase ‘in order to the forgiveness of sins’ we connect naturally with both the preceding verbs (‘repent’ and ‘be baptized’). The clause states the motive or object which should induce them to repent and be baptized. It enforces the entire exhortation, not one part to the exclusion of the other”—i. e., they were to repent for the remission of sins, quite as much as they were to be baptized for the remission of sins. Acts 22:16—“arise, and be baptized, and wash away thy sins, calling on his name”; Eph. 5:26—“that he might sanctify it [the church], having cleansed it by the washing of water with the word”; Tit. 3:5—“according __ to his mercy he saved as, through the washing of regeneration [baptism] and renewing of the Holy Spirit [the new birth]”; Heb. 10:22—“having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience [regeneration]: and having our body washed with pure water [baptism]”; cf. Acts 2:42—“the breaking of bread”; 1 Tim. 4:14—“the laying on of the hands of the presbytery.” Dr. A. C. Kendrick: “Considering how inseparable they were in the Christian profession—believe and be baptized, and how imperative and absolute was the requisition upon the believer to testify his allegiance by baptism, it could not be deemed singular that the two should be thus united, as it were, in one complex conception.... We have no more right to assume that the birth from water involves the birth from the Spirit and thus do away with the one, than to assume that the birth from the Spirit involves the birth from water, and thus do away with the other. We have got to have them both, each in its distinctness, in order to fulfil the conditions of membership in the kingdom of God.” Without baptism, faith is like the works of a clock that has no dial or hands by which one can tell the time; or like the political belief of a man who refuses to go to the polls and vote. Without baptism, discipleship is ineffective and incomplete. The inward change—regeneration by the Spirit—may have occurred, but the outward change—Christian profession—is yet lacking. Campbellism, however, holds that instead of regeneration preceding baptism and expressing itself in baptism, it is completed only in baptism, so that baptism is a means of regeneration. Alexander Campbell: “I am bold to affirm that every one of them, who in the belief of what the apostle spoke was immersed, did, in the very instant in which he was put under water, receive the forgiveness of his sins and the gift of the Holy Spirit.” But Peter commanded that men should be baptized because they had already received the Holy Spirit: Acts 10:47—“Can any man forbid the water, that these should not be baptized, who have received the Holy Spirit as well as we?” Baptists baptize Christians; Disciples baptize sinners, and in baptism think to make them Christians. With this form of sacramentalism, Baptists are necessarily less in sympathy than with pedobaptism or with sprinkling. The view of the Disciples confines the divine efficiency to the word (see quotation from Campbell on page 821). It was anticipated by Claude Pajon, the Reformed theologian, in 1673: see Dorner, Gesch. prot. Theologie, 448‐450. That this was not the doctrine of John the Baptist would appear from Josephus, Ant., 18:5:2, who in speaking of John’s baptism says: “Baptism appears acceptable to God, not in order that those who were baptized might get free from certain sins, but in order that the body might be sanctified, because the soul beforehand had already been purified through righteousness.” Disciples acknowledge no formal creed, and they differ so greatly among themselves that we append the following statements of their founder and of later representatives. Alexander Campbell, Christianity Restored, 138 (in The Christian Baptist, 5:100): “In and by the act of immersion, as soon as our bodies are put under water, at that very instant our former or old sins are washed away.... Immersion and regeneration are Bible names for the same act.... It is not our faith in God’s promise of remission, but our going down into the water, that obtains the remission of sins.” W. E. Garrison, Alexander Campbell’s Theology, 247‐299—“Baptism, like naturalization, is the formal oath of allegiance by which an alien becomes a citizen. In neither case does the form in itself effect any magical change in the subject’s disposition. In both cases a change of opinion and of affections is presupposed, and the form is the culmination of a process.... It is as easy for God to forgive our sins in the act of immersion as in any other way.” All work of the Spirit is through the word, only through sensible means, emotions being no criterion. God is transcendent; all authority is external, enforced only by appeal to happiness—a thoroughly utilitarian system. Isaac Erret is perhaps the most able of recent Disciples. In his tract entitled “Our Position,” published by the Christian Publishing Company, St. Louis, he says: “As to the design of baptism, we part company with Baptists, and find ourselves more at home on the other side of the house; yet we cannot say that our position is just the same with that of any of them. Baptists say they baptize believers because they are forgiven, and they insist that they shall have the evidence of pardon before they are baptized. But the language used in the Scriptures declaring what baptism is for, is so plain and unequivocal that the great majority of Protestants as well as the Roman Catholics admit it in their creeds to be, in some sense, for the remission of sins. The latter, however, and many of the former, attach to it the idea of regeneration, and insist that in baptism regeneration by the Holy Spirit is actually conferred. Even the Westminster Confession squints strongly in this direction, albeit its professed adherents of the present time attempt to explain away its meaning. We are as far from this ritualistic extreme as from the anti‐ritualism into which the Baptists have been driven. With us, regeneration must be so far accomplished before baptism that the subject is changed in heart, and in faith and penitence must have yielded up his heart to Christ—otherwise baptism is nothing but an empty form. But forgiveness is something distinct from regeneration. Forgiveness is an act of the Sovereign—not a change of the sinner’s heart; and while it is extended in view of the sinner’s faith and repentance, it needs to be offered in a sensible and tangible form, such that the sinner can seize it and appropriate it with unmistakable definiteness. In baptism he appropriates God’s promise of forgiveness, relying on the divine testimonies: ‘He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved’; ‘Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ, for the remission of sins, and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.’ He thus lays hold of the promise of Christ and appropriates it as his own. He does not merit it, nor procure it, nor earn it, in being baptized; but he appropriates what the mercy of God has provided and offered in the gospel. We therefore teach all who are baptized that, if they bring to their baptism a heart that renounces sin and implicitly trusts the power of Christ to save, they should rely on the Savior’s own promise—’He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved.’” All these utterances agree in making forgiveness chronologically distinct from regeneration, as the concluding point is distinct from the whole. Regeneration is not entirely the work of God,—it must be completed by man. It is not wholly a change of heart, it is also a change in outward action. We see in this system of thought the beginnings of sacramentalism, and we regard it as containing the same germs of error which are more fully developed in pedobaptist doctrine. Shakespeare represents this view in Henry V, 1:2—“What you speak is in your conscience washed As pure as sin with baptism”; Othello, 2:3—Desdemona could “Win the Moor—were’t to renounce his baptism—All seals and symbols of redeemed sin.” Dr. G. W. Lasher, in the Journal and Messenger, holds that Mat. 3:11—“I indeed baptize you in water unto (εἰς) repentance”—does not imply that baptism effects the repentance; the baptism was because of the repentance, for John refused to baptize those who did not give evidence of repentance before baptism. Mat. 10:42—“whosoever shall give ... a cup of cold water only, in (εἰς) the name of a disciple”—the cup of cold water does not put one into the name of a disciple, or make him a disciple. Mat. 12:41—“The men of Nineveh ... repented at (εἰς) the preaching of Jonah” = because of. Dr. Lasher argues that, in all these cases, the meaning of εἰς is “in respect to,” “with reference to.” So he would translate Acts 2:38—“Repent ye, and be baptized ... with respect to, in reference to, the remission of sins.” This is also the view of Meyer. He maintains that βαπτίζειν εἰς always means “baptize with reference to” (cf. Mat. 28:19; 1 Cor. 10:12; Gal. 3:27; Acts 2:38; 8:16; 19:5). We are brought through baptism, he would say, into fellowship with his death, so that we have a share ethically in his death, through the cessation of our life to sin. The better parallel, however, in our judgment, is found in Rom. 10:10—“with the heart man believeth unto (εἰς) righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto (εἰς) salvation,”—where evidently salvation is the end to which works the whole change and process, including both faith and confession. So Broadus makes John’s “baptism unto repentance” mean baptism in order to repentance, repentance including both the purpose of the heart and the outward expression of it, or baptism in order to complete and thorough repentance. Expositor’s Greek Testament, on Acts 2:38—“unto the remission of your sins”: “εἰς, unto, signifying the aim.” For the High Church view, see Sadler, Church Doctrine, 41‐124. On F. W. Robertson’s view of Baptismal Regeneration, see Gordon, in Bap. Quar., 1869:405. On the whole matter of baptism for the remission of sins, see Gates, Baptists and Disciples (advocating the Disciple view); Willmarth, in Bap. Quar., 1877:1‐26 (verging toward the Disciple view); and per contra, Adkins, Disciples and Baptists, booklet pub. by Am. Bap. Pub. Society (the best brief statement of the Baptist position); Bap. Quar., 1877:476‐489; 1872:214; Jacob, Eccl. Pol. of N. T., 255, 256.

(b) As the profession of a spiritual change already wrought, baptism is primarily the act, not of the administrator, but of the person baptized.

Upon the person newly regenerate the command of Christ first terminates; only upon his giving evidence of the change within him does it become the duty of the church to see that he has opportunity to follow Christ in baptism. Since baptism is primarily the act of the convert, no lack of qualification on the part of the administrator invalidates the baptism, so long as the proper outward act is performed, with intent on the part of the person baptized to express the fact of a preceding spiritual renewal (Acts 2:37, 38).

Acts 2:37, 38—“Brethren, what shall we do?... Repent ye and be baptized.” If baptism be primarily the act of the administrator or of the church, then invalidity in the administrator or the church renders the ordinance itself invalid. But if baptism be primarily the act of the person baptized—an act which it is the church’s business simply to scrutinize and further, then nothing but the absence of immersion, or of an intent to profess faith in Christ, can invalidate the ordinance. It is the erroneous view that baptism is the act of the administrator which causes the anxiety of High Church Baptists to deduce their Baptist lineage from regularly baptized ministers all the way back to John the Baptist, and which induces many modern endeavors of pedobaptists to prove that the earliest Baptists of England and the Continent did not immerse. All these solicitudes are unnecessary. We have no need to prove a Baptist apostolic succession. If we can derive our doctrine and practice from the New Testament, it is all we require. The Council of Trent was right in its Canon: “If any one saith that the baptism which is even given by heretics in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, with the intention of doing what the church doeth, is not true baptism, let him be anathema.” Dr. Norman Fox: “It is no more important who baptizes a man than who leads him to Christ.” John Spilsbury, first pastor of the church of Particular Baptists, holding to a limited atonement, in London, was newly baptized in 1633, on the ground that “baptizedness is not essential to the administrator,” and he repudiated the demand for apostolic succession, as leading logically to the “popedom of Rome.” In 1641, immersion followed, though two or three years before this, or in March, 1639, Roger Williams was baptized by Ezekiel Holliman in Rhode Island. Williams afterwards doubted its validity, thus clinging still to the notion of apostolic succession.

(c) As intrusted with the administration of the ordinances, however, the church is, on its part, to require of all candidates for baptism credible evidence of regeneration.

This follows from the nature of the church and its duty to maintain its own existence as an institution of Christ. The church which cannot restrict admission into its membership to such as are like itself in character and aims must soon cease to be a church by becoming indistinguishable from the world. The duty of the church to gain credible evidence of regeneration in the case of every person admitted into the body involves its right to require of candidates, in addition to a profession of faith with the lips, some satisfactory proof that this profession is accompanied by change in the conduct. The kind and amount of evidence which would have justified the reception of a candidate in times of persecution may not now constitute a sufficient proof of change of heart.

If an Odd Fellows’ Lodge, in order to preserve its distinct existence, must have its own rules for admission to membership, much more is this true of the church. The church may make its own regulations with a view to secure credible evidence of regeneration. Yet it is bound to demand of the candidate no more than reasonable proof of his repentance and faith. Since the church is to be convinced of the candidate’s fitness before it votes to receive him to its membership, it is generally best that the experience of the candidate should be related before the church. Yet in extreme cases, as of sickness, the church may hear this relation of experience through certain appointed representatives. Baptism is sometimes figuratively described as “the door into the church.” The phrase is unfortunate, since if by the church is meant the spiritual kingdom of God, then Christ is its only door; if the local body of believers is meant, then the faith of the candidate, the credible evidence of regeneration which he gives, the vote of the church itself, are all, equally with baptism, the door through which he enters. The door, in this sense, is a double door, one part of which is his confession of faith, and the other his baptism.

(d) As the outward expression of the inward change by which the believer enters into the kingdom of God, baptism is the first, in point of time, of all outward duties.

Regeneration and baptism, although not holding to each other the relation of effect and cause, are both regarded in the New Testament as essential to the restoration of man’s right relations to God and to his people. They properly constitute parts of one whole, and are not to be unnecessarily separated. Baptism should follow regeneration with the least possible delay, after the candidate and the church have gained evidence that a spiritual change has been accomplished within him. No other duty and no other ordinance can properly precede it.

Neither the pastor nor the church should encourage the convert to wait for others’ company before being baptized. We should aim continually to deepen the sense of individual responsibility to Christ, and of personal duty to obey his command of baptism just so soon as a proper opportunity is afforded. That participation in the Lord’s Supper cannot properly precede Baptism, will be shown hereafter.

(e) Since regeneration is a work accomplished once for all, the baptism which symbolizes this regeneration is not to be repeated.

Even where the persuasion exists, on the part of the candidate, that at the time of baptism he was mistaken in thinking himself regenerated, the ordinance is not to be administered again, so long as it has once been submitted to, with honest intent, as a profession of faith in Christ. We argue this from the absence of any reference to second baptisms in the New Testament, and from the grave practical difficulties attending the opposite view. In Acts 19:1‐5, we have an instance, not of rebaptism, but of the baptism for the first time of certain persons who had been wrongly taught with regard to the nature of John the Baptist’s doctrine, and so had ignorantly submitted to an outward rite which had in it no reference to Jesus Christ and expressed no faith in him as a Savior. This was not John’s baptism, nor was it in any sense true baptism. For this reason Paul commanded them to be “baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus.”

In the respect of not being repeated, Baptism is unlike the Lord’s Supper, which symbolizes the continuous sustaining power of Christ’s death, while baptism symbolizes its power to begin a new life within the soul. In Acts 19:1‐5, Paul instructs the new disciples that the real baptism of John, to which they erroneously supposed they had submitted, was not only a baptism of repentance, but a baptism of faith in the coming Savior. “And when they heard this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus”—as they had not been before. Here there was no rebaptism, for the mere outward submersion in water to which they had previously submitted, with no thought of professing faith in Christ, was no baptism at all—whether Johannine or Christian. See Brooks, in Baptist Quarterly, April, 1867, art.: Rebaptism. Whenever it is clear, as in many cases of Campbellite immersion, that the candidate has gone down into the water, not with intent to profess a previously existing faith, but in order to be regenerated, baptism is still to be administered if the person subsequently believes on Christ. But wherever it appears that there was intent to profess an already existing faith and regeneration, there should be no repetition of the immersion, even though the ordinance has been administered by the Campbellites. To rebaptize whenever a Christian’s faith and joy are rekindled so that he begins to doubt the reality of his early experiences, would, in the case of many fickle believers, require many repetitions of the ordinance. The presumption is that, when the profession of faith was made by baptism, there was an actual faith which needed to be professed, and therefore that the baptism, though followed by much unbelief and many wanderings, was a valid one. Rebaptism, in the case of unstable Christians, tends to bring reproach upon the ordinance itself.

(f) So long as the mode and the subjects are such as Christ has enjoined, mere accessories are matters of individual judgment.

The use of natural rather than of artificial baptisteries is not to be elevated into an essential. The formula of baptism prescribed by Christ is “into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”

Mat. 28:19—“baptizing them into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit”; cf. Acts 8:16—“they had been baptized into the name of the Lord Jesus”; Rom. 6:3—“Or are ye ignorant that all we who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?” Gal. 3:27—“For as many of you as were baptized into Christ did put on Christ.” Baptism is immersion into God, into the presence, communion, life of the Trinity; see Com. of Clark, and of Lange, on Mat. 28:19; also C. E. Smith, in Bap. Rev., 1881:305‐311. President Wayland and the Revised Version read, “into the name.” Per contra, see Meyer (transl., 1:281, note) on Rom. 6:3; cf. Mat. 10:41; 18:20; in all which passages, as well as in Mat. 28:19, he claims that εἰς τὸ ὄνομα signifies “with reference to the name.” In Acts 2:38, and 10:48, we have “in the name.” For the latter translation of Mat. 28:19, see Conant, Notes on Mat., 171. On the whole subject of this section, see Dagg, Church Order, 13‐73; Ingham, Subjects of Baptism.

C. Infant Baptism.

This we reject and reprehend, for the following reasons:

(a) Infant baptism is without warrant, either express or implied, in the Scripture.

First,—there is no express command that infants should be baptized. Secondly,—there is no clear example of the baptism of infants. Thirdly,—the passages held to imply infant baptism contain, when fairly interpreted, no reference to such a practice. In Mat. 19:14, none would have “forbidden,” if Jesus and his disciples had been in the habit of baptizing infants. From Acts 16:15, cf. 40, and Acts 16:33, cf. 34, Neander says that we cannot infer infant baptism. For 1 Cor. 16:15 shows that the whole family of Stephanas, baptized by Paul, were adults (1 Cor. 1:16). It is impossible to suppose a whole heathen household baptized upon the faith of its head. As to 1 Cor. 7:14, Jacobi calls this text “a sure testimony against infant baptism, since Paul would certainly have referred to the baptism of children as a proof of their holiness, if infant baptism had been practised.” Moreover, this passage would in that case equally teach the baptism of the unconverted husband of a believing wife. It plainly proves that the children of Christian parents were no more baptized and had no closer connection with the Christian church, than the unbelieving partners of Christians.

Mat. 19:14—“Suffer the little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for to such belongeth the kingdom of heaven”; Acts 16:15—“And when she [Lydia] was baptized, and her household”; cf. 40—“And they went out of the prison, and entered into the house of Lydia: and when they had seen the brethren, they comforted them, and departed.” Acts 16:33—The jailor “was baptized, he and all his, immediately”; cf. 34—“And he brought them up into his house, and set food before them, and rejoiced greatly, with all his house, having believed in God”; 1 Cor. 16:15—“ye know the house of Stephanas, that it is the firstfruits of Achaia, and that they have set themselves to minister unto the saints”; 1:16—“And I baptized also the household of Stephanas”; 7:14—“For the unbelieving husband is sanctified in the wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified in the brother: else were your children unclean; but now are they holy”—here the sanctity or holiness attributed to unbelieving members of the household is evidently that of external connection and privilege, like that of the O. T. Israel. Broadus, Am. Com., on Mat. 19:14—“No Greek Commentator mentions infant baptism in connection with this passage, though they all practised that rite.” Schleiermacher, Glaubenslehre, 2:383—“All the traces of infant baptism which it has been desired to find in the New Testament must first be put into it.” Pfleiderer, Grundriss, 184‐187—“Infant baptism cannot be proved from the N. T., and according to 1 Cor. 7:14 it is antecedently improbable; yet it was the logical consequence of the command, Mat. 28:19 sq., in which the church consciousness of the 2d century prophetically expressed Christ’s appointment that it should be the universal church of the nations.... Infant baptism represents one side of the Biblical sacrament, the side of the divine grace; but it needs to have the other side, appropriation of that grace by personal freedom, added in confirmation.” Dr. A. S. Crapsey, formerly an Episcopal rector in Rochester, made the following statement in the introduction to a sermon in defence of infant baptism: “Now in support of this custom of the church, we can bring no express command of the word of God, no certain warrant of holy Scripture, nor can we be at all sure that this usage prevailed during the apostolic age. From a few obscure hints we may conjecture that it did, but it is only conjecture after all. It is true St. Paul baptized the household of Stephanas, of Lydia, and of the jailor at Philippi, and in these households there may have been little children; but we do not know that there were, and these inferences form but a poor foundation upon which to base any doctrine. Better say at once, and boldly, that infant baptism is not expressly taught in holy Scripture. Not only is the word of God silent on this subject, but those who have studied the subject tell us that Christian writers of the very first age say nothing about it. It is by no means sure that this custom obtained in the church earlier than in the middle of the second or the beginning of the third century.” Dr. C. M. Mead, in a private letter, dated May 27, 1895—“Though a Congregationalist, I cannot find any Scriptural authorization of pedobaptism, and I admit also that immersion seems to have been the prevalent, if not the universal, form of baptism at the first.” A review of the passages held by pedobaptists to support their views leads us to the conclusion expressed in the North British Review, Aug. 1852:211, that infant baptism is utterly unknown to Scripture. Jacob, Eccl. Polity of N. T., 270‐275—“Infant baptism is not mentioned in the N. T. No instance of it is recorded there; no allusion is made to its effects; no directions are given for its administration.... It is not an apostolic ordinance.” See also Neander’s view, in Kitto, Bib. Cyclop., art.: Baptism; Kendrick, in Christian Rev., April, 1863; Curtis, Progress of Baptist Principles, 96; Wayland, Principles and Practices of Baptists, 125; Cunningham, lect. on Baptism, in Croall Lectures for 1886.

(b) Infant baptism is expressly contradicted.

First,—by the Scriptural prerequisites of faith and repentance, as signs of regeneration. In the great commission, Matthew speaks of baptizing disciples, and Mark of baptizing believers; but infants are neither of these. Secondly,—by the Scriptural symbolism of the ordinance. As we should not bury a person before his death, so we should not symbolically bury a person by baptism until he has in spirit died to sin. Thirdly,—by the Scriptural constitution of the church. The church is a company of persons whose union with one another presupposes and expresses a previous conscious and voluntary union of each with Jesus Christ. But of this conscious and voluntary union with Christ infants are not capable. Fourthly,—by the Scriptural prerequisites for participation in the Lord’s Supper. Participation in the Lord’s Supper is the right only of those who can discern the Lord’s body (1 Cor. 11:29). No reason can be assigned for restricting to intelligent communicants the ordinance of the Supper, which would not equally restrict to intelligent believers the ordinance of Baptism.

Infant baptism has accordingly led in the Greek church to infant communion. This course seems logically consistent. If baptism is administered to unconscious babes, they should participate in the Lord’s Supper also. But if confirmation or any intelligent profession of faith is thought necessary before communion, why should not such confirmation or profession be thought necessary before baptism? On Jonathan Edwards and the Halfway Covenant, see New Englander, Sept. 1884:601‐614; G. L. Walker, Aspects of Religious Life of New England, 61‐82; Dexter, Congregationalism, 487, note—“It has been often intimated that President Edwards opposed and destroyed the Halfway Covenant. He did oppose Stoddardism, or the doctrine that the Lord’s Supper is a converting ordinance, and that unconverted men, because they are such, should be encouraged to partake of it.” The tendency of his system was adverse to it; but, for all that appears in his published writings, he could have approved and administered that form of the Halfway Covenant then current among the churches. John Fiske says of Jonathan Edwards’s preaching: “The prominence he gave to spiritual conversion, or what was called ‘change of heart,’ brought about the overthrow of the doctrine of the Halfway Covenant. It also weakened the logical basis of infant baptism, and led to the winning of hosts of converts by the Baptists.” Other pedobaptist bodies than the Greek Church save part of the truth, at the expense of consistency, by denying participation in the Lord’s Supper to those baptized in infancy until they have reached years of understanding and have made a public profession of faith. Dr. Charles E. Jefferson, at the International Congregational Council of Boston, September, 1899, urged that the children of believers are already church members, and that as such they are entitled, not only to baptism, but also to the Lord’s Supper—“an assertion that started much thought”! Baptists may well commend Congregationalists to the teaching of their own Increase Mather, The Order of the Gospel (1700), 11—“The Congregational Church discipline is not suited for a worldly interest or for a formal generation of professors. It will stand or fall as godliness in the power of it does prevail, or otherwise.... If the begun Apostacy should proceed as fast the next thirty years as it has done these last, surely it will come that in New England (except the gospel itself depart with the order of it) that the most conscientious people therein will think themselves concerned to gather churches out of churches.” How much of Judaistic externalism may linger among nominal Christians is shown by the fact that in the Armenian Church animal sacrifices survived, or were permitted to converted heathen priests, in order they might not lose their livelihood. These sacrifices continued in other regions of Christendom, particularly in the Greek church, and Pope Gregory the Great permitted them; see Conybeare, in Am. Jour. Theology, Jan. 1893:62‐90. In The Key of Truth, a manual of the Paulician Church of Armenia, whose date in its present form is between the seventh and the ninth centuries, we have the Adoptianist view of Christ’s person, and of the subjects and the mode of baptism: “Thus also the Lord, having learned from the Father, proceeded to teach us to perform baptism and all other commandments at the age of full growth and at no other time.... For some have broken and destroyed the holy and precious canons which by the Father Almighty were delivered to our Lord Jesus Christ, and have trodden them underfoot with their devilish teaching, ... baptizing those who are irrational, and communicating the unbelieving.” Minority is legally divided into three septennates: 1. From the first to the seventh year, the age of complete irresponsibility, in which the child cannot commit a crime; 2. from the seventh to the fourteenth year, the age of partial responsibility, in which intelligent consciousness of the consequences of actions is not assumed to exist, but may be proved in individual instances; 3. from the fourteenth to the twenty‐first year, the age of discretion, in which the person is responsible for criminal action, may choose a guardian, make a will, marry with consent of parents, make business contracts not wholly void, but is not yet permitted fully to assume the free man’s position in the State. The church however is not bound by these hard and fast rules. Wherever it has evidence of conversion and of Christian character, it may admit to baptism and church membership, even at a very tender age.

(c) The rise of infant baptism in the history of the church.

The rise of infant baptism in the history of the church is due to sacramental conceptions of Christianity, so that all arguments in its favor from the writings of the first three centuries are equally arguments for baptismal regeneration.

Neander’s view may be found in Kitto, Cyclopædia, 1:287—“Infant baptism was established neither by Christ nor by his apostles. Even in later times Tertullian opposed it, the North African church holding to the old practice.” The newly discovered Teaching of the Apostles, which Bryennios puts at 140‐160 A.D., and Lightfoot at 80‐110 A. D., seems to know nothing of infant baptism. Professor A. H. Newman, in Bap. Rev., Jan. 1884—“Infant baptism has always gone hand in hand with State churches. It is difficult to conceive how an ecclesiastical establishment could be maintained without infant baptism or its equivalent. We should think, if the facts did not show us so plainly the contrary, that the doctrine of justification by faith alone would displace infant baptism. But no. The establishment must be maintained. The rejection of infant baptism implies insistence upon a baptism of believers. Only the baptized are properly members of the church. Even adults would not all receive baptism on professed faith, unless they were actually compelled to do so. Infant baptism must therefore be retained as the necessary concomitant of a State church. “But what becomes of the justification by faith? Baptism, if it symbolizes anything, symbolizes regeneration. It would be ridiculous to make the symbol to forerun the fact by a series of years. Luther saw the difficulty; but he was sufficient for the emergency. ‘Yes,’ said he, ‘justification is by faith alone. No outward rite, apart from faith, has any efficacy.’ Why, it was against opera operata that he was laying out all his strength. Yet baptism is the symbol of regeneration, and baptism must be administered to infants, or the State church falls. With an audacity truly sublime, the great reformer declares that infants are regenerated in connection with baptism, and that they are simultaneously justified by personal faith. An infant eight days old believe? ‘Prove the contrary if you can!’ triumphantly ejaculates Luther, and his point is gained. If this kind of personal faith is said to justify infants, is it wonderful that those of maturer years learned to take a somewhat superficial view of the faith that justifies?” Yet Luther had written: “Whatever is without the word of God is by that very fact against God”; see his Briefe, ed. DeWette, II:292; J. G. Walch, De Fide in Utero. There was great discordance between Luther as reformer, and Luther as conservative churchman. His Catholicism, only half overcome, broke into all his views of faith. In his early years, he stood for reason and Scripture; in his later years he fought reason and Scripture in the supposed interest of the church. Mat. 18:10—“See that ye despise not one of these little ones”—which refers not to little children but to childlike believers, Luther adduces as a proof of infant baptism, holding that the child is said to believe—“little ones that believe on me” (verse 6)—because it has been circumcised and received into the number of the elect. “And so, through baptism, children become believers. How else could the children of Turks and Jews be distinguished from those of Christians?” Does this involve the notion that infants dying unbaptized are lost? To find the very apostle of justification by faith saying that a little child becomes a believer by being baptized, is humiliating and disheartening (so Broadus. Com. on Matthew, page 384, note). Pfleiderer, Philos. Religion, 2:342‐345, quotes from Lang as follows: “By mistaking and casting down the Protestant spirit which put forth its demands on the time in Carlstadt, Zwingle, and others, Luther made Protestantism lose its salt; he inflicted wounds upon it from which it has not yet recovered to‐day; and the ecclesiastical struggle of the present is just a struggle of spiritual freedom against Lutherism.” E. G. Robinson: “Infant baptism is a rag of Romanism. Since regeneration is always through the truth, baptismal regeneration is an absurdity.” See Christian Review, Jan. 1851; Neander, Church History, 1:311, 313; Coleman, Christian Antiquities, 258‐260; Arnold, in Bap. Quarterly, 1869:32; Hovey, in Bap. Quarterly, 1871:75.

(d) The reasoning by which it is supported is unscriptural, unsound, and dangerous in its tendency.

First,—in assuming the power of the church to modify or abrogate a command of Christ. This has been sufficiently answered above. Secondly,—in maintaining that infant baptism takes the place of circumcision under the Abrahamic covenant. To this we reply that the view contradicts the New Testament idea of the church, by making it a hereditary body, in which fleshly birth, and not the new birth, qualifies for membership. “As the national Israel typified the spiritual Israel, so the circumcision which immediately followed, not preceded, natural birth, bids us baptize children, not before, but after spiritual birth.” Thirdly,—in declaring that baptism belongs to the infant because of an organic connection of the child with the parent, which permits the latter to stand for the former and to make profession of faith for it,—faith already existing germinally in the child by virtue of this organic union, and certain for the same reason to be developed as the child grows to maturity. “A law of organic connection as regards character subsisting between the parent and the child,—such a connection as induces the conviction that the character of the one is actually included in the character of the other, as the seed is formed in the capsule.” We object to this view that it unwarrantably confounds the personality of the child with that of the parent; practically ignores the necessity of the Holy Spirit’s regenerating influences in the case of children of Christian parents; and presumes in such children a gracious state which facts conclusively show not to exist.

What takes the place of circumcision is not baptism but regeneration. Paul defeated the attempt to fasten circumcision on the church, when he refused to have that rite performed on Titus. But later Judaizers succeeded in perpetuating circumcision under the form of infant baptism, and afterward of infant sprinkling (McGarvey, Com. on Acts). E. G. Robinson: “Circumcision is not a type of baptism: 1. It is purely a gratuitous assumption that it is so. There is not a word in Scripture to authorize it; 2. Circumcision was a national, a theocratic, and not a personal, religious rite; 3. If circumcision be a type, why did Paul circumcise Timothy? Why did he not explain, on an occasion so naturally calling for it, that circumcision was replaced by baptism?” On the theory that baptism takes the place of circumcision, see Pepper, Baptist Quarterly, April, 1857; Palmer, in Baptist Quarterly, 1871:314. The Christian Church is either a natural, hereditary body, or it was merely typified by the Jewish people. In the former case, baptism belongs to all children of Christian parents, and the church is indistinguishable from the world. In the latter case, it belongs only to spiritual descendants, and therefore only to true believers. “That Jewish Christians, who of course had been circumcised, were also baptized, and that a large number of them insisted that Gentiles who had been baptized should also be circumcised, shows conclusively that baptism did not take the place of circumcision.... The notion that the family is the unit of society is a relic of barbarism. This appears in the Roman law, which was good for property but not for persons. It left none but a servile station to wife or son, thus degrading society at the fountain of family life. To gain freedom, the Roman wife had to accept a form of marriage which opened the way for unlimited liberty of divorce.” Hereditary church‐membership is of the same piece with hereditary priesthood, and both are relics of Judaism. J. J. Murphy, Nat. Selection and Spir. Freedom, 81—“The institution of hereditary priesthood, which was so deeply rooted in the religions of antiquity and was adopted into Judaism, has found no place in Christianity; there is not, I believe, any church whatever calling itself by the name of Christ, in which the ministry is hereditary.” Yet there is a growing disposition to find in infant baptism the guarantee of hereditary church membership. Washington Gladden, What is Left? 252‐254—“Solidarity of the generations finds expression in infant baptism. Families ought to be Christian and not individuals only. In the Society of Friends every one born of parents belonging to the Society is a birthright member. Children of Christian parents are heirs of the kingdom. The State recognizes that our children are organically connected with it. When parents are members of the State, children are not aliens. They are not called to perform duties of citizenship until a certain age, but the rights and privileges of citizenship are theirs from the moment of their birth. The State is the mother of her children; shall the church be less motherly than the State?... Baptism does not make the child God’s child; it simply recognizes and declares the fact.” Another illustration of what we regard as a radically false view is found in the sermon of Bishop Grafton of Fond du Lac, at the consecration of Bishop Nicholson in Philadelphia: “Baptism is not like a function in the natural order, like the coronation of a king, an acknowledgment of what the child already is. The child, truly God’s loved offspring by way of creation, is in baptism translated into the new creation and incorporated into the Incarnate One, and made his child.” Yet, as the great majority of the inmates of our prisons and the denizens of the slums have received this “baptism,” it appears that this “loved offspring” very early lost its “new creation” and got “translated” in the wrong direction. We regard infant baptism as only an ancient example of the effort to bring in the kingdom of God by externals, the protest against which brought Jesus to the cross. Our modern methods of salvation by sociology and education and legislation are under the same indictment, as crucifying the Son of God afresh and putting him to open shame. Prof. Moses Stuart urged that the form of baptism was immaterial, but that the temper of heart was the thing of moment. Francis Wayland, then a student of his, asked: “If such is the case, with what propriety can baptism be administered to those who cannot be supposed to exercise any temper of heart at all, and with whom the form must be everything?”—The third theory of organic connection of the child with its parents is elaborated by Bushnell, in his Christian Nurture, 90‐223. Per contra, see Bunsen, Hippolytus and his Times, 179, 211; Curtis, Progress of Baptist Principles, 262. Hezekiah’s son Manasseh was not godly; and it would be rash to say that all the drunkard’s children are presumptively drunkards.

(e) The lack of agreement among pedobaptists.

The lack of agreement among pedobaptists as to the warrant for infant baptism and as to the relation of baptized infants to the church, together with the manifest decline of the practice itself, are arguments against it.

The propriety of infant baptism is variously argued, says Dr. Bushnell, upon the ground of “natural innocence, inherited depravity, and federal holiness; because of the infant’s own character, the parent’s piety, and the church’s faith; for the reason that the child is an heir of salvation already, and in order to make it such.... No settled opinion on infant baptism and on Christian nurture has ever been attained to.”

Quot homines, tot sententiæ. The belated traveler in a thunderstorm prayed for a little more light and less noise. Bushnell, Christian Nurture, 9‐89, denies original sin, denies that hereditary connection can make a child guilty. But he seems to teach transmitted righteousness, or that hereditary connection can make a child holy. He disparages “sensible experiences” and calls them “explosive conversions.” But because we do not know the time of conversion, shall we say that there never was a time when the child experienced God’s grace? See Bib. Sac., 1872:665. Bushnell said: “I don’t know what right we have to say that a child can’t be born again before he is born the first time.” Did not John the Baptist preach Christ before he was born? (Luke 1:15, 41, 44). The answer to Bushnell is simply this, that regeneration is through the truth, and an unborn child cannot know the truth. To disjoin regeneration from the truth, is to make it a matter of external manipulation in which the soul is merely passive and the whole process irrational. There is a secret work of God in the soul, but it is always accompanied by an awakening of the soul to perceive the truth and to accept Christ. Are baptized infants members of the Presbyterian Church? We answer by citing the following standards: 1. The Confession of Faith, 25:2—“The visible church ... consists of all those throughout the world, that profess the true religion, together with their children.” 2. The Larger Catechism, 62—“The visible church is a society made up of all such as in all ages and places of the world do profess the true religion, and of their children.” 166—“Baptism is not to be administered to any that are not of the visible church ... till they profess their faith in Christ and obedience to him: but infants descending from parents either both or but one of them professing faith in Christ and obedience to him are in that respect within the covenant and are to be baptized.” 3. The Shorter Catechism, 96—“Baptism is not to be administered to any that are out of the visible church, till they profess their faith in Christ and obedience to him: but the infants of such as are members of the visible church are to be baptized.” 4. Form of Government, 3—“A particular church consists of a number of professing Christians, with their offspring.” 5. Directory for Worship, 1—“Children born within the pale of the visible church and dedicated to God in baptism are under the inspection and government of the church.... When they come to years of discretion, if they be free from scandal, appear sober and steady, and to have sufficient knowledge to discern the Lord’s body, they ought to be informed it is their duty and their privilege to come to the Lord’s Supper.” The Maplewood Congregational Church of Malden, Mass., enrolls as members all children baptized by the church. The relation continues until they indicate a desire either to continue it or to dissolve it. The list of such members is kept distinct from that of the adults, but they are considered as members under the care of the church. Dr. W. G. T. Shedd: “The infant of a believer is born into the church as the infant of a citizen is born into the State. A baptized child in adult years may renounce his baptism, become an infidel, and join the synagogue of Satan, but until he does this, he must be regarded as a member of the church of Christ.” On the Decline of Infant Baptism, see Vedder, in Baptist Review, April, 1882:173‐189, who shows that in fifty years past the proportion of infant baptisms to communicants in general has decreased from one in seven to one in eleven; among the Reformed, from one in twelve to one in twenty; among the Presbyterians, from one in fifteen to one in thirty‐three; among the Methodists, from one in twenty‐two to one in twenty‐nine; among the Congregationalists, from one in fifty to one in seventy‐seven.

(f) The evil effects of infant baptism.

First,—in forestalling the voluntary act of the child baptized, and thus practically preventing his personal obedience to Christ’s commands.

The person baptized in infancy has never performed any act with intent to obey Christ’s command to be baptized, never has put forth a single volition looking toward obedience to that command; see Wilkinson, The Baptist Principle, 40‐46. Every man has the right to choose his own wife. So every man has the right to choose his own Savior.

Secondly,—in inducing superstitious confidence in an outward rite as possessed of regenerating efficacy.

French parents still regard infants before baptism as only animals (Stanley). The haste with which the minister is summoned to baptize the dying child shows that superstition still lingers in many an otherwise evangelical family in our own country. The English Prayerbook declares that in baptism the infant is “made a child of God and an inheritor of the kingdom of heaven.” Even the Westminster Assembly’s Catechism, 28:6, holds that grace is actually conferred in baptism, though the efficacy of it is delayed till riper years. Mercersburg Review: “The objective medium or instrumental cause of regeneration is baptism. Men are not regenerated outside the church and then brought into it for preservation, but they are regenerated by being incorporated with or engrafted into the church through the sacrament of baptism.” Catholic Review: “Unbaptized, these little ones go into darkness; but baptized, they rejoice in the presence of God forever.” Dr. Beebe of Hamilton went after a minister to baptize his sick child, but before he returned the child died. Reflection made him a Baptist, and the Editor of The Examiner. Baptists unhesitatingly permit converts to die unbaptized, showing plainly that they do not regard baptism as essential to salvation. Baptism no more makes one a Christian, than putting a crown on one’s head makes him a king. Zwingle held to a symbolic interpretation of the Lord’s Supper, but he clung to the sacramental conception of Baptism. E. H. Johnson, Uses and Abuses of Ordinances, 33, claims that, while baptism is not a justifying or regenerating ordinance, it is a sanctifying ordinance,—sanctifying, in the sense of setting apart. Yes, we reply, but only as church going and prayer are sanctifying; the efficacy is not in the outward act but in the spirit which accompanies it. To make it signify more is to admit the sacramental principle. In the Roman Catholic Church the baptism of bells and of rosaries shows how infant baptism has induced the belief that grace can be communicated to irrational and even material things. In Mexico people bring caged birds, cats, rabbits, donkeys, and pigs, for baptism. The priest kneels before the altar in prayer, reads a few words in Latin, then sprinkles the creature with holy water. The sprinkling is supposed to drive out any evil spirit that may have vexed the bird or beast. In Key West, Florida, a town of 22,000 inhabitants, infant baptism has a stronger hold than anywhere else at the South. Baptist parents had sometimes gone to the Methodist preachers to have their children baptized. To prevent this, the Baptist pastors established the custom of laying their hands upon the heads of infants in the congregation, and “blessing” them, i. e., asking God’s blessing to rest upon them. But this custom came to be confounded with christening, and was called such. Now the Baptist pastors are having a hard struggle to explain and limit the custom which they themselves have introduced. Perverse human nature will take advantage of even the slightest additions to N. T. prescriptions, and will bring out of the germs of false doctrine a fearful harvest of evil. Obsta principiis—“Resist beginnings.”

Thirdly,—in obscuring and corrupting Christian truth with regard to the sufficiency of Scripture, the connection of the ordinances, and the inconsistency of an impenitent life with church‐membership.

Infant baptism in England is followed by confirmation, as a matter of course, whether there has been any conscious abandonment of sin or not. In Germany, a man is always understood to be a Christian unless he expressly states to the contrary—in fact, he feels insulted if his Christianity is questioned. At the funerals even of infidels and debauchees the pall used may be inscribed with the words: “Blessed are the dead that die in the Lord.” Confidence in one’s Christianity and hopes of heaven based only on the fact of baptism in infancy, are a great obstacle to evangelical preaching and to the progress of true religion. Wordsworth, The Excursion, 596, 602 (book 5)—“At the baptismal font. And when the pure And consecrating element hath cleansed The original stain, the child is thus received Into the second ark, Christ’s church, with trust That he, from wrath redeemed therein shall float Over the billows of this troublesome world To the fair land of everlasting life.... The holy rite That lovingly consigns the babe to the arms Of Jesus and his everlasting care.” Infant baptism arose in the superstitious belief that there lay in the water itself a magical efficacy for the washing away of sin, and that apart from baptism there could be no salvation. This was and still remains the Roman Catholic position. Father Doyle, in Anno Domini, 2:182—“Baptism regenerates. By means of it the child is born again into the newness of the supernatural life.” Theodore Parker was baptized, but not till he was four years old, when his “Oh, don’t!”—in which his biographers have found prophetic intimation of his mature dislike for all conventional forms—was clearly the small boy’s dislike of water on his face; see Chadwick, Theodore Parker, 6, 7. “How do you know, my dear, that you have been christened?” “Please, mum, ’cos I’ve got the marks on my arm now, mum!”

Fourthly,—in destroying the church as a spiritual body, by merging it in the nation and the world.

Ladd, Principles of Church Polity: “Unitarianism entered the Congregational churches of New England through the breach in one of their own avowed and most important tenets, namely, that of a regenerate church‐membership. Formalism, indifferentism, neglect of moral reforms, and, as both cause and results of these, an abundance of unrenewed men and women, were the causes of their seeming disasters in that sad epoch.” But we would add, that the serious and alarming decline of religion which culminated in the Unitarian movement in New England had its origin in infant baptism. This introduced into the Church a multitude of unregenerate persons and permitted them to determine its doctrinal position. W. B. Matteson: “No one practice of the church has done so much to lower the tone of its life and to debase its standards. The first New England churches were established by godly and regenerated men. They received into their churches, through infant baptism, children presumptively, but alas not actually, regenerated. The result is well known—swift, startling, seemingly irresistible decline. ‘The body of the rising generation,’ writes Increase Mother, ‘is a poor perishing, inconverted, and, except the Lord pour out his Spirit, an undone generation.’ The ‘Halfway Covenant’ was at once a token of preceding, and a cause of further, decline. If God had not indeed poured out his Spirit in the great awakening under Edwards, New England might well, as some feared, ‘be lost even to New England and buried in its own ruins.’ It was the new emphasis on personal religion—an emphasis which the Baptists of that day largely contributed—that gave to the New England churches a larger life and a larger usefulness. Infant baptism has never since held quite the same place in the polity of those churches. It has very generally declined. But it is still far from extinct, even among evangelical Protestants. The work of Baptists is not yet done. Baptists have always stood, but they need still to stand, for a believing and regenerated church‐membership.”

Fifthly,—in putting into the place of Christ’s command a commandment of men, and so admitting the essential principle of all heresy, schism, and false religion.

There is therefore no logical halting‐place between the Baptist and the Romanist positions. The Roman Catholic Archbishop Hughes of New York, said well to a Presbyterian minister: “We have no controversy with you. Our controversy is with the Baptists.” Lange of Jena: “Would the Protestant church fulfil and attain to its final destiny, the baptism of infants must of necessity be abolished.” The English Judge asked the witness what his religious belief was. Reply: “I haven’t any.” “Where do you attend church?” “Nowhere.” “Put him down as belonging to the Church of England.” The small child was asked where her mother was. Reply: “She has gone to a Christian and devil meeting.” The child meant a Christian Endeavor meeting. Some systems of doctrine and ritual, however, answer her description, for they are a mixture of paganism and Christianity. The greatest work favoring the doctrine which we here condemn is Wall’s History of Infant Baptism. For the Baptist side of the controversy see Arnold, in Madison Avenue Lectures, 160‐182; Curtis, Progress of Baptist Principles, 274, 275; Dagg, Church Order, 144‐202.

The Lord’s Supper is that outward rite in which the assembled church eats bread broken and drinks wine poured forth by its appointed representative, in token of its constant dependence on the once crucified, now risen Savior, as source of its spiritual life; or, in other words, in token of that abiding communion of Christ’s death and resurrection through which the life begun in regeneration is sustained and perfected.

Norman Fox, Christ in the Daily Meal, 31, 33, says that the Scripture nowhere speaks of the wine as “poured forth”; and in 1 Cor. 11:24—“my body which is broken for you,” the Revised Version omits the word “broken”; while on the other hand the Gospel according to John (19:36) calls especial attention to the fact that Christ’s body was not broken. We reply that Jesus, in giving his disciples the cup, did speak of his blood as “poured out” (Mark 14:24); and it was not the body, but “a bone of him,” which was not to be broken. Many ancient manuscripts add the word “broken” in 1 Cor. 11:24. On the Lord’s Supper in general, see Weston, in Madison Avenue Lectures, 183‐195; Dagg, Church Order, 203‐214.

1. The Lord’s Supper an ordinance instituted by Christ.

(a) Christ appointed an outward rite to be observed by his disciples in remembrance of his death. It was to be observed after his death; only after his death could it completely fulfil its purpose as a feast of commemoration.

Luke 22:19—“And be took bread, and when he had given thanks, he brake it, and gave to them, saying, This is my body which is given for you: this do in remembrance of me. And the cup in like manner after supper, saying, This cup is the new covenant in my blood, even that which is poured out for you”; 1 Cor. 11:23‐25—“For I received of the Lord that which also I delivered unto you, that the Lord Jesus in the night in which he was betrayed took bread; and when he had given thanks, he brake it, and said, This is my body, which is for you: this do in remembrance of me. In like manner also the cup, after supper, saying, This cup is the new covenant in my blood: this do, as often as ye drink it, in remembrance of me.” Observe that this communion was Christian communion before Christ’s death, just as John’s baptism was Christian baptism before Christ’s death.

(b) From the apostolic injunction with regard to its celebration in the church until Christ’s second coming, we infer that it was the original intention of our Lord to institute a rite of perpetual and universal obligation.

1 Cor. 11:26—“For as often as ye eat this bread, and drink the cup, ye proclaim the Lord’s death till he come”; cf. Mat. 26:29—“But I say unto you, I shall not drink henceforth of this fruit of the vine, until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father’s kingdom”; Mark 14:25—“Verily I say unto you, I will no more drink of the fruit of the vine, until that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God.” As the paschal supper continued until Christ came the first time in the flesh, so the Lord’s Supper is to continue until he comes the second time with all the power and glory of God.

(c) The uniform practice of the N. T. churches, and the celebration of such a rite in subsequent ages by almost all churches professing to be Christian, is best explained upon the supposition that the Lord’s Supper is an ordinance established by Christ himself.

Acts 2:42—“And they continued stedfastly in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread and the prayers”; 46—“And day by day, continuing stedfastly with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread at home, they took their food with gladness and singleness of heart”—on the words here translated “at home” (κατ᾽ οἶκον), but meaning, as Jacob maintains, “from one worship‐room to another,” see page 961. Acts 20:7—“And upon the first day of the week, when we were gathered together to break bread, Paul discoursed with them”; 1 Cor. 10:16—“The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not a communion of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not a communion of the body of Christ? seeing that we, who art many, are one bread, one body: for we all partake of the one bread.”

2. The Mode of administering the Lord’s Supper.

(a) The elements are bread and wine.

Although the bread which Jesus broke at the institution of the ordinance was doubtless the unleavened bread of the Passover, there is nothing in the symbolism of the Lord’s Supper which necessitates the Romanist use of the wafer. Although the wine which Jesus poured out was doubtless the ordinary fermented juice of the grape, there is nothing in the symbolism of the ordinance which forbids the use of unfermented juice of the grape,—obedience to the command “This do in remembrance of me” (Luke 22:19) requires only that we should use the “fruit of the vine” (Mat. 26:29). Huguenots and Roman Catholics, among Parkman’s Pioneers of France in the New World, disputed whether the sacramental bread could be made of the meal of Indian corn. But it is only as food, that the bread is symbolic. Dried fish is used in Greenland. The bread only symbolizes Christ’s life and the wine only symbolizes his death. Any food or drink may do the same. It therefore seems a very conscientious but unnecessary literalism, when Adoniram Judson (Life by his Son, 352) writes from Burma: “No wine to be procured in this place, on which account we are unable to meet with the other churches this day in partaking of the Lord’s Supper.” For proof that Bible wines, like all other wines, are fermented, see Presb. Rev., 1881:80‐114; 1882:78‐108, 394‐399, 586; Hovey, in Bap. Quar. Rev., April, 1887:152‐180. Per contra, see Samson, Bible Wines. On the Scripture Law of Temperance, see Presb. Rev., 1882:287‐324.

(b) The communion is of both kinds,—that is, communicants are to partake both of the bread and of the wine.

The Roman Catholic Church withholds the wine from the laity, although it considers the whole Christ to be present under each of the forms. Christ, however, says: “Drink ye all of it” (Mat. 26:27). To withhold the wine from any believer is disobedience to Christ, and is too easily understood as teaching that the laity have only a portion of the benefits of Christ’s death. Calvin: “As to the bread, he simply said ‘Take, eat.’ Why does he expressly bid them all drink? And why does Mark explicitly say that ‘they all drank of it’ (Mark 14:23)?” Bengel: Does not this suggest that, if communion in “one kind alone were sufficient, it is the cup which should be used? The Scripture thus speaks, foreseeing what Rome would do.” See Expositor’s Greek Testament on 1 Cor. 11:27. In the Greek Church the bread and wine are mingled and are administered to communicants, not to infants only but also to adults, with a spoon.

(c) The partaking of these elements is of a festal nature.

The Passover was festal in its nature. Gloom and sadness are foreign to the spirit of the Lord’s Supper. The wine is the symbol of the death of Christ, but of that death by which we live. It reminds us that he drank the cup of suffering in order that we might drink the wine of joy. As the bread is broken to sustain our physical life, so Christ’s body was broken by thorns and nails and spear to nourish our spiritual life. 1 Cor. 11:29—“For he that eateth and drinketh, eateth and drinketh judgment onto himself, if he discern not the body.” Here the Authorized Version wrongly had “damnation” instead of “judgment.” Not eternal condemnation, but penal judgment in general, is meant. He who partakes “in an unworthy manner” (verse 27), i. e., in hypocrisy, or merely to satisfy bodily appetites, and not discerning the body of Christ of which the bread is the symbol (verse 29), draws down upon him God’s judicial sentence. Of this judgment, the frequent sickness and death in the church at Corinth was a token. See verses 30‐34, and Meyer’s Com.; also Gould, in Am. Com. on 1 Cor. 11:27—“unworthily”—“This is not to be understood as referring to the unworthiness of the person himself to partake, but to the unworthy manner of partaking.... The failure to recognize practically the symbolism of the elements, and hence the treatment of the Supper as a common meal, is just what the apostle has pointed out as the fault of the Corinthians, and it is what he characterizes as an unworthy eating and drinking.” The Christian therefore should not be deterred from participation in the Lord’s Supper by any feeling of his personal unworthiness, so long as he trusts Christ and aims to obey him, for “All the fitness he requireth Is to feel our need of him.”

(d) The communion is a festival of commemoration,—not simply bringing Christ to our remembrance, but making proclamation of his death to the world.

1 Cor. 11:24, 26—“this do in remembrance of me.... For as often as ye eat this bread and drink this cup, ye proclaim the Lord’s death till he come.” As the Passover commemorated the deliverance of Israel from Egypt, and as the Fourth of July commemorates our birth as a nation, so the Lord’s Supper commemorates the birth of the church in Christ’s death and resurrection. As a mother might bid her children meet over her grave and commemorate her, so Christ bids his people meet and remember him. But subjective remembrance is not its only aim. It is public proclamation also. Whether it brings perceptible blessing to us or not, it is to be observed as a means of confessing Christ, testifying our faith, and publishing the fact of his death to others.

(e) It is to be celebrated by the assembled church. It is not a solitary observance on the part of individuals. No “showing forth” is possible except in company.

Acts 20:7—“gathered together to break bread”; 1 Cor. 11:18, 20, 22, 33, 34—“when ye come together in the church ... assemble yourselves together ... have ye not houses to eat and to drink in? or despise ye the church of God, and put them to shame that have not? ... when ye come together to eat.... If any man is hungry, let him eat at home; that your coming together be not unto judgment.” Jacob, Eccl. Polity of N. T., 191‐194, claims that in Acts 2:46—“breaking bread at home”—where we have οἶκος, not οἶκία, οἶκος is not a private house, but a “worship‐room,” and that the phrase should be translated “breaking bread from one worship‐room to another,” or “in various worship‐rooms.” This meaning seems very apt in Acts 5:42—“And every day, in the temple and at home [rather, ‘in various worship‐rooms’], they ceased not to teach and to preach Jesus as the Christ”; 8:3—“But Saul laid waste the church, entering into every house [rather, ‘every worship‐room’] and dragging men and women committed them to prison”; Rom. 16:5—“salute the church that is in their house [rather, ‘in their worship‐room’]”; Titus 1:11—“men who overthrow whole houses [rather, ‘whole worship‐rooms’], teaching things which they ought not, for filthy lucre’s sake.” Per contra, however, see 1 Cor. 11:34—“let him eat at home,” where οἶκος is contrasted with the place of meeting; so also 1 Cor. 14:35 and Acts 20:20, where οἶκος seems to mean a private house. The celebration of the Lord’s Supper in each family by itself is not recognized in the New Testament. Stanley, in Nineteenth Century, May, 1878, tells us that as infant communion is forbidden in the Western Church, and evening communion is forbidden by the Roman Church, so solitary communion is forbidden by the English Church, and death‐bed communion by the Scottish Church. E. G. Robinson: “No single individual in the New Testament ever celebrates the Lord’s Supper by himself.” Mrs. Browning recognized the essentially social nature of the ordinance, when she said that truth was like the bread at the Sacrament—to be passed on. In this the Supper gives us a type of the proper treatment of all the goods of life, both temporal and spiritual. Dr. Norman Fox, Christ in the Daily Meal, claims that the Lord’s Supper is no more an exclusively church ordinance than is singing or prayer; that the command to observe it was addressed, not to an organized church, but only to individuals; that every meal in the home was to be a Lord’s Supper, because Christ was remembered in it. But we reply that Paul’s letter with regard to the abuses of the Lord’s Supper was addressed, not to individuals, but to “the church of God which is at Corinth.” (1 Cor. 1:2). Paul reproves the Corinthians because in the Lord’s Supper each ate without thought of others: “What, have ye not houses to eat and to drink in? or despise ye the church of God, and put them to shame that have not?” (11:22). Each member having appeased his hunger at home, the members of the church “come together to eat” (11:30), as the spiritual body of Christ. All this shows that the celebration of the Lord’s Supper was not an appendage to every ordinary meal. In Acts 20:7—“upon the first day of the week, when we were gathered together to break bread, Paul discoursed with them”—the natural inference is that the Lord’s Supper was a sacred rite, observed apart from any ordinary meal, and accompanied by religious instruction. Dr. Fox would go back of these later observances to the original command of our Lord. He would eliminate all that we do not find in Mark, the earliest gospel. But this would deprive us of the Sermon on the Mount, the parable of the Prodigal Son, and the discourses of the fourth gospel. McGiffert gives A. D. 52, as the date of Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, and this ante‐dates Mark’s gospel by at least thirteen years. Paul’s account of the Lord’s Supper at Corinth is therefore an earlier authority than Mark.

(f) The responsibility of seeing that the ordinance is properly administered rests with the church as a body; and the pastor is, in this matter, the proper representative and organ of the church. In cases of extreme exigency, however, as where the church has no pastor and no ordained minister can be secured, it is competent for the church to appoint one from its own number to administer the ordinance.

1 Cor. 11:2, 23—“Now I praise you that ye remember me in all things, and hold fast the traditions, even as I delivered them to you.... For I received of the Lord that which also I delivered unto you, that the Lord Jesus in the night in which he was betrayed took bread.” Here the responsibility of administering the Lord’s Supper is laid upon the body of believers.

(g) The frequency with which the Lord’s Supper is to be administered is not indicated either by the N. T. precept or by uniform N. T. example. We have instances both of its daily and of its weekly observance. With respect to this, as well as with respect to the accessories of the ordinance, the church is to exercise a sound discretion.

Acts 2:46—“And day by day, continuing stedfastly with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread at home [or perhaps, ‘in various worship‐rooms’]”; 20:7—“And upon the first day of the week, when we were gathered together to break bread.” In 1878, thirty‐nine churches of the Establishment in London held daily communion; in two churches it was held twice each day. A few churches of the Baptist faith in England and America celebrate the Lord’s Supper on each Lord’s day. Carlstadt would celebrate the Lord’s Supper only in companies of twelve, and held also that every bishop must marry. Reclining on couches, and meeting in the evening, are not commanded; and both, by their inconvenience, might in modern times counteract the design of the ordinance.

3. The Symbolism of the Lord’s Supper.

The Lord’s Supper sets forth, in general, the death of Christ as the sustaining power of the believer’s life.

A. Expansion of this statement.

(a) It symbolizes the death of Christ for our sins.

1 Cor. 11:26—“For as often as ye eat this bread, and drink the cup, ye proclaim the Lord’s death till he come”; cf. Mark 14:24—“This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many”—the blood upon which the covenant between God and Christ, and so between God and us who are one with Christ, from eternity past was based. The Lord’s Supper reminds us of the covenant which ensures our salvation, and of the atonement upon which the covenant was based; cf. Heb. 13:20—“blood of an eternal covenant.” Alex. McLaren: “The suggestion of a violent death, implied in the doubling of the symbols, by which the body is separated from that of the blood, and still further implied in the breaking of the bread, is made prominent in the words in reference to the cup. It symbolizes the blood of Jesus which is ‘shed.’ That shed blood is covenant blood. By it the New Covenant, of which Jeremiah had prophesied, one article of which was, ‘Their sins and iniquities I will remember no more,’ is sealed and ratified, not for Israel only but for an indefinite ‘many,’ which is really equivalent to all. Could words more plainly declare that Christ’s death was a sacrifice? Can we understand it, according to his own interpretation of it, unless we see in his words here a reference to his previous words (Mat. 20:28) and recognize that in shedding his blood ‘for many,’ he ‘gave his life a ransom for many’? The Lord’s Supper is the standing witness, voiced by Jesus himself, that he regarded his death as the very centre of his work, and that he regarded it not merely as a martyrdom, but as a sacrifice by which he put away sins forever. Those who reject that view of that death are sorely puzzled what to make of the Lord’s Supper.”

(b) It symbolizes our personal appropriation of the benefits of that death.

1 Cor. 11:24—“This is my body, which is for you”; cf. 1 Cor. 5:7—“Christ our passover is sacrificed for us”; or R. V.—“our passover also hath been sacrificed, even Christ”; here it is evident not only that the showing forth of the Lord’s death is the primary meaning of the ordinance, but that our partaking of the benefits of that death is as clearly taught as the Israelites’ deliverance was symbolized in the paschal supper.

(c) It symbolizes the method of this appropriation, through union with Christ himself.

1 Cor. 10:16—“The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not a communion of [marg.: ‘participation in’] the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not a communion of [marg.: ‘participation in’] the body of Christ?” Here “is it not a participation” = “does it not symbolize the participation?” So Mat. 26:26—“this is my body” = “this symbolizes my body.”

(d) It symbolizes the continuous dependence of the believer for all spiritual life upon the once crucified, now living, Savior, to whom he is thus united.

Cf. John 6:53—“Verily, verily, I say unto you, except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, ye have not life in yourselves”—here is a statement, not with regard to the Lord’s Supper, but with regard to spiritual union with Christ, which the Lord’s Supper only symbolizes; see page 965, (a). Like Baptism, the Lord’s Supper presupposes and implies evangelical faith, especially faith in the Deity of Christ; not that all who partake of it realize its full meaning, but that this participation logically implies the five great truths of Christ’s preëxistence, his supernatural birth, his vicarious atonement, his literal resurrection, and his living presence with his followers. Because Ralph Waldo Emerson perceived that the Lord’s Supper implied Christ’s omnipresence and deity, he would no longer celebrate it, and so broke with his church and with the ministry.

(e) It symbolizes the sanctification of the Christian through a spiritual reproduction in him of the death and resurrection of the Lord.

Rom. 8:10—“And if Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin; but the spirit is life because of righteousness”; Phil. 3:10—“that I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, becoming conformed unto his death; if by any means I may attain unto the resurrection from the dead.” The bread of life nourishes; but it transforms me, not I it.

(f) It symbolizes the consequent union of Christians in Christ, their head.

1 Cor. 10:17—“seeing that we, who are many, are one bread, one body: for we all partake of the one bread.” The Roman Catholic says that bread is the unity of many kernels, the wine the unity of many berries, and all are changed into the body of Christ. We can adopt the former part of the statement, without taking the latter. By being united to Christ, we become united to one another; and the Lord’s Supper, as it symbolizes our common partaking of Christ, symbolizes also the consequent oneness of all in whom Christ dwells. Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, IX—“As this broken bread was scattered upon the mountains, and being gathered together became one, so may thy church be gathered together from the ends of the earth into thy kingdom.”

(g) It symbolizes the coming joy and perfection of the kingdom of God.

Luke 22:18—“for I say unto you, I shall not drink from henceforth of the fruit of the vine, until the kingdom of God shall come”; Mark 14:25—“Verily I say unto you, I will no more drink of the fruit of the vine, until that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God”; Mat. 26:29—“But I say unto you, I shall not drink henceforth of this fruit of the vine, until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father’s kingdom.” Like Baptism, which points forward to the resurrection, the Lord’s Supper is anticipatory also. It brings before us, not simply death, but life; not simply past sacrifice, but future glory. It points forward to the great festival, “the marriage supper of the Lamb” (Rev. 19:9). Dorner: “Then Christ will keep the Supper anew with us, and the hours of highest solemnity in this life are but a weak foretaste of the powers of the world to come.” See Madison Avenue Lectures, 176‐216; The Lord’s Supper, a Clerical Symposium, by Pressensé, Luthardt, and English Divines.

B. Inferences from this statement.

(a) The connection between the Lord’s Supper and Baptism consists in this, that they both and equally are symbols of the death of Christ. In Baptism, we show forth the death of Christ as the procuring cause of our new birth into the kingdom of God. In the Lord’s Supper, we show forth the death of Christ as the sustaining power of our spiritual life after it has once begun. In the one, we honor the sanctifying power of the death of Christ, as in the other we honor its regenerating power. Thus both are parts of one whole,—setting before us Christ’s death for men in its two great purposes and results.

If baptism symbolized purification only, there would be no point of connection between the two ordinances. Their common reference to the death of Christ binds the two together.

(b) The Lord’s Supper is to be often repeated,—as symbolizing Christ’s constant nourishment of the soul, whose new birth was signified in Baptism.

Yet too frequent repetition may induce superstitious confidence in the value of communion as a mere outward form.

(c) The Lord’s Supper, like Baptism, is the symbol of a previous state of grace. It has in itself no regenerating and no sanctifying power, but is the symbol by which the relation of the believer to Christ, his sanctifier, is vividly expressed and strongly confirmed.

We derive more help from the Lord’s Supper than from private prayer, simply because it is an external rite, impressing the sense as well as the intellect, celebrated in company with other believers whose faith and devotion help our own, and bringing before us the profoundest truths of Christianity—the death of Christ, and our union with Christ in that death.

(d) The blessing received from participation is therefore dependent upon, and proportioned to, the faith of the communicant.

In observing the Lord’s Supper, we need to discern the body of the Lord (1 Cor. 11:29)—that is, to recognize the spiritual meaning of the ordinance, and the presence of Christ, who through his deputed representatives gives to us the emblems, and who nourishes and quickens our souls as these material things nourish and quicken the body. The faith which thus discerns Christ is the gift of the Holy Spirit.

(e) The Lord’s Supper expresses primarily the fellowship of the believer, not with his brethren, but with Christ, his Lord.

The Lord’s Supper, like Baptism, symbolizes fellowship with the brethren only as consequent upon, and incidental to, fellowship with Christ. Just as we are all baptized “into one body” (1 Cor. 12:13) only by being “baptized into Christ” (Rom. 6:3), so we commune with other believers in the Lord’s Supper, only as we commune with Christ. Christ’s words: “this do in remembrance of me” (1 Cor. 11:24), bid us think, not of our brethren, but of the Lord. Baptism is not a test of personal worthiness. Nor is the Lord’s Supper a test of personal worthiness, either our own or that of others. It is not primarily an expression of Christian fellowship. Nowhere in the New Testament is it called a communion of Christians with one another. But it is called a communion of the body and blood of Christ (1 Cor. 10:16)—or, in other words, a participation in him. Hence there is not a single cup, but many: “divide it among yourselves” (Luke 22:17). Here is warrant for the individual communion‐cup. Most churches use more than one cup: if more than one, why not many? 1 Cor. 11:26—“as often as ye eat ... ye proclaim the Lord’s death”—the Lord’s Supper is a teaching ordinance, and is to be observed, not simply for the good that comes to the communicant and to his brethren, but for the sake of the witness which it gives to the world that the Christ who died for its sins now lives for its salvation. A. H. Ballard, in The Standard, Aug. 18, 1900, on 1 Cor. 11:29—“eateth and drinketh judgment unto himself, if he discern not the body”—“He who eats and drinks, and does not discern that he is redeemed by the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all, eats and drinks a double condemnation, because he does not discern the redemption which is symbolized by the things which he eats and drinks. To turn his thought away from that sacrificial body to the company of disciples assembled is a grievous error—the error of all those who exalt the idea of fellowship or communion in the celebration of the ordinance.” The offence of a Christian brother, therefore, even if committed against myself, should not prevent me from remembering Christ and communing with the Savior. I could not commune at all, if I had to vouch for the Christian character of all who sat with me. This does not excuse the church from effort to purge its membership from unworthy participants; it simply declares that the church’s failure to do this does not absolve any single member of it from his obligation to observe the Lord’s Supper. See Jacob, Eccl. Polity of N. T., 285.

4. Erroneous views of the Lord’s Supper.

A. The Romanist view.

The Romanist view,—that the bread and wine are changed by priestly consecration into the very body and blood of Christ; that this consecration is a new offering of Christ’s sacrifice; and that, by a physical partaking of the elements, the communicant receives saving grace from God. To this doctrine of “transubstantiation” we reply:

(a) It rests upon a false interpretation of Scripture. In Mat. 26:26, “this is my body” means: “this is a symbol of my body.” Since Christ was with the disciples in visible form at the institution of the Supper, he could not have intended them to recognize the bread as being his literal body. “The body of Christ is present in the bread, just as it had been in the passover lamb, of which the bread took the place” (John 6:53 contains no reference to the Lord’s Supper, although it describes that spiritual union with Christ which the Supper symbolizes; cf. 63. In 1 Cor. 10:16, 17, κοινωίαν τοῦ σώματος τοῦ Χριστοῦ is a figurative expression for the spiritual partaking of Christ. In Mark 8:33, we are not to infer that Peter was actually “Satan,” nor does 1 Cor. 12:12 prove that we are all Christs. Cf. Gen. 41:26; 1 Cor. 10:4).

Mat. 26:28—“This is my blood ... which is poured out,” cannot be meant to be taken literally, since Christ’s blood was not yet shed. Hence the Douay version (Roman Catholic), without warrant, changes the tense and reads, “which shall be shed.” At the institution of the Supper, it is not conceivable that Christ should hold his body in his own hands, and then break it to the disciples. There were not two bodies there. Zwingle: “The words of institution are not the mandatory ‘become’: they are only an explanation of the sign.” When I point to a picture and say: “This is George Washington,” I do not mean that the veritable body and blood of George Washington are before me. So when a teacher points to a map and says: “This is New York,” or when Jesus refers to John the Baptist, and says: “this is Elijah, that is to come” (Mat. 11:14). Jacob, The Lord’s Supper, Historically Considered—“It originally marked, not a real presence, but a real absence, of Christ as the Son of God made man”—that is, a real absence of his body. Therefore the Supper, reminding us of his body, is to be observed in the church “till he come” (1 Cor. 11:26). John 6:53—“Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, ye have not life in yourselves” must be interpreted by verse 63—“It is the spirit that giveth life; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I have spoken unto you are spirit, and are life.” 1 Cor. 10:16—“The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not a communion of [marg.: ‘participation in’] the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not a communion of [marg. ‘participation in’] the body of Christ?”—see Expositor’s Greek Testament, in loco; Mark 8:33—“But he turning about, and seeing his disciples, rebuked Peter, and saith, Get thee behind me, Satan”; 1 Cor. 12:12—“For the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of the body, being many, are one body; so also is Christ.” cf. Gen. 41:26—“The seven good kine are seven years; and the seven good ears are seven years: the dream is one;” 1 Cor. 10:4—“they drank of a spiritual rock that followed them: and the rock was Christ.” Queen Elizabeth: “Christ was the Word that spake it: He took the bread and brake it; And what that Word did make it, That I believe and take it.” Yes, we say; but what does the Lord make it? Not his body, but only a symbol of his body. Sir Thomas More went back to the doctrine of transubstantiation which the wisdom of his age was almost unanimous in rejecting. In his Utopia, written to earlier years, he had made deism the ideal religion. Extreme Romanism was his reaction from this former extreme. Bread and wine are mere remembrancers, as were the lamb and bitter herbs at the Passover. The partaker is spiritually affected by the bread and wine, only as was the pious Israelite in receiving the paschal symbols; see Norman Fox, Christ in the Daily Meal, 25, 42. E. G. Robinson: “The greatest power in Romanism is its power of visible representation. Ritualism is only elaborate symbolism. It is interesting to remember that this prostration of the priest before the consecrated wafer is no part of even original Roman Catholicism.” Stanley, Life and Letters, 2:213—“The pope, when he celebrates the communion, always stands in exactly the opposite direction [to that of modern ritualists], not with his back but with his face to the people, no doubt following the primitive usage.” So in Raphael’s picture of the Miracle of Bolsina, the priest is at the north end of the table, in the very attitude of a Protestant clergyman. Pfleiderer, Philos. Religion, 2:211—“The unity of the bread, of which each enjoys a part, represents the unity of the body of Christ, which consists in the community of believers. If we are to speak of a presence of the body of Christ in the Lord’s Supper, that can only be thought of, in the sense of Paul, as pertaining to the mystical body, i. e., the Christian Community. Augustine and Zwingle, who have expressed most clearly this meaning of the Supper, have therefore caught quite correctly the sense of the Apostle.” Norman Fox, Christ in the Daily Meal, 40‐53—“The phrase ‘consecration of the elements’ is unwarranted. The leaven and the mustard seed were in no way consecrated when Jesus pronounced them symbols of divine things. The bread and wine are not arbitrarily appointed remembrancers, they are remembrancers in their very nature. There is no change in them. So every other loaf is a symbol, as well as that used in the Supper. When St. Patrick held up the shamrock as the symbol of the Trinity, he meant that every such sprig was the same. Only the bread of the daily meal is Christ’s body. Only the washing of dirty feet is the fulfilment of Christ’s command. The loaf not eaten to satisfy hunger is not Christ’s symbolic body at all.” Here we must part company with Dr. Fox. We grant the natural fitness of the elements for which he contends. But we hold also to a divine appointment of the bread and wine for a special and sacred use, even as the “bow in the cloud” (Gen. 9:13), because it was a natural emblem, was consecrated to a special religious use.

(b) It contradicts the evidence of the senses, as well as of all scientific tests that can be applied. If we cannot trust our senses as to the unchanged material qualities of bread and wine, we cannot trust them when they report to us the words of Christ.

Gibbon was rejoiced at the discovery that, while the real presence is attested by only a single sense—our sight [as employed in reading the words of Christ]—the real presence is disproved by three of our senses, sight, touch, and taste. It is not well to purchase faith in this dogma at the price of absolute scepticism. Stanley, on Baptism, in his Christian Institutions, tells us that, in the third and fourth centuries, the belief that the water of baptism was changed into the blood of Christ was nearly as firmly and widely fixed as the belief that the bread and wine of the communion were changed into his flesh and blood. Döllinger: “When I am told that I must swear to the truth of these doctrines [of papal infallibility and apostolic succession], my feeling is just as if I were asked to swear that two and two make five, and not four.” Teacher: “Why did Henry VIII quarrel with the pope?” Scholar: “Because the pope had commanded him to put away his wife on pain of transubstantiation.” The transubstantiation of Henry VIII is quite as rational as the transubstantiation of the bread and wine in the Eucharist.

(c) It involves the denial of the completeness of Christ’s past sacrifice, and the assumption that a human priest can repeat or add to the atonement made by Christ once for all (Heb. 9:28—ἅπαξ προσενεχθείς). The Lord’s Supper is never called a sacrifice, nor are altars, priests, or consecrations ever spoken of, in the New Testament. The priests of the old dispensation are expressly contrasted with the ministers of the new. The former “ministered about sacred things,” i. e., performed sacred rites and waited at the altar; but the latter “preach the gospel” (1 Cor. 9:13, 14).

Heb. 9:28—“so Christ also, having been once offered”—here ἅπαξ means “once for all,” as in Jude 3—“the faith which was once for all delivered unto the saints”; 1 Cor. 9:13, 14—“Know ye not that they that minister about sacred things eat of the things of the temple, and they that wait upon the altar have their portion with the altar? Even so did the Lord ordain that they that proclaim the gospel should live of the gospel.” Romanism introduces a mediator between the soul and Christ, namely, bread and wine,—and the priest besides. Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:680‐687 (Syst. Doct., 4: 146‐163)—“Christ is thought of as at a distance, and as represented only by the priest who offers anew his sacrifice. But Protestant doctrine holds to a perfect Christ, applying the benefits of the work which he long ago and once for all completed upon the cross.” Chillingworth: “Romanists hold that the validity of every sacrament but baptism depends upon its administration by a priest; and without priestly absolution there is no assurance of forgiveness. But the intention of the priest is essential in pronouncing absolution, and the intention of the bishop is essential in consecrating the priest. How can any human being know that these conditions are fulfilled?” In the New Testament, on the other hand, Christ appears as the only priest, and each human soul has direct access to him. Norman Fox, Christ in the Daily Meal, 22—“The adherence of the first Christians to the Mosaic law makes it plain that they did not hold the doctrine of the modern Church of Rome that the bread of the Supper is a sacrifice, the table an altar, and the minister a priest. For the old altar, the old sacrifice, and the old priesthood still remained, and were still in their view appointed media of atonement with God. Of course they could not have believed in two altars, two priesthoods and two contemporaneous sets of sacrifices.” Christ is the only priest. A. A. Hodge, Popular Lectures, 257—“The three central dangerous errors of Romanism and Ritualism are: 1. the perpetuity of the apostolate; 2. the priestly character and offices of Christian ministers; 3. the sacramental principle, or the depending upon sacraments, as the essential, initial, and ordinary channels of grace.” “Hierarchy,” says another, “is an infraction of the divine order; it imposes the weight of an outworn symbolism on the true vitalities of the gospel; it is a remnant rent from the shroud of the dead past, to enwrap the limbs of the living present.”

(d) It destroys Christianity by externalizing it. Romanists make all other service a mere appendage to the communion. Physical and magical salvation is not Christianity, but is essential paganism.

Council of Trent, Session VII, On Sacraments in General, Canon IV: “If any one saith that the sacraments of the New Testament are not necessary to salvation, but are superfluous, and that without them, and without the desire thereof, men attain of God, through faith alone, the grace of justification; though all [the sacraments] are not indeed necessary for every individual: let him be anathema.” On Baptism, Canon IV: “If any one saith that the baptism which is even given by heretics in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, with the intention of doing what the church doth, is not true baptism, let him be anathema.” Baptism, in the Romanist system, is necessary to salvation: and baptism, even though administered by heretics, is an admission to the church. All baptized persons who, through no fault of their own, but from lack of knowledge or opportunity, are not connected outwardly with the true church, though they are apparently attached to some sect, yet in reality belong to the soul of the true church. Many belong merely to the body of the Catholic church, and are counted as its members, but do not belong to its soul. So says Archbishop Lynch, of Toronto; and Pius IX extended the doctrine of invincible ignorance, so as to cover the case of every dissentient from the church whose life shows faith working by love. Adoration of the Host (Latin hostia, victim) is a regular part of the service of the Mass. If the Romanist view were correct that the bread and wine were actually changed into the body and blood of Christ, we could not call this worship idolatry. Christ’s body in the sepulchre could not have been a proper object of worship, but it was so after his resurrection, when it became animated with a new and divine life. The Romanist error is that of holding that the priest has power to transform the elements; the worship of them follows as a natural consequence, and is none the less idolatrous for being based upon the false assumption that the bread and wine are really Christ’s body and blood. The Roman Catholic system involves many absurdities, but the central absurdity is that of making religion a matter of machinery and outward manipulation. Dr. R. S. MacArthur calls sacramentalism “the pipe‐line conception of grace.” There is no patent Romanist plumbing. Dean Stanley said that John Henry Newman “made immortality the consequence of frequent participation of the Holy Communion.” Even Faber made game of the notion, and declared that it “degraded celebrations to be so many breadfruit trees.” It is this transformation of the Lord’s Supper into the Mass that turns the church into “the Church of the Intonement.” “Cardinal Gibbons,” it was once said, “makes his own God—the wafer.” His error is at the root of the super‐sanctity and celibacy of the Romanist clergy, and President Garrett forgot this when he made out the pass on his railway for “Cardinal Gibbons and wife.” Dr. C. H. Parkhurst: “There is no more place for an altar in a Christian church than there is for a golden calf.” On the word “priest” in the N. T., see Gardiner, in O. T. Student, Nov. 1889:285‐291; also Bowen, in Theol. Monthly, Nov. 1889:316‐329. For the Romanist view, see Council of Trent, session XIII, canon III: per contra, see Calvin, Institutes, 2:585‐602; C. Hebert, The Lord’s Supper: History of Uninspired Teaching.

B. The Lutheran and High Church view.

The Lutheran and High Church view,—that the communicant, in partaking of the consecrated elements, eats the veritable body and drinks the veritable blood of Christ in and with the bread and wine, although the elements themselves do not cease to be material. To this doctrine of “consubstantiation” we object:

(a) That the view is not required by Scripture.—All the passages cited in its support may be better interpreted as referring to a partaking of the elements as symbols. If Christ’s body be ubiquitous, as this theory holds, we partake of it at every meal, as really as at the Lord’s Supper.

(b) That the view is inseparable from the general sacramental system of which it forms a part.—In imposing physical and material conditions of receiving Christ, it contradicts the doctrine of justification only by faith; changes the ordinance from a sign, into a means, of salvation; involves the necessity of a sacerdotal order for the sake of properly consecrating the elements; and logically tends to the Romanist conclusions of ritualism and idolatry.

(c) That it holds each communicant to be a partaker of Christ’s veritable body and blood, whether he be a believer or not,—the result, in the absence of faith, being condemnation instead of salvation. Thus the whole character of the ordinance is changed from a festival occasion to one of mystery and fear, and the whole gospel method of salvation is obscured.

Encyc. Britannica, art.: Luther, 15:81—“Before the peasants’ war, Luther regarded the sacrament as a secondary matter, compared with the right view of faith. In alarm at this war and at Carlstadt’s mysticism, he determined to abide by the tradition of the church, and to alter as little as possible. He could not accept transubstantiation, and he sought a via media. Occam gave it to him. According to Occam, matter can be present in two ways, first, when it occupies a distinct place by itself, excluding every other body, as two stones mutually exclude each other; and, secondly, when it occupies the same space as another body at the same time. Everything which is omnipresent must occupy the same space as other things, else it could not be ubiquitous. Hence consubstantiation involved no miracle. Christ’s body was in the bread and wine naturally, and was not brought into the elements by the priest. It brought a blessing, not because of Christ’s presence, but because of God’s promise that this particular presence of the body of Christ should bring blessings to the faithful partaker.” Broadus, Am. Com. on Mat., 529—“Luther does not say how Christ is in the bread and wine, but his followers have compared his presence to that of heat or magnetism in iron. But how then could this presence be in the bread and wine separately?” For the view here combated, see Gerhard, x: 352—“The bread, apart from the sacrament instituted by Christ, is not the body of Christ, and therefore it is ἀρτολατρία (bread‐worship) to adore the bread in these solemn processions” (of the Roman Catholic church). 397—“Faith does not belong to the substance of the Eucharist; hence it is not the faith of him who partakes that makes the bread a communication of the body of Christ; nor on account of unbelief in him who partakes does the bread cease to be a communication of the body of Christ.” See also Sadler, Church Doctrine, 124‐199; Pusey, Tract No. 90, of the Tractarian Series; Wilberforce, New Birth; Nevins, Mystical Presence. Per contra, see Calvin, Institutes, 2:525‐584; G. P. Fisher, in Independent, May 1, 1884—“Calvin differed from Luther, in holding that Christ is received only by the believer. He differed from Zwingle, in holding that Christ is truly, though spiritually, received.” See also E. G. Robinson, in Baptist Quarterly, 1869:85‐109; Rogers, Priests and Sacraments. Consubstantiation accounts for the doctrine of apostolic succession and for the universal ritualism of the Lutheran Church. Bowing at the name of Jesus, however, is not, as has been sometimes maintained, a relic of the papal worship of the Real Presence, but is rather a reminiscence of the fourth century, when controversies about the person of Christ rendered orthodox Christians peculiarly anxious to recognize Christ’s deity. “There is no ‘corner’ in divine grace” (C. H. Parkhurst). “All notions of a needed ‘priesthood,’ to bring us into connection with Christ, must yield to the truth that Christ is ever with us” (E. G. Robinson). “The priest was the conservative, the prophet the progressive. Hence the conflict between them. Episcopalians like the idea of a priesthood, but do not know what to do with that of prophet.” Dr. A. J. Gordon: “Ritualism, like eczema in the human body, is generally a symptom of a low state of the blood. As a rule, when the church becomes secularized, it becomes ritualized, while great revivals, pouring through the church, have almost always burst the liturgical bands and have restored it to the freedom of the Spirit.” Puseyism, as defined by Pusey himself, means: “1. high thoughts of the two sacraments; 2. high estimate of Episcopacy as God’s ordinance; 3. high estimate of the visible church as the body wherein we are made and continue to be members of Christ; 4. regard for ordinances as directing our devotions and disciplining us, such as daily public prayers, fasts and feasts; 5. regard for the visible part of devotion, such as the decoration of the house of God, which acts insensibly on the mind; 6. reverence for and deference to the ancient church, instead of the reformers, as the ultimate expounder of the meaning of our church.” Pusey declared that he and Maurice worshiped different Gods.

5. Prerequisites to Participation in the Lord’s Supper.

A. There are prerequisites.

This we argue from the fact:

(a) That Christ enjoined the celebration of the Supper, not upon the world at large, but only upon his disciples; (b) that the apostolic injunctions to Christians, to separate themselves from certain of their number, imply a limitation of the Lord’s Supper to a narrower body, even among professed believers; (c) that the analogy of Baptism, as belonging only to a specified class of persons, leads us to believe that the same is true of the Lord’s Supper.

The analogy of Baptism to the Lord’s Supper suggests a general survey of the connections between the two ordinances: 1. Both ordinances symbolize primarily the death of Christ; then secondarily our spiritual death to sin because we are one with him; it being absurd, where there is no such union, to make our Baptism the symbol of his death. 2. We are merged in Christ first in Baptism; then in the Supper Christ is more and more taken into us; Baptism = we in Christ, the Supper = Christ in us. 3. As regeneration is instantaneous and sanctification continues in time, so Baptism should be for once, the Lord’s Supper often; the first single, the second frequent. 4. If one ordinance, the Supper, requires discernment of the Lord’s body, so does the other, the ordinance of Baptism; the subject of Baptism should know the meaning of his act. 5. The order of the ordinances teaches Christian doctrine, as the ordinances do; to partake of the Lord’s Supper before being baptized is to say in symbol that one can be sanctified without being regenerated. 6. Both ordinances should be public, as both “show forth” the Lord’s death and are teaching ordinances; no celebration of either one is to be permitted in private. 7. In both the administrator does not act at his own option, but is the organ of the church; Philip acts as organ of the church at Jerusalem when he baptizes the eunuch. 8. The ordinances stand by themselves, and are not to be made appendages of other meetings or celebrations; they belong, not to associations or conventions, but to the local church. 9. The Lord’s Supper needs scrutiny of the communicant’s qualifications as much as Baptism; and only the local church is the proper judge of these qualifications. 10. We may deny the Lord’s Supper to one whom we know to be a Christian, when he walks disorderly or disseminates false doctrine, just as we may deny Baptism to such a person. 11. Fencing the tables, or warning the unqualified not to partake of the Supper, may, like instruction with regard to Baptism, best take place before the actual administration of the ordinance; and the pastor is not a special policeman or detective to ferret out offences. See Expositor’s Greek Testament on 1 Cor. 10:1‐6.

B. The prerequisites are those only which are expressly or implicitly laid down by Christ and his apostles.

(a) The church, as possessing executive but not legislative power, is charged with the duty, not of framing rules for the administering and guarding of the ordinance, but of discovering and applying the rules given it in the New Testament. No church has a right to establish any terms of communion; it is responsible only for making known the terms established by Christ and his apostles. (b) These terms, however, are to be ascertained not only from the injunctions, but also from the precedents, of the New Testament. Since the apostles were inspired, New Testament precedent is the “common law” of the church.

English law consists mainly of precedent, that is, past decisions of the courts. Immemorial customs may be as binding as are the formal enactments of a legislature. It is New Testament precedent that makes obligatory the observance of the first day, instead of the seventh day, of the week. The common law of the church consists, however, not of any and all customs, but only of the customs of the apostolic church interpreted in the light of its principles, or the customs universally binding because sanctioned by inspired apostles. Has New Testament precedent the authority of a divine command? Only so far, we reply, as it is an adequate, complete and final expression of the divine life in Christ. This we claim for the ordinances of Baptism and of the Lord’s Supper, and for the order of these ordinances. See Proceedings of the Baptist Congress, 1896:23. The Mennonites, thinking to reproduce even the incidental phases of N. T. action, have adopted: 1. the washing of feet; 2. the marriage only of members of the same faith; 3. non‐resistance to violence; 4. the use of the ban, and the shunning of expelled persons; 5. refusal to take oaths; 6. the kiss of peace; 7. formal examination of the spiritual condition of each communicant before his participation in the Lord’s Supper; 8. the choice of officials by lot. And they naturally break up into twelve sects, dividing upon such points as holding all things in common; plainness of dress, one sect repudiating buttons and using only hooks upon their clothing, whence their nickname of Hookers; the holding of services in private houses only; the asserted possession of the gift of prophecy (A. S. Carman).

C. On examining the New Testament, we find that the prerequisites to participation in the Lord’s Supper are four.

First,—Regeneration.

The Lord’s Supper is the outward expression of a life in the believer, nourished and sustained by the life of Christ. It cannot therefore be partaken of by one who is “dead through ... trespasses and sins.” We give no food to a corpse. The Lord’s Supper was never offered by the apostles to unbelievers. On the contrary, the injunction that each communicant “examine himself” implies that faith which will enable the communicant to “discern the Lord’s body” is a prerequisite to participation.

1 Cor. 11:27‐29—“Wherefore whosoever shall eat the bread or drink the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner, shall be guilty of the body and the blood of the Lord. But let a man prove himself, and so let him eat of the bread, and drink of the cup. For he that eateth and drinketh, eateth and drinketh judgment unto himself, if he discern not the Lord’s body.” Schaff, in his Church History, 2:517, tells us that in the Greek Church, in the seventh and eighth centuries, the bread was dipped in the wine, and both elements were delivered in a spoon. See Edwards, on Qualifications for Full Communion, in Works, 1:81.

Secondly,—Baptism.

In proof that baptism is a prerequisite to the Lord’s Supper, we urge the following considerations:

(a) The ordinance of baptism was instituted and administered long before the Supper.

Mat. 21:25—“The baptism of John, whence was it? from heaven or from men?”—Christ here intimates that John’s baptism had been instituted by God before his own.

(b) The apostles who first celebrated it had, in all probability, been baptized.

Acts 1:21, 22—“Of the men therefore that have companied with us all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and went out among us, beginning from the baptism of John ... of these must one become a witness with us of his resurrection”; 19:4—“John baptized with the baptism of repentance, saying unto the people that they should believe on him that should come after him, that is, on Jesus.” Several of the apostles were certainly disciples of John. If Christ was baptized, much more his disciples. Jesus recognized John’s baptism as obligatory, and it is not probable that he would take his apostles from among those who had not submitted to it. John the Baptist himself, the first administrator of baptism, must have been himself unbaptized. But the twelve could fitly administer it, because they had themselves received it at John’s hands. See Arnold, Terms of Communion, 17.

(c) The command of Christ fixes the place of baptism as first in order after discipleship.

Mat. 28:19, 20—“Go ye therefore, and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit: teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I commanded you”—here the first duty is to make disciples, the second to baptize, the third to instruct in right Christian living. Is it said that there is no formal command to admit only baptized persons to the Lord’s Supper? We reply that there is no formal command to admit only regenerate persons to baptism. In both cases, the practice of the apostles and the general connections of Christian doctrine are sufficient to determine our duty.

(d) All the recorded cases show this to have been the order observed by the first Christians and sanctioned by the apostles.

Acts 2:41, 46—“They then that received his word were baptized.... And day by day, continuing stedfastly with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread at home [rather, ‘in various worship‐rooms’] they took their food with gladness and singleness of heart”; 8:12—“But when they believed Philip ... they were baptized”; 10:47, 48—“Can any man forbid the water, that these should not be baptized, who have received the Holy Spirit as well as we? And he commanded them to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ”; 22:16—“And now why tarriest thou? arise, and be baptized, and wash away thy sins, calling on his name.”

(e) The symbolism of the ordinances requires that baptism should precede the Lord’s Supper. The order of the facts signified must be expressed in the order of the ordinances which signify them; else the world is taught that sanctification may take place without regeneration. Birth must come before sustenance—“nascimur, pascimur.” To enjoy ceremonial privileges, there must be ceremonial qualifications. As none but the circumcised could eat the passover, so before eating with the Christian family must come adoption into the Christian family.

As one must be “born of the Spirit” before he can experience the sustaining influence of Christ, so he must be “born of water” before he can properly be nourished by the Lord’s Supper. Neither the unborn nor the dead can eat bread or drink wine. Only when Christ had raised the daughter of the Jewish ruler to life, did he say: “Give her to eat.” The ordinance which symbolizes regeneration, or the impartation of new life, must precede the ordinance which symbolizes the strengthening and perfecting of the life already begun. The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, dating back to the second half of the second century, distinctly declares (9:5, 10)—“Let no one eat or drink of your Eucharist except those baptized into the name of the Lord; for as regards this also the Lord has said: ‘Give not that which is holy unto the dogs’.... The Eucharist shall be given only to the baptized.”

(f) The standards of all evangelical denominations, with unimportant exceptions, confirm the view that this is the natural interpretation of the Scripture requirements respecting the order of the ordinances.

“The only protest of note has been made by a portion of the English Baptists.” To these should be added the comparatively small body of the Free Will Baptists in America. Pedobaptist churches in general refuse full membership, office‐holding, and the ministry, to unbaptized persons. The Presbyterian church does not admit to the communion members of the Society of Friends. Not one of the great evangelical denominations accepts Robert Hall’s maxim that the only terms of communion are terms of salvation. If individual ministers announce this principle and conform their practice to it, it is only because they transgress the standards of the churches to which they belong. See Tyerman’s Oxford Methodists, preface, page vi—“Even in Georgia, Wesley excluded dissenters from the Holy Communion, on the ground that they had not been properly baptized; and he would himself baptize only by immersion, unless the child or person was in a weak state of health.” Baptist Noel gave it as his reason for submitting to baptism, that to approach the Lord’s Supper conscious of not being baptized would be to act contrary to all the precedents of Scripture. See Curtis, Progress of Baptist Principles, 304. The dismission of Jonathan Edwards from his church at Northampton was due to his opposing the Halfway Covenant, which admitted unregenerate persons to the Lord’s Supper as a step on the road to spiritual life. He objected to the doctrine that the Lord’s Supper was “a converting ordinance.” But these very unregenerated persons had been baptized, and he himself had baptized many of them. He should have objected to infant baptism, as well as to the Lord’s Supper, in the case of the unregenerate.

(g) The practical results of the opposite view are convincing proof that the order here insisted on is the order of nature as well as of Scripture. The admission of unbaptized persons to the communion tends always to, and has frequently resulted in, the disuse of baptism itself, the obscuring of the truth which it symbolizes, the transformation of Scripturally constituted churches into bodies organized after methods of human invention, and the complete destruction of both church and ordinances as Christ originally constituted them.

Arnold, Terms of Communion, 76—The steps of departure from Scriptural precedent have not unfrequently been the following: (1) administration of baptism on a weekday evening, to avoid giving offence; (2) reception, without baptism, of persons renouncing belief in the baptism of their infancy; (3) giving up of the Lord’s Supper as non‐essential,—to be observed or not observed by each individual, according as he finds it useful; (4) choice of a pastor who will not advocate Baptist views; (5) adoption of Congregational articles of faith; (6) discipline and exclusion of members for propagating Baptist doctrine. John Bunyan’s church, once either an open communion church or a mixed church both of baptized and unbaptized believers, is now a regular Congregational body. Armitage, History of the Baptists, 482 sq., claims that it was originally a Baptist church. Vedder, however, in Bap. Quar. Rev., 1886:289, says that “The church at Bedford is proved by indisputable documentary evidence never to have been a Baptist church in any strict sense.” The results of the principle of open communion are certainly seen in the Regent’s Park church in London, where some of the deacons have never been baptized. The doctrine that baptism is not essential to church membership is simply the logical result of the previous practice of admitting unbaptized persons to the communion table. If they are admitted to the Lord’s Supper, then there is no bar to their admission to the church. See Proceedings of the Baptist Congress, Boston, November, 1902; Curtis, Progress of Baptist Principles, 296‐298.

Thirdly,—Church membership.

(a) The Lord’s Supper is a church ordinance, observed by churches of Christ as such. For this reason, membership in the church naturally precedes communion. Since communion is a family rite, the participant should first be a member of the family.

Acts 2:46 47—“breaking bread at home [rather, ‘in various worship‐rooms’]” (see Com. of Meyer); 20:7—“upon the first day of the week, when we were gathered together to break bread”; 1 Cor. 11:18, 22—“when ye come together in the church ... have ye not houses to eat and to drink in? or despise ye the church of God, and put them to shame that have not?”

(b) The Lord’s Supper is a symbol of church fellowship. Excommunication implies nothing, if it does not imply exclusion from the communion. If the Supper is simply communion of the individual with Christ, then the church has no right to exclude any from it.

1 Cor. 10:17—“we, who are many, are one bread, one body: for we all partake of the one bread.” Though the Lord’s Supper primarily symbolizes fellowship with Christ, it symbolizes secondarily fellowship with the church of Christ. Not all believers in Christ were present at the first celebration of the Supper, but only those organized into a body—the apostles. I can invite proper persons to my tea‐table, but that does not give them the right to come uninvited. Each church, therefore, should invite visiting members of sister churches to partake with it. The Lord’s Supper is an ordinance by itself, and should not be celebrated at conventions and associations, simply to lend dignity to something else. The Panpresbyterian Council at Philadelphia, in 1880, refused to observe the Lord’s Supper together, upon the ground that the Supper is a church ordinance, to be observed only by those who are amenable to the discipline of the body, and therefore not to be observed by separate church organizations acting together. Substantially upon this ground, the Old School General Assembly long before, being invited to unite at the Lord’s table with the New School body with whom they had dissolved ecclesiastical relations, declined to do so. See Curtis, Progress of Baptist Principles, 304; Arnold, Terms of Communion, 36.

Fourthly,—An orderly walk.

Disorderly walking designates a course of life in a church member which is contrary to the precepts of the gospel. It is a bar to participation in the Lord’s Supper, the sign of church fellowship. With Arnold, we may class disorderly walking under four heads:—

(a) Immoral conduct.

1 Cor. 5:1‐13—Paul commands the Corinthian church to exclude the incestuous person: “I wrote unto you in my epistle to have no company with fornicators;... but now I write unto you not to keep company, if any man that is named a brother be a fornicator, or covetous, or an idolater, or a reviler, or a drunkard, or __ an extortioner; with such a one no, not to eat.... Put away the wicked man from among yourselves.”—Here it is evident that the most serious forms of disorderly walking require exclusion not only from church fellowship but from Christian fellowship as well.

(b) Disobedience to the commands of Christ.

1 Cor. 14:37—“If any man thinketh himself to be a prophet, or spiritual, let him take knowledge of the things which I write unto you, that they are the commandments of the Lord”; 2 Thess. 3:6, 11, 15—“Now we command you, brethren,... that ye withdraw yourselves from every brother that walketh disorderly, and not after the tradition which they received of us... For we hear of some that walk among you disorderly, that work not at all, but are busybodies.... And if any man obeyeth not our word by this epistle, note that man, that ye have no company with him, to the end that he may be ashamed. And yet count him not as an enemy, but admonish him as a brother.”—Here is exclusion from church fellowship, and from the Lord’s Supper its sign, while yet the offender is not excluded from Christian fellowship, but is still counted “a brother.” Versus G. B. Stevens, in N. Englander, 1887:40‐47. In these passages Paul intimates that “not to walk after the tradition received from him, not to obey the word contained in his epistles, is the same as disobedience to the commands of Christ, and as such involves the forfeiture of church fellowship and its privileged tokens” (Arnold, Prerequisites to Communion, 68). Since Baptism is a command of Christ, it follows that we cannot properly commune with the unbaptized. To admit such to the Lord’s Supper is to give the symbol of church fellowship to those who, in spite of the fact that they are Christian brethren, are, though perhaps unconsciously, violating the fundamental law of the church. To withhold protest against plain disobedience to Christ’s commands is to that extent to countenance such disobedience. The same disobedience which in the church member we should denominate disorderly walking must a fortiori destroy all right to the Lord’s Supper on the part of those who are not members of the church.

(c) Heresy, or the holding and teaching of false doctrine.

Titus 3:10—“A man that is heretical [Am. Revisers: ‘a factious man’] after a first and second admonition refuse”; see Ellicott, Com., in loco: “αἱρετικὸς ἄνθρωπος = one who gives rise to divisions by erroneous teaching, not necessarily of a fundamentally heterodox nature, but of the kind just described in verse 9.” Cf. Acts 20:30—“from among your own selves shall men arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after them”; 1 John 4:2, 3—“Hereby know ye the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God: and every spirit that confesseth not Jesus is not of God: and this is the spirit of the antichrist.” B. B. Bosworth: “Heresy, in the N. T., does not necessarily mean the holding of erroneous opinions,—it may also mean the holding of correct opinions in an unbrotherly or divisive spirit.” We grant that the word “heretical” may also mean “factious”; but we claim that false doctrine is the chief source of division, and is therefore in itself a disqualification for participation in the Lord’s Supper. Factiousness is an additional bar, and we treat it under the next head of Schism. The Panpresbyterian Council, mentioned above, refused to admit to their body the Cumberland Presbyterians, because, though the latter adhere to the Presbyterian form of church government, they are Arminian in their views of the doctrines of grace. As we have seen, on pages 940‐942, that Baptism is a confession of evangelical faith, so here we see that the Lord’s Supper also is a confession of evangelical faith, and that no one can properly participate in it who denies the doctrines of sin, of the deity, incarnation and atonement of Christ, and of justification by faith, which the Lord’s Supper symbolizes. Such denial should exclude from all Christian fellowship as well. There is heresy which involves exclusion only from church fellowship. Since pedobaptists hold and propagate false doctrine with regard to the church and its ordinances—doctrines which endanger the spirituality of the church, the sufficiency of the Scriptures, and the lordship of Christ—we cannot properly admit them to the Lord’s Supper. To admit them or to partake with them, would be to treat falsehood as if it were truth. Arnold, Prerequisites to Communion, 72—“Pedobaptists are guilty of teaching that the baptized are not members of the church, or that membership in the church is not voluntary; that there are two sorts of baptism, one of which is a profession of faith of the person baptized, and the other is profession of faith of another person; that regeneration is given in and by baptism, or that the church is composed in great part of persons who do not give, and were never supposed to give, any evidence of regeneration; that the church has a right to change essentially one of Christ’s institutions, or that it is unessential whether it be observed as he ordained it or in some other manner; that baptism may be rightfully administered in a way which makes much of the language in which it is described in the Scriptures wholly unsuitable and inapplicable, and which does not at all represent the facts and doctrines which baptism is declared in the Scriptures to represent; that the Scriptures are not in all religious matters the sufficient and only binding rule of faith and practice.”

(d) Schism, or the promotion of division and dissension in the church.—This also requires exclusion from church fellowship, and from the Lord’s Supper which is its appointed sign.

Rom. 16:17—“Now I beseech you, brethren, mark them that are causing the divisions and occasions of stumbling contrary to the doctrine which ye learned: and turn away from them.” Since pedobaptists, by their teaching and practice, draw many away from Scripturally constituted churches,—thus dividing true believers from each other and weakening the bodies organized after the model of the New Testament,—it is imperative upon us to separate ourselves from them, so far as regards that communion at the Lord’s table which is the sign of church fellowship. Mr. Spurgeon admits pedobaptists to commune with his church “for two or three months.” Then they are kindly asked whether they are pleased with the church, its preaching, doctrine, form of government, etc. If they say they are pleased, they are asked if they are not disposed to be baptized and become members? If so inclined, all is well; but if not, they are kindly told that it is not desirable for them to commune longer. Thus baptism is held to precede church membership and permanent communion, although temporary communion is permitted without it. Arnold, Prerequisites to Communion, 80—“It may perhaps be objected that the passages cited under the four preceding subdivisions refer to church fellowship in a general way, without any specific reference to the Lord’s Supper. In reply to this objection, I would answer, in the first place, that having endeavored previously to establish the position that the Lord’s Supper is an ordinance to be celebrated in the church, and expressive of church fellowship, I felt at liberty to use the passages that enjoin the withdrawal of that fellowship as constructively enjoining exclusion from the Communion, which is its chief token. I answer, secondly, that the principle here assumed seems to me to pervade the Scriptural teachings so thoroughly that it is next to impossible to lay down any Scriptural terms of communion at the Lord’s table, except upon the admission that the ordinance is inseparably connected with church fellowship. To treat the subject otherwise, would be, as it appears to me, a violent putting asunder of what the Lord has joined together. The objection suggests an additional argument in favor of our position that the Lord’s Supper is a church ordinance.” “Who Christ’s body doth divide, Wounds afresh the Crucified; Who Christ’s people doth perplex, Weakens faith and comfort wrecks; Who Christ’s order doth not see, Works in vain for unity; Who Christ’s word doth take for guide, With the Bridegroom loves the Bride.”

D. The local church is the judge whether these prerequisites are fulfilled.

The local church is the judge whether these prerequisites are fulfilled in the case of persons desiring to partake of the Lord’s Supper.—This is evident from the following considerations:

(a) The command to observe the ordinance was given, not to individuals, but to a company.

(b) Obedience to this command is not an individual act, but is the joint act of many.

(c) The regular observance of the Lord’s Supper cannot be secured, nor the qualifications of persons desiring to participate in it be scrutinized, unless some distinct organized body is charged with this responsibility.

(d) The only organized body known to the New Testament is the local church, and this is the only body, of any sort, competent to have charge of the ordinances. The invisible church has no officers.

(e) The New Testament accounts indicate that the Lord’s Supper was observed only at regular appointed meetings of local churches, and was observed by these churches as regularly organized bodies.

(f) Since the duty of examining the qualifications of candidates for baptism and for membership is vested in the local church and is essential to its distinct existence, the analogy of the ordinances would lead us to believe that the scrutiny of qualifications for participation in the Lord’s Supper rests with the same body.

(g) This care that only proper persons are admitted to the ordinances should be shown, not by open or forcible debarring of the unworthy at the time of the celebration, but by previous public instruction of the congregation, and, if needful in the case of persistent offenders, by subsequent private and friendly admonition.

“What is everybody’s business is nobody’s business.” If there be any power of effective scrutiny, it must be lodged in the local church. The minister is not to administer the ordinance of the Lord’s Supper at his own option, any more than the ordinance of Baptism. He is simply the organ of the church. He is to follow the rules of the church as to invitations and as to the mode of celebrating the ordinance, of course instructing the church as to the order of the New Testament. In the case of sick members who desire to communicate, brethren may be deputed to hold a special meeting of the church at the private house or sick room, and then only may the pastor officiate. If an invitation to the Communion is given, it may well be in the following form: “Members in good standing of other churches of like faith and practice are cordially invited to partake with us.” But since the comity of Baptist churches is universally acknowledged, and since Baptist views with regard to the ordinances are so generally understood, it should be taken for granted that all proper persons will be welcome even if no invitation of any sort is given. Mr. Spurgeon, as we have seen, permitted unbaptized persons temporarily to partake of the Lord’s Supper unchallenged, but if there appeared a disposition to make participation habitual, one of the deacons in a private interview explained Baptist doctrine and urged the duty of baptism. If this advice was not taken, participation in the Lord’s Supper naturally ceased. Dr. P. S. Henson proposes a middle path between open and close communion, as follows: “Preach and urge faith in Jesus and obedience to him. Leave choice with participants themselves. It is not wise to set up a judgment‐seat at the Lord’s table. Always preach the Scriptural order—1. Faith in Jesus; 2. Obedience in Baptism; 2. Observance of the Lord’s Supper.” J. B. Thomas: “Objections to strict communion come with an ill grace from pedobaptists who withhold communion from their own baptized, whom they have forcibly made quasi‐members in spite of the only protest they are capable of offering, and whom they have retained as subjects of discipline without their consent.” A. H. Strong, Cleveland Sermon on Our Denominational Outlook, May 19, 1904—“If I am asked whether Baptists still hold to restricted communion, I answer that our principle has not changed, but that many of us apply the principle in a different manner from that of our fathers. We believe that Baptism logically precedes the Lord’s Supper, as birth precedes the taking of nourishment, and regeneration precedes sanctification. We believe that the order of the ordinances is an important point of Christian doctrine, and itself teaches Christian doctrine. Hence we proclaim it and adhere to it, in our preaching and our practice. But we do not turn the Lord’s Supper into a judgment‐seat, or turn the officers of the church into detectives. We teach the truth, and expect that the truth will win its way. We are courteous to all who come among us; and expect that they in turn will have the courtesy to respect our convictions and to act accordingly. But there is danger here that we may break from our moorings and drift into indifferentism with regard to the ordinances. The recent advocacy of open church‐ membership is but the logical consequence of a previous concession of open communion. I am persuaded that this new doctrine is confined to very few among us. The remedy for this false liberalism is to be found in that same Christ who solves for us all other problems. It is this Christ who sets the solitary in families, and who makes of one every nation that dwells on the face of the earth. Christian denominations are at least temporarily his appointment. Loyalty to the body which seems to us best to represent his truth is also loyalty to him. Love for Christ does not involve the surrender of the ties of family, or nation, or denomination, but only consecrates and ennobles them. “Yet Christ is King in Zion. There is but one army of the living God, even though there are many divisions. We can emphasize our unity with other Christian bodies, rather than the differences between us. We can regard them as churches of the Lord Jesus, even though they are irregularly constituted. As a marriage ceremony may be valid, even though performed without a license and by an unqualified administrator; and as an ordination may be valid, even though the ordinary laying‐on of hands be omitted; so the ordinance of the Lord’s Supper as administered in pedobaptist churches may be valid, though irregular in its accompaniments and antecedents. Though we still protest against the modern perversions of the New Testament doctrine as to the subjects and mode of Baptism, we hold with regard to the Lord’s Supper that irregularity is not invalidity, and that we may recognize as churches even those bodies which celebrate the Lord’s Supper without having been baptized. Our faith in the larger Christ is bringing us out from our denominational isolation into an inspiring recognition of our oneness with the universal church of God throughout the world.” On the whole subject, see Madison Avenue Lectures, 217‐260; and A. H. Strong, on Christian Truth and its Keepers, in Philosophy and Religion, 238‐244.

E. Special objections to open communion.

The advocates of this view claim that baptism, as not being an indispensable term of salvation, cannot properly be made an indispensable term of communion.

Robert Hall, Works, 1:285, held that there can be no proper terms of communion which are not also terms of salvation. He claims that “we are expressly commanded to tolerate in the church all those diversities of opinion which are not inconsistent with salvation.” For the open communion view, see also John M. Mason, Works, 1:369; Princeton Review, Oct. 1850; Bib. Sac., 21:449; 24:482; 25:401; Spirit of the Pilgrims, 6:103, 142. But, as Curtis remarks, in his Progress of Baptist Principles, 292, this principle would utterly frustrate the very objects for which visible churches were founded—to be “the pillar and ground of the truth” (1 Tim. 3:15); for truth is set forth as forcibly in ordinances as in doctrine.

In addition to what has already been said, we reply:

(a) This view is contrary to the belief and practice of all but an insignificant fragment of organized Christendom.

A portion of the English Baptists, and the Free Will Baptists in America, are the only bodies which in their standards of faith accept and maintain the principles of open communion. As to the belief and practice of the Methodist Episcopal denomination, the New York Christian Advocate states the terms of communion as being: 1. Discipleship; 2. Baptism; 3. Consistent church life, as required in the “Discipline”; and F. G. Hibbard, Christian Baptism, 174, remarks that, “in one principle the Baptist and pedobaptist churches agree. They both agree in rejecting from the communion at the table of the Lord, and denying the rights of church fellowship to all who have not been baptized. Valid baptism, they consider, is essential to constitute visible church membership. This also we [Methodists] hold.... The charge of close communion is no more applicable to the Baptists than to us.” The Interior states the Presbyterian position as follows: “The difference between our Baptist brethren and ourselves is an important difference. We agree with them, however, in saying that unbaptized persons should not partake of the Lord’s Supper. Close communion, in our judgment, is a more defensible position than open communion.” Dr. John Hall: “If I believed, with the Baptists, that none are baptized but those who are immersed on profession of faith, I should, with them, refuse to commune with any others.” As to the views of Congregationalists, we quote from Dwight, Systematic Theology, sermon 160—“It is an indispensable qualification for this ordinance that the candidate for communion be a member of the visible church of Christ, in full standing. By this I intend that he should be a man of piety; that he should have made a public profession of religion; and that he should have been baptized.” The Independent: “We have never been disposed to charge the Baptist church with any special narrowness or bigotry in their rule of admission to the Lord’s table. We do not see how it differs from that commonly admitted and established among Presbyterian churches.” The Episcopal standards and authorities are equally plain. The Book of Common Prayer, Order of Confirmation, declares: “There shall none be admitted to the holy communion, until such time as he be confirmed, or be ready and desirous to be confirmed”—confirmation always coming after baptism. Wall, History of Infant Baptism, part 2, chapter 9—“No church ever gave the communion to any persons before they were baptized. Among all the absurdities that ever were held, none ever maintained that any person should partake of the communion before he was baptized.”

(b) It assumes an unscriptural inequality between the two ordinances. The Lord’s Supper holds no higher rank in Scripture than does Baptism. The obligation to commune is no more binding than the obligation to profess faith by being baptized. Open communion, however, treats baptism as if it were optional, while it insists upon communion as indispensable.

Robert Hall should rather have said: “No church has a right to establish terms of baptism which are not also terms of salvation,” for baptism is most frequently in Scripture connected with the things that accompany salvation. We believe faith to be one prerequisite, but not the only one. We may hold a person to be a Christian, without thinking him entitled to commune unless he has been also baptized. Ezra’s reform in abolishing mixed marriages with the surrounding heathen was not narrow nor bigoted nor intolerant. Miss Willard said well that from the Gerizim of holy beatitudes there comes a voice: “Blessed are the inclusive, for they shall be included,” and from Mount Ebal a voice, saying: “Sad are the exclusive, for they shall be excluded.” True liberality is both Christian and wise. We should be just as liberal as Christ himself, and no more so. Even Miss Willard would not include rum‐sellers in the Christian Temperance Union, nor think that town blessed that did not say to saloon keepers: “Repent, or go.” The choir is not narrow because it does not include those who can only make discords, nor is the sheepfold intolerant that refuses to include wolves, nor the medical society that excludes quacks, nor the church that does not invite the disobedient and schismatic to its communion.

(c) It tends to do away with baptism altogether. If the highest privilege of church membership may be enjoyed without baptism, baptism loses its place and importance as the initiatory ordinance of the church.

Robert Hall would admit to the Lord’s Supper those who deny Baptism to be perpetually binding on the church. A foreigner may love this country, but he cannot vote at our elections unless he has been naturalized. Ceremonial rites imply ceremonial qualifications. Dr. Meredith in Brooklyn said to his great Bible Class that a man, though not a Christian, but who felt himself a sinner and needing Christ, could worthily partake of the Lord’s Supper. This is the logic of open communion. The Supper is not limited to baptized persons, nor to church members, nor even to converted people, but belongs also to the unconverted world. This is not only to do away with Baptism, but to make the Lord’s Supper a converting ordinance.

(d) It tends to do away with all discipline. When Christians offend, the church must withdraw its fellowship from them. But upon the principle of open communion, such withdrawal is impossible, since the Lord’s Supper, the highest expression of church fellowship, is open to every person who regards himself as a Christian.

H. F. Colby: “Ought we to acknowledge that evangelical pedobaptists are qualified to partake of the Lord’s Supper? We are ready to admit them on precisely the same terms on which we admit ourselves. Our communion bars come to be a protest, but from no plan of ours. They become a protest merely as every act of loyalty to truth becomes a protest against error.” Constitutions of the Holy Apostles, book 2, section 7 (about 250 A. D.)—“But if they [those who have been convicted of wickedness] afterwards repent and turn from their error, then we receive them as we receive the heathen, when they wish to repent, into the church indeed to hear the word, but do not receive them to communion until they have received the seal of baptism and are made complete Christians.”

(e) It tends to do away with the visible church altogether. For no visible church is possible, unless some sign of membership be required, in addition to the signs of membership in the invisible church. Open communion logically leads to open church membership, and a church membership open to all, without reference to the qualifications required in Scripture, or without examination on the part of the church as to the existence of these qualifications in those who unite with it, is virtually an identification of the church with the world, and, without protest from Scripturally constituted bodies, would finally result in its actual extinction.

Dr. Walcott Calkins, in Andover Review: “It has never been denied that the Puritan way of maintaining the purity and doctrinal soundness of the churches is to secure a soundly converted membership. There is one denomination of Puritans which has never deviated a hair’s breadth from this way. The Baptists have always insisted that regenerate persons only ought to receive the sacraments of the church. And they have depended absolutely upon this provision for the purity and doctrinal soundness of their churches.” At the Free Will Baptist Convention at Providence, Oct., 1874, the question came up of admitting pedobaptists to membership. This was disposed of by resolving that “Christian baptism is a personal act of public consecration to Christ, and that believers’ baptism and immersion alone, as baptism, are fundamental principles of the denomination.” In other words, unimmersed believers would not be admitted to membership. But is it not the Lord’s church? Have we a right to exclude? Is this not bigotry? The Free Will Baptist answers: “No, it is only loyalty to truth.” We claim that, upon the same principle, he should go further, and refuse to admit to the communion those whom he refuses to admit to church membership. The reasons assigned for acting upon the opposite principle are sentimental rather than rational. See John Stuart Mill’s definition of sentimentality, quoted in Martineau’s Essays, 1:94—“Sentimentality consists in setting the sympathetic aspect of things, or their loveableness, above their æsthetic aspect, their beauty; or above the moral aspect of them, their right or wrong.” OBJECTIONS TO STRICT COMMUNION, AND ANSWERS TO THEM (condensed from Arnold, Terms of Communion, 82): “1st. Primitive rules are not applicable now. Reply: (1) The laws of Christ are unchangeable. (2) The primitive order ought to be restored. “2d. Baptism, as an external rite, is of less importance than love. Reply: (1) It is not inconsistent with love, but the mark of love, to keep Christ’s commandments. (2) Love for our brethren requires protest against their errors. “3d. Pedobaptists think themselves baptized. Reply: (1) This is a reason why they should act as if they believed it, not a reason why we should act as if it were so. (2) We cannot submit our consciences to their views of truth without harming ourselves and them. “4th. Strict communion is a hindrance to union among Christians. Reply: (1) Christ desires only union in the truth. (2) Baptists are not responsible for the separation. (3) Mixed communion is not a cure but a cause of disunion. “5th. The rule excludes from the communion baptized members of pedobaptist churches. Reply: (1) These persons are walking disorderly, in promoting error. (2) The Lord’s Supper is a symbol of church fellowship, not of fellowship for individuals, apart from their church relations. “6th. A plea for dispensing with the rule exists in extreme cases where persons must commune with us or not at all. Reply: (1) It is hard to fix limits to these exceptions: they would be likely to encroach more and more, till the rule became merely nominal. (2) It is a greater privilege and means of grace, in such circumstances, to abstain from communing, than contrary to principle to participate. (3) It is not right to participate with others, where we cannot invite them reciprocally. “7. Alleged inconsistency of our practice.—(a) Since we expect to commune in heaven. Reply: This confounds Christian fellowship with church fellowship. We do commune with pedobaptists spiritually, here as hereafter. We do not expect to partake of the Lord’s Supper with them, or with others, in heaven. (b) Since we reject the better and receive the worse. Reply: We are not at liberty to refuse to apply Christ’s outward rule, because we cannot equally apply his inward spiritual rule of character. Pedobaptists withhold communion from those they regard as unbaptized, though they may be more spiritual than some in the church. (c) Since we recognize pedobaptists as brethren in union meetings, exchange of pulpits, etc. Reply: None of these acts of fraternal fellowship imply the church communion which admission to the Lord’s table would imply. This last would recognize them as baptized: the former do not. “8th. Alleged impolicy of our practice. Reply: (1) This consideration would be pertinent, only if we were at liberty to change our practice when it was expedient, or was thought to be so. (2) Any particular truth will inspire respect in others in proportion as its advocates show that they respect it. In England our numbers have diminished, compared with the population, in the ratio of 33 per cent; here we have increased 50 per cent. in proportion to the ratio of population. “Summary. Open communion must be justified, if at all, on one of four grounds: First, that baptism is not prerequisite to communion. But this is opposed to the belief and practice of all churches. Secondly, that immersion on profession of faith is not essential to baptism. But this is renouncing Baptist principles altogether. Thirdly, that the individual, and not the church, is to be the judge of his qualifications for admission to the communion. But this is contrary to sound reason, and fatal to the ends for which the church is instituted. For, if the conscience of the individual is to be the rule of the action of the church in regard to his admission to the Lord’s Supper, why not also with regard to his regeneration, his doctrinal belief, and his obedience to Christ’s commands generally? Fourthly, that the church has no responsibility in regard to the qualifications of those who come to her communion. But this is abandoning the principle of the independence of the churches, and their accountableness to Christ, and it overthrows all church discipline.” See also Hovey, in Bib. Sac., 1862:133; Pepper, in Bap. Quar., 1867:216; Curtis on Communion, 292; Howell, Terms of Communion; Williams, The Lord’s Supper; Theodosia Ernest, pub. by Am. Bap. Pub. Soc.; Wilkinson, The Baptist Principle. In concluding our treatment of Ecclesiology, we desire to call attention to the fact that Jacob, the English Churchman, in his Ecclesiastical Polity of the N. T., and Cunningham, the Scotch Presbyterian, in his Croall Lectures for 1886, have furnished Baptists with much valuable material for the defence of the New Testament doctrine of the Church and its Ordinances. In fact, a complete statement of the Baptist positions might easily be constructed from the concessions of their various opponents. See A. H. Strong, on Unconscious Assumptions of Communion Polemics, in Philosophy and Religion, 245‐249.