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 :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. c., 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 be 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 us, 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 souì 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 promiseHe 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 baptise you in water unto (eis) 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 (eis) 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 (eis) the preaching of Jonah "' = because of. Dr. Lasher argues that, in all these cases, the meaning of eis 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 Barrige eis 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 (eis) righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto (eis) 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": "eis, 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 bap

tism, 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.