Chapter XI: Baptism of the Sick Wife and Her Children, 272 (2)

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

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

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

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

I feel, more than I can express, that the state of mind in parents which will make them prize and use the ordinance of baptism for their children is the great want of our day. Bringing children to church, and baptizing them, unless the parents are themselves in covenant with God, is as wrong as it was for those earthly-minded Corinthians, whom Paul rebukes, to eat the Lord's Supper. They made a feast, or a meal, of the supper; and some use baptism just to give a child a name,--to "christen" it, as they say,--in mere compliance with a custom. But the abuse of a thing is no valid argument against it. The last supper is the subject of far more perversion; it gives occasion to a vast amount of superstition and folly. The procession of the host, the elevation of the host, the laying of the wafer on the tongue, the solemn injunctions against spitting for a certain time after receiving it, are no valid arguments against the Lord's Supper, and no Christian is led by them to disregard the words of the Lord Jesus, "This do in remembrance of me." Much of the practical benefit of the Supper comes through the feelings which it awakens, the conduct which it promotes. So with infant baptism. The child must be truly consecrated to God, beforehand, and afterwards; and the ordinance must be used as a sign and seal on our part, as it is on the part of God,--an act and testimony, a memorial, a vow. Hannah lent her child to the Lord from the beginning, and then brought him to the temple, with her offerings. We must take the child from baptism as though God had placed it a second time in our hands, to be trained up for him.

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

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

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

"Thou canst not entertain a king!
Unworthy thou of such a guest;
But I my own provision bring,
To make thy soul a heavenly feast."

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

"Prayer is appointed to convey
The blessings God designs to give."

So with sacraments; they convey gifts from God, not primarily gifts from us to God.

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

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

You see by this that covenants do not, by any means, derive all their efficacy from the feelings of a contracting party. Covenants and their seals are the most sacred of all human transactions, and cannot be lightly regarded, or trifled with. God reveals himself often under the name of the God that keepeth covenant. So that we may not set aside the sacraments, nor undervalue them. This leads me to say, furthermore, that children, who doubt whether their parents sincerely and truly offered them to God in baptism, the parents being in an unregenerate state, as it afterward appeared, when they came with their children to the ordinance, may be greatly comforted and encouraged by taking this view of the divine sacrament of baptism as having a force and application in their behalf, by the goodness of God, irrespective of their parents' character. God will not let his sacraments depend, for their efficacy, on the character either of the administrator or of the parents. For, if the character of an administrator affected the baptism, it might so happen that one could never really be baptized, since every successive hand which applied it might prove, in turn, to be that of an unworthy person. If a child is baptized on the profession of parents who afterward show that they were not sincere, the child shall not suffer thereby, if he recognizes the transaction, and makes it his own act. In the case of a converted husband or wife, while one companion remained a heathen, the children were, nevertheless, counted "holy," because the Gospel leaned to the side of mercy, and gave the children the benefit of the believing parent's faith, instead of attainting them through the heathen parent. So, when a child is baptized in error, he shall not suffer, nor even lose anything, if he will accept the covenant with its seal. No one can justly reply to all this, that, therefore, every one even though not of the church, may offer his child for baptism. No; for these are exceptional cases, in which it is true that a covenant, even if it be not fulfilled, has force, and things may enure under it which one who does not make the required profession cannot receive. The covenant, if but the outward conditions be complied with, places all, who are in any way related to it, under various contingencies, which sometimes, to some of the parties, may be productive of good. We see illustrations of this in the great tenderness and love which we feel toward a child whose parent has brought a stain upon himself and his family. We find an echo, in our hearts, of those kind words of the Most High, "The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father;" and, if that son behaves himself worthily, every good man is doubly careful to protect and help him. In this way the broken, or unfulfilled, covenant operates, with God and with man, to the good of some related to it. But shall we, therefore, break our covenant? Shall the unworthy be promiscuously admitted to its privileges? "Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound?"

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

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

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

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

Much can be done by these simple expedients to promote a quiet and pleasant attendance upon the delightful rite. I like the practice, in your church, of chanting low some appropriate words of Scripture before and after the baptism.

I am constrained to say, though with diffidence, that I fear some of my good brethren give erroneous impressions by what they say of the church-membership of children. They push it to extremes. They discuss the question, What shall be done with baptized children, who, on arriving at years of understanding, refuse to enter into covenant with God? Church censures are asserted by some to be proper in such cases, even to excommunication, or interference in some judicial way by the church. So long as I believe in regeneration by the Holy Spirit, I cannot feel that baptized children, as such, are, in any sense whatever, in which the term is generally received among men, _members_ of the church of Christ; while, in another and most important sense, they do belong to the church, hold a relation to it, and are a part of it. Strictly speaking, and in the highest spiritual sense, they are not even "the lambs of Christ's flock;" for lambs have the nature of sheep; but the children of believers are, by nature, children of wrath, even as others. And yet, in another sense, they hold a most important relation to the flock of Christ, as no other children do. In its most important sense, they are not to the church even what they are to the state; they have no place whatever in the invisible church,--the church which is saved,--till they are born again. If children are regenerated by the act of baptism, of course it is otherwise; but, not believing this, I am clear that the baptized child of a believer differs from any other unregenerate child, who is not baptized, only in this: that God looks upon it with peculiar interest and love, and that it is surrounded with special and peculiar privileges, opportunities, promises, and hopes, with regard to its being brought to repentance and saving faith in Christ; and by baptism it is initiated into special relationship to the people of God. The church also has special duties with regard to it. Some of my brethren give great occasion to those who resist children's baptism, to argue against it as Romish in its nature and effect, by not discriminating clearly in using the words members and membership in connection with children. Read almost any modern book against infant baptism, and you will find that its main force is directed against the practice as a "church and state" institution, and as making persons members of the church by means of sacraments. Let us who are really free from such imputation, assert the truly spiritual nature and object of this ordinance. I wish to see it divested of all that does not belong to it, made eminently spiritual, expressed in terms which cannot easily be misunderstood, and appealing to the natural affections, the understandings, the consciences, of spiritual men and women, as, in its sober and legitimate use, God's great appointment, from the call of Abraham to the millennium, for the increase and perpetuity of his church.[2]

[Footnote 2: This subject is discussed by itself, and more at large, in another part of this book.]

You are aware that the great question, which has made most of the trouble in the Christian church from the beginning, relates to the meaning and use of sacraments and ordinances, or what we call Symbolism. The tendency of the human mind, even in Paul's day, as indicated by him, with other things belonging to it, under the name of "the mystery of iniquity, which doth even now work," was, to increase the number of sacraments and ordinances, and make them bear an essential part in the work of regeneration. The right to multiply or extend them, and the claim that they possess a saving efficacy, characterizes one great division of the professed Christian church, while those who are called Protestants and the Reformed, regard them chiefly as signs; though of these, some seem to have much of that appetency after undue reliance on forms which Paul seeks to correct in the Epistle to the Galatians, while others go to an opposite extreme, and undervalue the two divinely-appointed sacraments, which they think have no efficiency as used by the Spirit of God, but only as signs used by us to represent something.

Between these divisions of the Christian church lies the battle-ground of great ecclesiastical controversies from the beginning, as the Netherlands were, for a long time, the battle-field of Europe. Archbishop Leighton seems to strike the balance between formalism and sacramental grace in ordinances, as well as any writer, in commenting on these words of Peter, "The like figure whereunto, even baptism, doth also now save us." He says:

"Thus, then, we have a true account of the power of this, and so of other, sacraments, and a discovery of the error of two extremes. (1.) Of those who ascribe too much to them, as if they wrought by a natural, inherent virtue, and carried grace in them inseparably. (2.) Of those who ascribe too little to them, making them only signs and badges of our profession. Signs they are, but more than signs merely representing; they are means exhibiting, and seals confirming, grace to the faithful. But the working of faith and the conveying Christ into the soul, to be received by faith, is not a thing put into them to do of themselves, but still in the supreme hand that appointed them; and he indeed both causes the souls of his own to receive these his seals with faith, and makes them effectual to confirm that faith which receives them so. They are then, in a word, neither empty signs to them who believe, nor effectual causes of grace to them that believe not."

Let me make the distinction very clear to your mind, for it is of great practical importance. The "mystery of iniquity" in Paul's time, and since his day, did not, and does not, consist in making too much of God's ordinances in their purity and proper use. That cannot be done, any more than you can intelligently love the Bible too much, or the Sabbath. But, to pervert them, or to make additions to them, or to rely upon them wholly, is Romanism. But can men make too much of having a seal on a deed? Is the deed good for anything without the seal? Can they make too much of having three witnesses to their wills? Those three witnesses, instead of two, make an otherwise worthless writing, a man's last will and testament. Thus, a true sign, ordinance, or seal, among men, has inherent efficacy of some sort. Shall we deny it to the ordinances and seals of Heaven? He who lays claim to the covenant, but rejects the seal, deceives himself. They must go together.

But will you not think me older even than I claim to be, because I am so garrulous? I have many things to say, but will not say them with pen and ink, hoping to see you shortly. Farewell, my dear daughter, to you and your beloved husband, with abundant kisses for your little namesake, who, I pray, may be spared to you, if God has any work for her to do on earth. Dedicate her sincerely and entirely, beforehand, to God, and then in his house, with baptism, before the assembled brethren in Christ; and let your subsequent treatment of her be a repetition of the whole. Baptizing a child, with right views and feelings, leads to much prayer for it. Renew the consecration of your child daily, in little, sudden acts of prayer, as well as in more deliberate offices of devotion. Thus surround it with an atmosphere of faith and consecration, not forgetting the public transaction in which you covenanted with God, before many witnesses, for the child, and He, my dear daughter, with you, in its behalf. For, a covenant implies two parties; and God is one, and you are the other; and Jesus is the mediator, who said of children, "Of such is the kingdom of God." "He that came down from heaven," had seen, in heaven, how largely that world is peopled with them. "Of such is the kingdom of heaven." Peace be with you. All send love.

Your affectionate Father.

Chapter Third.

BERTHA'S BAPTISM.--CHANTING AT BAPTISMS.--PUBLIC AND PRIVATE BAPTISMS.--WEEK-DAY BAPTISMS.--A DAUGHTER'S LOVE.--BAPTISM OF A DEAF-MUTE INFANT.--FIDELITY OF A BAPTIZED CHILD.--SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM.--THE MODE.--IMPROBABILITY OF IMMERSION, IN THE NEW TESTAMENT.--ON BEING BURIED IN BAPTISM.--NEW VERSION OF THE SCRIPTURES.--OUR DIVISION INTO SECTS.--A MOTHER'S PLEA FOR INFANT BAPTISM.

Where is it mothers learn their love?
In every church a fountain springs,
O'er which th' eternal Dove
Hovers on softest wings.

O, happy arms, where cradled lies,
And ready for the Lord's embrace,
That precious sacrifice,
The darling of his grace!

KEBLE.

We took Bertha to church when she was two months old. The minister, being fond of music, had, for some time, requested the choir to chant select passages of Scripture at baptisms.

So, as we came up the aisle with the child, the choir breathed out those words, "And I will establish my covenant between thee and me, and thy seed after thee, in their generations, for an everlasting covenant; to be a God unto thee, and to thy seed after thee." "Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not; for of such is the kingdom of God." "And he took them up in his arms, put his hands upon them, and blessed them." And, as we turned away from the font, they added, "So shall he sprinkle many nations." "The Lord shall increase you more and more, you and your children." "But the mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting upon them that fear him, and his righteousness unto children's children; to such as keep his covenant, and to those that remember his commandments, to do them."

How I loved that choir, and the congregation! for, many a face did I see bathed in tears, and others beaming with smiles and love, as, with respectful, half-turned looks, they seemed to give us their blessing.

"Do you not think, more than ever," I said, to the beloved grandmother of my child, after church, as we watched the little sleeper in her cradle, "that people lose very much in having their children baptized at home?"

"It makes a different thing of it," she replied. "I felt that all the congregation loved Bertha and you. How many prayers you obtained for her and for yourselves, which you would have missed by a private baptism!"

"Besides," I remarked, "'God loveth the gates of Zion more than all the dwellings of Jacob.' I think that for that reason, and on the same principle, namely, that he is more honored, he regards our public dedication of children with more favor than a private baptism, except, of course, where sickness makes the public service impossible. But it is some trouble to mothers, and no doubt many shrink from it."

"The trouble is more in anticipation than reality," she replied. "That pastor's room, where they stay till the introductory services are over, makes it more convenient and agreeable. But all the trouble, even if it were far greater, is nothing compared with the satisfaction of having taken your offering and come into His courts. You have paid your vows unto the Lord, in the presence of all his people. You will remember those prayers, those words of Scripture which were chanted, and your feelings as you took the child into your arms to be presented to God, and as you heard those adorable names pronounced upon her and then received her back into your arms, as it were, from the hands of God."

"What do you think," said I, "of the practice of having children baptized in the church on a week-day? It enables the parents to attend meeting on the Sabbath with more composure than when they bring their children on the Sabbath."

"But O," said she, "what is that, compared with the privilege of bringing the child before the whole church of God, in his house, on the Lord's day, and so identifying its baptism with the most solemn acts of public worship? I do not like those week-day baptisms. Where they have the communion lecture in the afternoon of a week-day, there may be reasons of convenience for bringing the children for baptism then, rather than on the Sabbath; but there is a great loss of enjoyment, and also of impressiveness, in the ordinance, in doing so, I think. I was at a place, several years ago, when fourteen children were baptized on a Wednesday afternoon, in the church. I went to see it, but it was not solemn at all. I could not help thinking what an impressive and useful sight that would have been on the Sabbath, before all the people, and how much more good, probably, it would have done the parents, even if they had given up half the Sabbath in going and returning with the children."

"If people," said I, "thought more of the spiritual meaning and privileges of baptism, and viewed it as they do in times of sickness and death, they would think less of inconveniences and discomforts, and see that the ordinance is something more than giving a child a name."

* * * * *

Some time after this, I called upon a cousin of ours, a young married lady of our congregation, who, within a year, had come to us from another place, she having been married to an educated, intelligent member of another congregation, and who, from his great love for her, had come with her to our place of worship from another denomination, this having been made a condition of their marriage. For she felt that she could not be debarred the privilege of sitting at the Lord's table with her mother, three sisters, and brother, as she would be if she united herself with her friend's church. The idea of going to any table of Christ on earth where they could not come, thus seeming to disfranchise her whole family whom Christ had gathered into his fold, and some of them into heaven, did violence to her feelings. At one time, it seemed likely that the engagement of marriage would be terminated, on this ground alone. Some one of the gentleman's persuasion, who thought that she "ought to follow Christ in ordinances," and "take up her cross" in this instance, whispered to her that she was, perhaps, in danger of denying Christ, from love to her kindred, and he said to her, "He that loveth father or mother more than me, is not worthy of me." This had the opposite effect from that which was intended, for it showed her, in the strongest light, the error of supposing that love to Christ could ever require her to separate from herself, at the table of Christ, such friends of Jesus as the members of her dear Christian home,--a home which had been like that of Bethany to many of the Saviour's friends. She felt more sure of being actuated by right motives in giving up her marriage, and not withdrawing fellowship from her mother and the family, than she would be in sacrificing that fellowship to gratify a new affection. Her next younger sister was baptized after the father's death. She was a deaf-mute. The mother was a very beautiful woman. She had borne severe trials for her religion with a spirit of patience and Christian propriety which won the love and esteem of the community. She went to the altar of God, a widow, with the little deaf and dumb child, and presented it for baptism. It was as though the impending calamity of its father's death had shut up some of the senses of the child, and God had placed it in the mother's hand as a silent memorial to her, for life, of his chastising love. She left her fatherless flock in the family pew, and went with her nursling, not merely to give it to God, but to receive for it the seal of his covenant, bowing submissively to his inscrutable appointment, and imploring the God of Abraham to be still her God, and the God of this her seed. That scene had not failed to make deep impressions upon the other children; and now it was proposed to one of them that she should, by connecting herself in marriage, disavow her mother's right to cling, in those hours of anguish, to that asylum of the fatherless, infant baptism,--that very present help in trouble, the covenant of God with believers and their offspring. The little child, moreover, had become a Christian, and had sat with her sister, side by side, at the communion-table, for several years. "Forbid it," she prayed with herself, "that I should go where I cannot be allowed to follow Christ till I have separated this dear one from my side."

She once wrote a letter on the subject to the gentleman, which he showed, after their marriage, to some of his friends. There will be no impropriety in its appearing here. It ran thus:

"MY DEAR MR. E.: Though I am not willing to deny that Roger
Williams was, as you say, raised up to illustrate some important
principles, and to help on the general cause of truth, I must say
that he strikes me as a very unreasonable man in much of his
behavior. Our puritan fathers did not come to this wilderness with
French, atheistic, idolatrous love for a goddess of liberty. They
came here, it is true, for liberty of conscience and freedom to
worship God. With a great sum they purchased this freedom. But
infidels could as well claim to be absolved by the laws from all
recognition of God, under the plea of liberty, as Mr. Williams and
his friends could make his demands for toleration. To insist that
our fathers, in their circumstances, should have opened their doors
wide to every doctrine, and to the denial of everything professed
by them, is unreasonable. They came here with an intense love for
certain truths and practices, which persecution had only served to
make exceedingly precious to them. To have proclaimed at once
universal toleration of every wind of doctrine, would have proved
them libertines in religion. Because they did not so, reproach is
cast upon them by some, who seem to me to be free-thinkers on the
subject of religious liberty. If other men wished to found a
community with doctrines and practices adverse to those of the New
England fathers, the land was wide, and it would have been the part
of good manners in Mr. Williams to have gone into the wilderness at
once, to subdue it and to fight the savages, all for love and zeal
for his own tenets, instead of poaching upon the hard-earned soil
of those who had laid down their all for what they deemed to be the
truth. It seems to me unphilosophical in some of our historians to
reflect, as they do, upon our forefathers for not being so totally
indifferent to what they deemed error, as to allow it free course.
Their strict, and, if you please, rigid ways, were the necessary
defences of their principles, which were just taking root here.
They did right in passing stringent laws to protect them; and
religious liberty was no more violated in doing so than is the
liberty of our town's people here, who, by the law of the State
protecting game, cannot take fish, or kill birds, during certain
seasons.

"Besides, I never saw any proof that Mr. Williams was himself the
great apostle of toleration. I remember reading to father, during
his sickness, some remarks of the late John Quincy Adams, in which
he vindicates the New England fathers for banishing Roger Williams
as a 'nuisance.'[3] Mr. Adams surely cannot be accused of bigotry,
nor of being an enemy to the cause of freedom; and his remarks
seemed to me more just than the eulogies, by historians and
orators, of Mr. Williams. Father once showed me an old book of Mr.
Williams's, which we have now, called 'George Fox digg'd out of his
Burrowes,' in which Mr. W. inveighs against the Quakers for their
want of 'civil respect,' and for using 'thee' and 'thou,' in
addressing magistrates and others. He says, on the two hundredth
page, 'I have therefore publickly declared myself, that a due and
moderate restraint and punishing of these incivilities (though
pretending conscience) is as far from persecution, properly so
called, as that it is a duty and command of God unto all mankinde,
first in families, and thence unto all mankinde societies.'--It is
also a matter of history that the colony settled by Mr. Williams
refused their franchise to Roman Catholics, though even then the
Roman Catholics of Maryland were tolerating people of his own
faith, and Quakers also. Mr. Williams always seemed to me like one
of our pious, zealous 'come-outers.' He even forsook his own
denomination in three months after he had been baptized, and for
forty years denied the validity of their sacraments, and the
scripturalness of their churches and ministry. Such a man would
even at this day be excommunicated by every society, unless it
were some association for the encouragement of radical notions of
liberty. I no more see in him the impersonation of religious
freedom, than in some other good people who go or stay where they
are not wanted. I am not disposed to deny that you and your
friends, with their principles, of which you, erroneously, I think,
claim Mr. Williams as the great exponent, 'have a mission,' as you
say, to perform; but I do not feel called upon to join in it. Some
of your writers seem to me--shall I say it?--a little too sure of
having just the right pattern and patent-right in ordinances, and
somewhat too complacent in not being liked by other denominations,
and perhaps a little disposed to look for persecution. Now I was
pleased with a remark of Matthew Henry's, on Mark 10:28, that 'It
is not the suffering, but the cause, that makes the martyr.' But we
were brought up under different associations, and cannot see just
alike in all things. I cannot, however, contradict, by any step
which my feelings would incline me to take, the Christian
citizenship of those who are dear to Christ, and are so precious to
me. As much as I love you, I think you should feel perfectly free
to leave me in my happy home, if you cannot allow me to retain my
fidelity to my own conscientious convictions of truth, and to the
sacred rights of those whom nature and grace have conspired to make
inseparable from my own Christian hopes and joys."

[Footnote 3: "Can we blame the founders of the Massachusetts Colony for banishing him from their jurisdiction? In the annals of religious persecution is there to be found a martyr more gently dealt with by those against whom he began the war of intolerance; whose authority he persisted, even after professions of penitence and submission, in defying, till deserted even by the wife of his bosom; and whose utmost severity of punishment upon him was only an order for his removal as a nuisance from among them?"--_Discourse before Mass. Hist. Soc._, 1843, pp. 25-30.--[ED.]]

The gentleman agreed to allow her the largest liberty, and they were married. He knew that she had a mind and heart that were more precious than rubies, and that the heart of a husband could safely trust in her. The sequel will show, however, how good it is to be matched as well as mated, and, in the conjugal relation, to be "perfectly joined together in the same judgment."

The object of my call, that evening, was to rejoice with her, and to be the bearer of some congratulations at the recovery of their infant, whose death had been expected for some time. The child was now perfectly restored.

As I stood in the entry, not having rung the door-bell, and was hanging up my hat and coat, some one in the parlor said:

"What good can it do the child or us to sprinkle a little water on its head?"

"Good-evening, Mr. M.," said the husband, as I went in. I was interrupted in my expression of a fear that I had intruded upon their conversation, by their assurances to the contrary. "I am glad you came in," said Mr. Kelly, "for perhaps you can help us. You heard, I suppose, what I was saying as you came in. If I am not mistaken, Mr. M., you yourself are not very strenuous about infant baptism, for I have heard of your making inquiries on the subject."

"Not only have all my doubts been removed," said I, "but the baptism of my child has been the source of the richest instruction and comfort."

"I am glad to hear you say so," said Mrs. K.

"But," said Mr. K., "you do not, of course, derive your warrant for it from the word of God. That is our only guide, you know. There is no more authority in the Bible for baptizing children than there is for praying to saints. You are probably aware that the practice originated in the third century of the Christian era."

_Mr. M._ It originated with a man by the name of Abraham, I believe, sir, two or three thousand years before Christ.

_Mr. K._ O, then, you go to Judaism for it!

_Mr. M._ Judaism comes to me with it, and hands it over to me. There was something good in Judaism, we all think. Judaism was not a Mormonism, as certain ways of speaking of it not unfrequently would make us think it to have been; it was not an exploded folly, but the form which the church of God bore for two thousand years. But it began before Judaism; it is older than Moses. Judaism received it from Abraham. It is like a great river rising in a desert place, and seeming to lose itself in a lake, but flowing out again into another lake, and thence to the sea. So Judaism was only a great lake, which took and seemingly held this river of baptism for a time, but its current went on and flowed into another lake, the Christian dispensation. But you cannot say that a river which makes a chain of lakes, rises, for that reason, in the first lake. No, its head spring, in this case, was antecedent to the lake.

_Mr. K._ Did Abraham or the Jews baptize children, Mr. M.?

I answered, "Every male child of Abraham's descendants, who should not receive the sign of consecration to God, was to be cut off from among the people. Proselytes of the covenant and their children were baptized, very early."

_Mr. K._ But where is the command to apply baptism to children?

_Mr. M._ Where, my dear sir, is the command to discontinue that which was enjoined upon the founder of the race of believers for all time? I believe in the perpetuity of Abraham's relation to us as the father of the faithful, as I believe in Adam's relation to us as the representative of the race, and in the Saviour's relation to us as our representative. God seems to love these federal headships, as we call them. Abraham did not receive circumcision being a Jew, but, as the apostle says, "as a seal of the righteousness which is by faith, which he had while he was yet uncircumcised." We have Scripture for that, Mr. Kelly. And "the law, which was four hundred and thirty years after," did not disannul that covenant "that was confirmed before of God in Christ." How can you call circumcision a Jewish ordinance, when the Bible so explicitly denies it to be of Jewish origin?

_Mr. K._ O, I do not understand this Abrahamic covenant. I take the New Testament for my guide.

_Mr. M._ You think well of the book of Psalms, I presume, as a help to prayer and pious feelings?

_Mr. K._ Yes; but in all matters of faith and practice, the New Testament, like the doings of the latest session of the legislature, is the rule for New Testament believers. You might as well have tried to govern the ancient Jews with the New Testament, as enforce the laws of the Old Testament on us.

_Mr. M._ Is the privilege of having God stand in a special relation to my child an Old Testament ordinance, in the same sense with ceremonial observances?

_Mr. K._ Not exactly that, but it is a superstition to baptize children, now that circumcision is done away, and believers' baptism is enjoined.

_Mr. M._ Believers' baptism is enjoined, but children's baptism is not therefore prohibited.

_Mr. K._ But where is it enacted?

_Mr. M._ If the original form of dedicating children is essential, why is not the original form of the Sabbath essential, the very day which was first appointed? How dare we change a day which God himself ordained from the beginning, until he makes the change as peremptory as the institution itself? Have we any right to infer, in such an important matter? Where is the express, divine command,--not precedent, example, usage, but where is the enactment,--making the first day of the week the Christian Sabbath?

_Mr. K._ So long as we may keep the thing, observing one day in seven, it makes no difference which day we keep, if we can all agree on one and the same day. We do not all agree to retain circumcision in any way.

_Mr. M._ So long as we may retain the thing signified by circumcision, it makes but little difference what form is used to express it.

_Mr. K._ The apostles, who changed the Sabbath from the seventh to the first day, knew the mind of Christ.

_Mr. M._ And so the men, who first practised infant baptism, knew the minds of the inspired apostles, and they knew the mind of Christ. But to go a step further back, the only ground for inferring that the Sabbath is rightly changed from the seventh to the first day of the week, is the incidental mention of Christ's meeting his assembled disciples a few times after his resurrection on the first day. On that slight ground we are all content to rest our present observance of the Sabbath. Now, I say that the mention of the baptism of households eight times, in one form and another, is as good a warrant for infant baptism, as those two or three Sabbath-evening meetings were for the institution of the Lord's-day Sabbath.

_Mr. K._ I cannot agree with you, Mr. M., in putting circumcision on the same level with the Sabbath.

_Mr. M._ I myself see a resemblance in the changes made in the two cases. I have no wish to proselyte you to my views. I have only answered your polite inquiries.

_Mr. K._ O, I know that; we shall be good friends still; but I see no grounds for baptizing children on the faith of their parents.

_Mr. M._ We look at the thing from different points of view. I see it as clearly as I see that the church of God is essentially the same in all ages, with its variety of forms. This matter of children's baptism is with me a spiritual thing, and is independent of dispensations. You know that a river may have, in one district of the earth through which it flows, one name, and in another district another name, while it is the same river. Now, the divine recognition of believers' children, as standing in a special covenanted relation with God, is the headspring of infant dedication by the use of a rite. The object of this recognition is, that He may have a godly seed. God does not perpetuate religion directly by natural descent, it is true, but he seeks to promote it by descent from a pious parentage, and he therefore endows that parentage with special privileges and promises. The inclusion of children with their believing parents has been the great means of perpetuating religion in the earth. It is a stream which washed the shores of Judaism under the name of circumcision; now it washes the shores of the Gentiles under the name of baptism. For the Saviour or the apostles to have reäppointed infant dedication, with the use of the cotemporary initiating ordinance, would, to my mind, be as superfluous as for the allied powers to have agreed that the Danube should still run through Austria.

_Mr. K._ Your principle of interpretation, Mr. M., has brought in all the darkness which has covered the earth in the Romish apostacy. There will be no end to human inventions in religion, if this principle prevails.

_Mr. M._ But, my dear sir, there certainly has been an end at the very beginning; for what inventions in Protestant worship have non-prelatical Pædobaptists made? Surely that practice has not been prolific of superstitions. I often hear this alleged, Mr. K., and we are called Romish and Popish because we baptize infants. But will it not be best for Christian sects to allow each other entire liberty of conscience, and not accuse each other of tendencies to Romanism, when all are zealously Protestant? Here is a piece, which I cut from a newspaper lately, which describes the baptism by immersion of some females and others, one Sabbath in January, the thermometer below zero, a place being cut through the ice for the purpose, and a boy watching with a pole to keep the floating ice from the opening. Shall I call this Romish, superstitious, fanatical? Shall I say, How can we, consistently with such practices among Protestants, say anything about the doctrine of penances? No. I prefer to think that those who do these things are as good Protestants as myself, and I will not impeach their rigid adherence to their belief, by imputing Romish tendencies to their modes of worship and their ordinances; for no people are further from Romanism in their principles than they (unless it be some of us Pædobaptists, Mrs. Kelly).

_Mr. K._ Well, there is no quarrelling with you; but let me say that when another sect sees you employing an ordinance which has no warrant in the Bible,--sprinkling water upon people, on proper subjects and improper subjects for baptism, when we know that the word _baptize_ means to _immerse_, and that believers only are properly baptized,--how can we be silent? Would you be silent if Episcopalians should set up Latin prayers, or the confessional; or the Methodists turn their love-feasts into the old Passover?