Bertha and Her Baptism
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Nehemiah Adams >> Bertha and Her Baptism
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_Pastor._ Those friends who advised you so, think, perhaps, too much of
the ceremony itself, and not so much of what it signifies. Now the
pleasure of being baptized is nothing compared with having God enter
into a covenant in your behalf when you knew nothing about it.
_Mrs. Ford._ They said to me, also, "What right have you to do it,
instead of letting her have the choice and privilege of doing it herself
hereafter?" I told them that, if we acted on that principle, in the
treatment of our children, there would be a long list of useful things,
which we do for them, to be postponed.
_Pastor._ We can benefit another without his consent. The question is,
whether it is a benefit to a child for God and its natural guardians to
make a covenant together in its behalf.
_Mr. Benson._ It surely is so, if God truly is a party to such a
covenant. But where is the proof that he is? That is my trouble. They
tell me that this covenanting with God for a child, and sealing it with
an ordinance, ceased with Abraham, who was a Jew; that it was a Jewish
custom, which died out.
_Pastor._ Abraham a mere Jew! God's covenant with a believer and his
children a Jewish covenant! Never was there a greater mistake. Paul
tells us expressly it was not so. Get me a Bible, Helen, and bring me a
lamp. I read these words: "And the promise that he should be heir of the
world was not to Abraham and his seed through the law, but through the
righteousness of faith." His relation to the world was independent of
dispensations; it grew out of that faith which he had in common with all
believers to the end of time. "And he received the sign of circumcision,
a seal of the righteousness of the faith which he had yet being
uncircumcised, that he might be the father of all them that believe,
though they be not circumcised." Christ also says: "Moses, therefore,
gave unto you circumcision; (not because it is of Moses, but of the
fathers.)" Abraham was not a Jew when God covenanted with him, any more
than you, madam, were Mrs. Ford, when, at the age of sixteen, as you
have told me, you entered into covenant with God. That covenant had
chief respect to your immortal soul, and yet it reached in its
influences to all the conditions of that soul while here in the flesh.
So God covenanted with Abraham as a believer, not as a mere national
ancestor; yet temporal and spiritual blessings came in rich measures
upon his immediate descendants. But we read, "So then as many as be of
faith are blessed with faithful," that is, believing, "Abraham." "And if
ye be Christ's, then are ye Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the
promise." Can anything be plainer than this?
_Mrs. Ford._ My father was a minister, you know, sir, and he used to
preach a great deal on this subject.
_Pastor._ Let us hear your understanding of these passages, Mrs. Ford.
"I am afraid," said she, "I cannot tell you just what he used to say.
But my idea of it is this: Though Abraham was the founder of the Hebrew
people, he was no more a Jew than a Gentile in his covenant with God,
for it was as believer the great believer, that God made a covenant
with him. So that he was not circumcised as a Jew, but, as the Bible
says, to have a seal of the righteousness which he had by faith. God
made a covenant with him as a believer, to be his God and the God of his
children, as the children of a believer, not a Jew; so that all
believers are blessed with believing Abraham, by having the same
covenant extended to them. Then, I take it, God gave him a sign and seal
as a pledge, and to remind him of it, and to keep his children in
remembrance." She paused, and I said:
"Please to go on." You remember, Bertha, how you used to make this Mrs.
Ford discuss doctrinal matters when she was sewing for you.
_Mrs. Ford._ I remember that father said that God took the rainbow as a
sign and seal of his promise, to Noah and all future generations, that
there should never be another universal deluge. So he appointed a
children's ordinance to mark his covenant with believers to the end of
time. Only there was this difference; the way of signing and sealing the
covenant not being coupled with the laws of nature, but conforming to
the kind of symbols successively in use, it was changed, at the time
that the Sabbath was changed, and the whole of the old dispensation; but
father used to say, Is the commonwealth and citizenship broken up
because the legislature adopts a new state seal? Does that destroy all
the old public documents?
_Pastor._ Good! So the United States' mint is from time to time changing
its dies; lately it has abolished copper, and substituted equivalent
coins of different composition. But money does not perish. A cent is a
cent still, red or white. So, whether the seal be blood or water, the
great ordinance which it seals remains the same.
"And now I will tell you," said I, "how it seems to me God's covenanting
with parents for their children came to pass. He wished to give Abraham
a token and seal of his love to him. So he took his child, the thing
which he loved best, and would see oftenest, and thought of most, and
made the child, as it were, the tablet on which to write his covenant
with the father. That was one reason. 'Because he loved the fathers,
therefore he chose their seed.' But this is the least of the reasons in
the case.
"Here is one of vastly greater importance. God wished to perpetuate
religion in the earth. He knew that the family constitution would be
the principal means of doing this, parents teaching and commanding their
children, and so transmitting religion. Because he knew that Abraham
would do this, he gave it as a reason for his love and confidence in
him, in not concealing from him his purpose to destroy Sodom. 'Shall I
hide from Abraham that thing which I do? For I know him that he will
command his children and his household after him, and they shall keep
the ways of the Lord.' So, in order to remind Abraham of what was
expected by the Most High in making his children the presumptive heirs
of grace, and to remind the children of it when they came to years of
understanding, God gave him and them this mark and seal."
"Well, then," said Mr. Benson, "it seems to me Abraham was better off
than we, if he had God in covenant with him for his children, and we
have not. I sometimes wish that I could have God covenant with me about
my boy, as Abraham had about Isaac."
"I should like," said Mrs. B., "to hear him say, 'I will be a God to
him,' and then tell us to do something of his own appointment that
should be like our signing and sealing a covenant together, as the
Lord's Supper enables us to do with Christ."
"If we have no such blessed privilege," said I, "then, as Abraham
desired to see our day, I should, in this respect, rejoice to see
Abraham's day. I cannot forego the privilege of having God in covenant
with me for my children as he was with Abraham for his; and I crave some
divine seal affixed to it.
"You said, Mrs. Benson, that you would like to have God promise to be
the God of your child, and then command you to do something which would
be like God and you signing and sealing it together. But do you think,
Mrs. B., that this is necessary? Why is it not enough for God to make a
promise, and you make one, and let it be without any sign or seal?"
"People don't do things in that way," said Mr. Benson, with a decided
motion, two or three times, with his head. "They call a wedding a
ceremony, it is true, and some say, 'So long as people are engaged to be
man and wife, the ceremony makes little difference.' But it does make
all the difference in the world,--this mere ceremony, as they call it.
They never like to dispense with it themselves, at least; because, you
see, it makes all the difference between unlawful, sinful union, and
marriage. It makes married life; which could not exist, without the
ceremony, among decent people. It gives a title and ground to a thing
which could not be without it. So, I begin to see and feel, it is with
regard to what some call the ceremony of baptism. But excuse me, wife, I
took the answer out of your mouth."
"Well," said Mrs. Benson to me, "I must wait upon you, sir, to answer
the question further."
"Mr. Benson has the right view of the subject," I replied. "We make too
little of signs and seals, from a morbid fear and jealousy of those
which are invented by man and added to religion. But God's own seals are
safe and good. We cannot make too much of them.
"God never did anything with men, from the beginning, without signs and
seals. The tree of life was one, and so was the tree of the knowledge of
good and evil. Adam and Eve knew better, at first, than to say, 'So long
as we love and obey God, of what use are these symbols?' By not
regarding symbols afterward, they brought death into our world and all
our woe. Even before that, God had appointed a symbol of his authority,
and a seal of a covenant between him and man forever, in the appointment
of the Sabbath. The mark on Cain's forehead, the rainbow, the lamp
passing between the severed parts of Abraham's sacrifice, Jacob's
ladder, the burning bush, the passover, and things too numerous to
mention, show how God loves signs and seals.
"There are many good people, at the present day, who say to me, I am
willing to consecrate my child to God in prayer, and bring him up for
God; but I do not see the necessity of an ordinance. Why bring the child
to baptism? I can do all which is required and signified, without the
sign."
"What do you say to them?" said Mrs. Ford.
_Pastor._ I tell them they are on dangerous ground. Will they be wiser
than God? He knows our natures, and what to prescribe to us in our
intercourse with him. I would as soon meddle with a law of nature, as
with God's ordinances. I might as well neglect a law of nature, and
think to be safe and well, as to neglect one of God's ordinances, and
expect his blessing.
People, moreover, may as well object to family prayer, and say that
they try to live in a spirit of prayer all day. Why do they have special
seasons for retirement, if they walk with God? Why do they hardly feel
that they have prayed if company, or a bedfellow, on a journey, keeps
them from using oral prayer? It is a bitter grief, also, when no funeral
solemnities lead the way to the grave with a beloved object; yet, where
in the word of God are they commanded? As Mr. Benson said, "Who is
willing to dispense with the wedding ceremony, except in cases where
sadness and trouble seek concealment?"
People cannot give full evidence that they are Christians unless they
make a public profession of religion. They cannot properly remember
Jesus without partaking of his body and blood. Depend upon it, my dear
friends, God sets great value on ordinances, and our observance of them.
God has given us two sacraments, and he who dispenses with them because
he undervalues them, or undertakes to say that they are not necessary to
him, or to any in this age of the world, is in peril. The only danger
from forms and ordinances is when they are of human origin. We must take
care and not let our revulsion from Romanism carry us to the extreme of
neglecting or setting aside the ordinances of God's appointment. "There
are three that bear record on earth, the Spirit, and the water, and the
blood; and these three agree in one." A man may, with equal propriety,
dispense with the blood, and its symbol the wine, or with the Spirit, as
with the water, if God has appointed it with the other two as a witness
between him and us. You notice that the Spirit is named with the two
inanimate things, the blood and the water. Take care, I say to my
friends, lest, in setting aside the water, you shut out that divine
Spirit, who, knowing how to deal with our nature, chooses the blood and
the water to be used by us in connection with our most spiritual
religious exercises of the mind and heart. We have no more right to
interfere with God's ordinances than with the number of the persons in
the Trinity.
"All this affects me so," said Mr. Benson, "that I shall not fail to
offer my child to be baptized, if I am allowed to do so. Now, there is
my difficulty. Why do you think, and how do you show, that baptism must
now be used as God's sign and seal of his covenant with believers for
their children? When circumcision was dropped, some insist that the
covenant was dropped with it, and, therefore, that there is no warrant
in Scripture for baptizing children."
"Why," said Mrs. Ford, "if the coming in of Moses' dispensation did not
abolish the arrangement with Abraham, why should its going out? I am
inclined to think that Abraham and his seed are, to Moses and his
dispensation, something like that vine to the trellis, running over it
to the top of the piazza, bending itself in, you see, to accommodate
itself, but having a root and a top, the one below, the other above, the
short frame, which only guides it up to the roof. In the eleventh of
Romans does not Paul say that Jews and Gentiles have one and the same
'root'? I always supposed that root to be Abraham and his covenant."
I did not quote Latin to my friends, but I thought of the old law-maxim,
_Manente ratione, manet ipsa lex_--which, if your scholarship is not at
hand to translate it, Percival will tell you, means, "The reason for a
law remaining, the law itself also remains." It is used in such cases as
the following: When one would insist that a law was intended to be
repealed by the operation of another law, not directly or expressly
aimed to repeal it, it is a good reply. If the original reason for
enacting the old law can be shown still to exist, it is strong
presumptive evidence that there was no intention to repeal that law. I
explained this, in as simple language as I could, to my excellent
friends, and told them, "If God's covenant, which circumcision sealed,
were Mosaic, and therefore national, Jewish, we should presume that it
ceased with the Jewish nation; or, if it continued, that it was
restricted to their posterity. But why should God bestow his inestimable
blessing on the father of the faithful, and take it away from the
faithful themselves? We love our children, as Abraham did his. It is as
important to us that God should be the God of our seed, as it was to
Abraham. My heart yearns after that covenanting God in behalf of my
children."
"I will give up thinking of Abraham as a Jew," said Mrs. Benson.
"What was he, then?" said I, "or what will he be to you, from this
time?"
"He was the head of believers," said she, "just as Adam was the head of
men. As Mrs. Ford said, he was the great believer; and I am persuaded
that all who are of faith have his privileges, and more too; but
certainly all that he had."
"But, my dear," said your mother, "you have forgotten the question.
Supposing that the covenant still remains, why do you take baptism for
the seal of it? The old way of sealing it is given up. What authority do
you show for using baptism in its place?"
"I take the initiating ordinance of religion for the time being," said
I, "whatever it may be. Is not baptism the initiating ordinance, as
circumcision was? When they built our long bridge, and the ferry-boats
ceased running, did the town put up a great sign over the gate, saying,
'It is enacted that this river shall continue to be crossed'? Did they
add, 'This bridge is hereby appointed as the way of getting over the
river'? Or, did not people take it for granted, when the bridge was
opened and the ferry-boats were withdrawn, that the bridge was designed
to be the way by which they were to pass over the river?
"Now, suppose so impossible a thing as this, that hereafter baptism
should, by divine revelation, be changed for anointing with oil, and
nothing were said about children. I would anoint the child with oil,
instead of baptizing it with water. We are to use the initiatory rite of
the church for the time being."
"But," said Mrs. Benson, "is there any resemblance between circumcision
and baptism?"
"There need be none," said I. "Resemblance does not give it efficacy,
but God's appointment of it. If marking the flesh in some way should be
appointed to succeed baptism, we need not look for a likeness between it
and baptism before we complied with the divine requirement."
"I do wish," said Mrs. Benson, "that the authority to baptize children
were more expressly stated in the Bible, to satisfy all who were not
brought up as we have been."
_Pastor._ The overwhelming majority of those who now receive the Bible
as the word of God find it there.
_Mrs. Benson._ But why did not Paul receive a revelation about it, as he
did about the Lord's Supper?
_Pastor._ Did that make the thing any more authoritative with us than
the original appointment? We will not prescribe to God how to teach us.
We will not make up our minds how he ought to have made a revelation,
but we will take that revelation and try to understand it.
"I agree to that," said they all.
_Pastor._ It appears to me that God prefers, on certain subjects, that
the world shall reason by inferences. It is a wise way of educating
children and youth, to leave some things to be learned in this way, and
not by setting everything before them, like too many examples in the
arithmetic wrought out.
We have changed the Sabbath from the seventh to the first day in the
week. It gives me a sublime idea of our Sabbath, that by some great,
silent alteration, it has come to pass that all the world keep the day
of Christ's resurrection, instead of the day which commemorated the work
of creation. I feel toward it as I do with regard to the noiseless
changes of the seasons, and the conformity of our habits and practices
to them. I left New York late in winter for the Azores, and, before I
expected it, the warm southern airs came one morning into my cabin
window. So the Christian Sabbath, with its beautiful associations,
flowed in upon the world without a formal proclamation. I feel thankful
to God for so regarding our intelligent natures, as to leave some
things, relating to ordinances, modes, and forms, to be inferred,
bringing great changes over the moral and spiritual world, and leaving
us to adjust ourselves and the administration of the appointed
ordinances to them. We can add nothing, we take nothing away from an
express, divine command; but, as the first disciples were left to infer
that a Sabbath was as necessary after Christ brought in the new creation
as before, and adjusted it to the celebration of the Saviour's rising
from the dead, so we infer that God's covenant with believing parents
for their children is as desirable now as ever; that all the original
reasons for it now exist; and, therefore, we take the initiating
ordinance of religion now, as the church in former ages did, and apply
it to the children. All church-members did it before Christ; all
church-members may do it now. God saw fit to make every adult member, at
least, of the Jewish family, a church-member; if he has changed and
restricted the terms of church-membership now, that is a sufficient
reason for not making the sealing of children as universal now as it was
before. That is to say, in both cases, it is a church-member's
privilege.
Without detailing the conversation at this point, let me say, I take it
for granted that Abraham, as my great spiritual ancestor, my
representative before God, my commissioner to receive for me and
transmit my privileges and blessings, continues in that relation unless
expressly set aside. Christ did not set him aside. How wonderfully he is
brought forward under the new dispensation, when it is said to us, "And
if ye be Christ's, then are ye Abraham's seed, and heirs according to
the promise." But, pray, why should Abraham be intruded in connection
with Christ, if he with his covenant is like a lapsed legacy, or a
superseded act of Congress? Why comes he here, in connection with the
Saviour, and tells me that if I am Christ's, then am I his, Abraham's,
seed? Hear this: "Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law,
being made a curse for us, that the blessing of Abraham might come on
the Gentiles through Jesus Christ." Wonderful elevation of Abraham and
his blessing, as the great type of all that Christ was to procure for
us! If Abraham and his covenant ceased with the Jewish people, how does
the blessing of Abraham fully come upon us, the Gentiles? But give me
his covenant for my children; then I see that Christ is executor of the
testament made with Abraham for his children; and I am one of the heirs;
as indeed I am, even if I have no children, but if I have, all of
Abraham's privileges and his covenanting God are mine and theirs.
So that, I said to my friends, I go to the Bible not to say, "Must I
baptize my children?" but, "Am I forbidden to baptize them?"
All my predecessors in the church of God, before Christ, had the
privilege of bringing their children into the bonds of the covenant with
themselves. If they felt as we do about it (and strict usage, and the
rich experience which they had had of its benefits, must have made it
inestimably precious to them), it is incredible that a sudden and total
discontinuance of it, at the beginning of Christianity, should not have
occasioned great clamor. The formalists, at least, would have
remonstrated at the seeming violation, by this new order of things, of
natural affection. For, as Doddridge well observes, "What would have
been done with the infants, or male children, of Christians?"--that is,
of converted Jews, as well as others. They could not circumcise them;
but their teachers, being spiritually-minded men, knew that circumcision
was a seal of faith, not merely of nationality, and must not the
converts have required some sign and symbol still for their children?
Now they had long been used to the baptism of proselytes and their
children; so that baptizing their own children, as a substitute for
circumcising them, could not have been a violent change with those whom
Peter's vision of the sheet had taught that the Gentiles should be
fellow-heirs. And when he, in one of his first sermons, said to the
whole house of Israel, "Ye are the children of the covenant," and "The
promise is unto you and to your children," we can account for their
utter silence as to any revocation by Christianity of the right and
privilege of applying the initiatory ordinance of religion, for the time
being, to a believer's child.
"But," said Mr. Benson, "the Saviour said, 'He that believeth, and is
baptized, shall be saved.' The apostles said, 'Repent and be baptized,
every one of you.' Show us, now, why this does not prove that repentance
and faith were not thus made essential to baptism. According to these
passages, none could be baptized who had not repented and believed.
This would exclude infants. 'Believe, and be baptized;' how do you
dispose of that, sir?"
"Very easily," said I.
Mrs. Benson exclaimed, "O, sir, if you can, all my difficulty is at an
end!"
"Well, then," said I, "in the first place, there is no such requirement
in the Bible. You see the expression very often, but it is not found in
Scripture. But tell me exactly what your difficulty is."
"Why," said she, "my husband has just stated it. People tell us the
Bible says, 'He that believeth, and is baptized, shall be saved.' So
they insist that no one should be baptized who is not old enough to
believe."
I told her that I could remove her difficulty in very few words.
"Suppose," said I, "that Abraham is preaching to full-grown men in
Canaan, and is trying to proselyte them from their idolatry to the
worship of God. He would say to them, 'Believe and be circumcised,'
would he not? for God ordained that certain proselytes should be
circumcised."
"Yes, sir," said two or three voices at once.
"Well, then," said I, "must it follow that children could not be
circumcised because Abraham said to men, 'Believe and be circumcised'?
How will that reasoning answer? Is it true? No. Little Isaac refuted it,
for he was circumcised even when his father was saying to his pagan
neighbors, 'Believe and be circumcised.'"
"True enough, all who believed, in Christ's day and the apostles',
needed to be baptized, because they were not children, but were grown
up, when Christian baptism began. Had an apostle, however, lived to see
the jailer's family, and that of Lydia, and of Stephanas, grown up, and
any in those families had remained unconverted, and then he had said to
them, 'Believe and be baptized,' there would be some force in saying
that believing and baptism must always go together."
"One other thing always troubled me," said Mr. Benson, "and that is,
that there was no seal of the covenant for any but male children. Now,
if the initiatory rite of Christianity be used for the same purpose as
that given to Abraham, why not confine it, as formerly, to males?"
"How interesting it is," said I, "and it is full of instruction, to see
God paying regard to the world's knowledge and progress, in all his
measures, and doing nothing prematurely. There is a very striking
illustration of this in the account of the fall.
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