Bertha and Her Baptism

N >> Nehemiah Adams >> Bertha and Her Baptism

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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
reaeppointed 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.

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