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INFANT BAPTISM. 
 
INFANT BAPTISM 
 
 ITS NATURE AND OBJECTS. 
 
 By the EEV. JAMES "LirMSDEN, 
 
 BARRY, FORFARSHIRE. 
 
 SECOND EDlflON. 
 
 EDINBURGH 
 SHEPHERD & ELLIOT, 15 PRINCES STEEET. 
 
 LONDON : HAMILTON, ADAMS, & CO. 
 MDCCCLVI. 
 

 WX'^< 
 
 o/'^r' 
 
 
 This Tract was drawn up by the appointment of 
 the Free Presbytery of Arbroath ; and having been 
 read as a Presbyterial exercise at their last meet- 
 ing, it is now, in a slightly extended form, pub- 
 lished at their request. 
 
 The object was simply to provide a statement 
 which might aid parents in understanding the 
 nature and obligations of Baptism, and thus con- 
 tribute to their acceptable and profitable observ- 
 ance of the sacrament when administered to their 
 children. 
 
 July 18, 1856. 
 

 I 
 
 INFANT BAPTISM. 
 
 The questions regarding the mode and subjects of 
 Baptism, though the more ordinary and prominent, 
 are not the only ones which the discussion of this 
 topic involves. Even after these are settled, there 
 remains the not less important inquiry, What is 
 the use or meaning of Baptism, especially of Infant 
 Baptism? What good purpose does it serve? What 
 spiritual benefit does it confer ? This inquiry may 
 be regarded as raised by a controversialist, or 
 as proceeding from a humble, anxious believer. 
 In either case, it deserves to be entertained, and 
 plainly needs to be satisfied — on the one hand, in 
 order to obviate an objection which is often and not 
 unsuccessfully urged ; on the other hand, in order 
 to promote an intelligent observance and comfort- 
 able improvement of the ordinance. Assuming, 
 then, that infants are proper subjects of baptism, 
 and that the pouring or sprinkling of water is a 
 
6 INFANT BAPTISM. 
 
 lawful and scriptm*al mode of its administration, let 
 us endeavour to trace, with reference to the meaning 
 and efficacy of Infant Baptism, the analogy to the 
 Lord's Supper, which their common sacramental 
 nature implies, and to determine for it a character 
 intermediate between the idea of mere symbolism, 
 and the Romish doctrine of sacramental grace. 
 
 The commonly received doctrine of the Reformed 
 Churches, as to the nature and object of baptism, is 
 concisely and comprehensively stated in our Shorter 
 Catechism : — ^' Baptism is a sacrament wherein the 
 washing with water in the name of the Father, and 
 of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, doth signify and 
 seal our ingrafting into Christ, and partaking of the 
 benefits of the covenant of grace, and our engage- 
 ment to be the Lord's." This definition, put into the 
 mouth of a believer, is evidently intended to include 
 infant baptism ; and we will best attain the end of 
 our present investigation, by examining the place 
 which is here assigned to it, by inquiring to what 
 extent, or in what sense, the representation here 
 given of this ordinance as a sign and ^e^Z harmonises 
 with the view which Scripture warrants us to take 
 of baptism as administered to infants. 
 
 L Let us first inquire whether baptism is a SIGN, 
 and if so, of what truths infant baptism is signi- 
 ficant. 
 
 None but a very cursory observer will receive, 
 even at first sight, the impression that baptism, as 
 exhibited in tlie New Testament, is merely a badge 
 
BAPTISM A SIGN. 7 
 
 of Christian profession, the initiatory rite by which 
 the transition from Judaism or heathenism to 
 Christianity, or the assumption of the Christian 
 name, is externally recognised. The very fact 
 that baptism has supplied many figurative expres- 
 sions, in which the sacred writers have embodied 
 the deepest spiritual truths, is enough to shew that 
 it is not a mere arbitrary ceremony, having no 
 symbolical fitness in itself, but dependent for all 
 its significance on the words by which its celebra- 
 tion is accompanied. It evidently has a natural 
 resemblance to these Gospel verities ; and that it 
 should have been instituted expressly in order to 
 represent them, or picture them forth to our eyes, 
 is in entire harmony with God's mode of teach- 
 ing his Chm'ch in preceding dispensations. No 
 sooner was the covenant of grace proclaimed in 
 the hearing of our first parents, than God added, 
 in the rite of sacrifice, a symbolical explanation 
 of the promise of the woman's seed. And w^hat- 
 ever else the various sacrifices of the temple service 
 were, they were at least signs — scenic or pictorial 
 representations, of the doctrine of pardon and 
 reconciliation through a Saviour's death, and they 
 were designed to illustrate and interpret the fre- 
 quent but necessarily dim statements in which it 
 had been announced, and thus to convey to the 
 mind some more distinct idea of its principle or 
 outline than could be communicated by the shadowy 
 language of promise and prophecy alone. Every 
 
8 INFANT BAPTISM. 
 
 one who considers how greatly the understanding 
 of a verbal description is helped by pictures, how 
 much more vivid the impression which the eye can 
 take in at a glance, than what the ear can transmit 
 from even the most accurate language, will discern 
 the wisdom and condescension of God in thus accom- 
 modating his plan of teaching heavenly things to 
 this characteristic of our mental constitution. 
 
 The clear and full disclosure of the plan of mercy 
 in the light of the Gospel day, has diminished — it 
 might be thought to have superseded — the necessity 
 of the Church's dependence on symbolic institutes 
 for her knowledge of Divine truth. But though 
 the elaborate and complex system of the Old Tes- 
 tament ritual has been utterly swept away, God has 
 seen it meet still to have respect to the weakness of 
 our perception, and has not altogether discarded the 
 use of visible and significant elements as aids in 
 our spiritual instruction. He has appointed in the 
 New Testament Church two ordinances, which, 
 though contrasted with the Levitical ceremonies in 
 their simplicity, as well as in the fewness of their 
 number, yet have this in common, that they con- 
 sist in the ritual use of visible material elements. 
 One of these is admitted to be of the same nature 
 as the Levitical observances — in so far as they were 
 signs of Divine truths. Can we imagine that the 
 other has no such design or function — that it stands 
 alone amidst all the apparently similar ordinances 
 which God, throughout the history of His Church, 
 
BAPTISM A SIGN. 9 
 
 has instituted^ its earthly elements having no Divine 
 signification, uttering no voice of heavenly instruc- 
 tion? In the Lord's Supper — which consists in 
 the "giving and receiving of bread and wine," we 
 have " Christ's death shewed forth" — we have set 
 before us, in expressive element and action, Christ 
 incarnate, Christ crucified, Christ crucified the en- 
 tire nourishment of his people, Christ crucified 
 becoming the nourishment of each individual soul, 
 as he is given to that soul by God, in his being 
 received by faith, and through that closest union 
 with each believer which faith effects. What 
 fulness of Gospel truth regarding the life of the 
 believer, and under what unexampled simplicity of 
 outward form ! And if so much of Gospel truth 
 regarding the source and mode of a believer's 
 nourishment is portrayed in this ordinance, may 
 we not suppose that the whole remainder of the 
 sum and substance of the Gospel truth — viz., how 
 a sinner can become a believer and a partaker of 
 the heritage of Christ's people — is represented in 
 the other ? and that thus, under these two simple 
 ordinances, there is comprehended the doctrine of 
 the grace of Christ — not less fully than in all the 
 various, and costly, and arduous observances of the 
 former economy ? 
 
 In order to ascertain of what spiritual realities 
 baptism is significant, we must inquire what light 
 Scripture casts upon the meaning of each of its two 
 parts, the element and the action. 
 
10 INFANT BAPTISM. 
 
 1. ^\\% sacramenial elemeyitj or "sensible sign," is 
 WATER. As applied outwardly to the body, water 
 conveys the idea of cleansing, and thus must here 
 be understood as representing the agent of spiritual 
 purifying. But the blood of Christ cleanses the 
 soul from guilt, and the Holy Spirit washes away 
 sin's moral pollution ; and, therefore, it is very 
 commonly said that the water in baptism signifies 
 both. It is very true, that these are never disjoined 
 in the actual application of the blessings of the 
 covenant of grace ; that when we speak of or repre- 
 sent the one, we cannot forget the presence of the 
 other ; that the blood of Christ may be regarded 
 as comprehensive of the gift of the Spirit, as its 
 purchase and consequence ; and that the gift of the 
 Spirit must always be viewed as implying the virtue 
 and the spirituality .of Christ's blood as its source. 
 But still, though these are inseparable and mutually 
 dependent, yet they are distinct parts of the great 
 salvation, having separate and distinguishable re- 
 sults. And it may be submitted w^iether a more 
 accurate and careful interpretation would not regard 
 the sign, however much it inferentially implied, as 
 properly and directly signifying only one of these 
 two — and that one the Holy Spirit. For — 
 
 (1.) To regard the one sign, icatcr^ as equally, 
 primarily, and at the same time denoting two se- 
 parate things, seems at variance with that simplicity 
 and distinctness which ought to characterise sym- 
 bols even more than language. There are not 
 
THE SACRAMENTAL ELEMENT. 11 
 
 awanting instances, indeed, throughout the Jewisli 
 ritual, in which one type had a twofold primary 
 signification, as, for example, the Holy of Holies, 
 which is spoken of both as a figure of Heaven 
 (Heb. ix. 7, 12, 24), and also as a figure of the 
 human body of Jesus in which the Deity was en- 
 shrined (Heb. X. 20 ; John ii. 21) ; but then, it is 
 not to be taken in these two senses at one and the 
 same time, or when looked on from one point of 
 view. These two distinct significations are connected 
 with two equally distinct lines of interpretation 
 running through the whole series of related sym- 
 bols. It is questionable whether there is any in- 
 stance, in the complicated system of Old Testament 
 types, in which two separate things are simulta- 
 neously figured forth in one act or emblem, and 
 no separate results exhibited as corresponding to 
 each of them. This were not complexity, but con- 
 fusion. It was rather customary to employ several 
 earthly things as similitudes of one heavenly thing, 
 than to find one of the things of earth adequate to 
 represent more than one spiritual reality. 
 
 (2.) In the figurative language of Scripture, ivater 
 is a frequent emblem of the Holy Spirit. There 
 are those numerous passages in which, as the means 
 of allaying thirst, or of quickening the processes of 
 vegetation (such as Isa. xliv. 3, 4 ; Ps. Ixxii. 6 ; 
 John vii. 37-39), water is introduced to represent 
 the Spirit's refreshing, reviving, invigorating grace. 
 There are also other passages in which the figure 
 
12 INFANT BAPTISM. 
 
 of " pouring out," used to express God's dispensa- 
 tion of the Spirit, seems to be borrowed from the 
 manner of the application of water which was most 
 familiar to the notice of the Jew (such as Zech. 
 xii. 10; Ezek. xxxix. 29 ; Prov. i. 23 ; Joel ii. 28 ; 
 Isa. xxxii. 15).* Apart from these, however, we 
 have tliree texts in the New Testament which afford 
 a manifest illustration of the water in baptism, 
 as suggested by its being used for the washing 
 of the person. In Eph. v. 26, it is said, ^' Christ 
 loved the Church, and gave himself for it, that he 
 might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of 
 water by the word ; " where the washing with water 
 evidently means nothing else than the operation of 
 the Holy Spirit in sanctification or spiritual cleans- 
 ing. In Titus iii. 5, we read of being saved " by 
 the washing of regeneration, and the renewing of 
 the Holy Ghost," and in John iii. 5, of being '•'■ bom 
 of water and the Spirit." It is not necessary to 
 suppose that in these two passages baptism is de- 
 noted, or even alluded to.f The same idea — the 
 
 * Unless, indeed, it should be supposed that in any of these 
 instances the reference is to the pouring out of the anointing oil. It 
 is worthy of notice, especially if 'pouring be regarded as the proper 
 mode of using the water in baptism, that while this expression often 
 describes the bestowal of the Spirit, we nowhere find it employed to 
 describe the application of Christ's blood to the believer. 
 
 f Dr Halley of Manchester, in his work on the Sacraments, while 
 advocating very low views of the nature and design of these ordi- 
 nances, singularly enough contends that baptism is the thing actually 
 meant by the " washing of regeneration" in one of these texts, and 
 the being " born of water" in the other. His reasoning in support of 
 this opinion is very unsatisfactory and inadequate. He argues with 
 
THE SACRAMENTAL ELEMENT. 13 
 
 purifying virtue of water in ordinary life — suggested 
 the use of this element equally in the figurative 
 ordinance and the figurative language ;* and accord- 
 ing to a very common rule of Hebrew composition, 
 which demands that the same thought be expressed 
 twice in the same sentence — once figuratively and 
 once literally — it is easy to see that the word and 
 in each of these two texts is equivalent to the word 
 even^ and that the washing and water are only other 
 forms of describing the renewing or regenerating 
 agency of the Holy Spirit. 
 
 (3.) Scripture, adopting the name of the earthly 
 ordinance to express the act of heavenly grace which 
 it represents, repeatedly speaks of baptism with the 
 Holy Ghost, never of baptism with the blood of 
 Christ. Thus, marking at once the resemblance 
 and the contrast between the figurative and the 
 spiritual baptism, John says, ^' I indeed have bap- 
 tized you with water, but He shall hajjtize you ivith 
 the Holy Ghosts — (Mark i. 8 ; Matthew iii. 11.) 
 Our Saviour uses the same language, " For John 
 truly baptized with water, but ye shall be baptized 
 
 muchingenuity against the Romish and Puseyite inference from this 
 interpretation, that baptism and regeneration are simultaneous; but 
 how he avoids the obvious conclusion, from his own interpretation of 
 John iii. 5, that baptism is indispensably necessary to salvation, it is 
 impossible to understand. 
 
 * Thus, also, the expression in ^ o\m\\. , Eating the flesh and drinking 
 the blood of the Son of man, neither means nor refers to the Lord's 
 Supper, but is derived from the same idea as the ordinance, viz., 
 the idea that Christ, by his body and blood, purchased, and in himself 
 possesses, all that is necessary for our spiritual life and nourishment. 
 
14 INFANT BAPTISM. 
 
 with the Holy Ghost."— (Acts i. 5, xi. 16.) And 
 that it may not be imagined that the promised 
 spiritual baptism comprehended nothing more than 
 a communication of miraculous gifts, the apostle 
 describes it as consisting in the saving renovation 
 of the soul, '' For hy one Spirit are we all baptized 
 into one body." — (1 Cor. xii, 13.) And though 
 the name of the Holy Spirit is not mentioned, his 
 work is evidently denoted in the similar figm'ative 
 use of the name of the ordinance, in Kom. vi. 3, 4; 
 Gal. iii. 27 ; Col. ii. 12. 
 
 (4.) The baptism with water, which, as an ini- 
 tiatory rite, is to be administered only once, cor- 
 responds better with the Spirit's act of regeneration, 
 which is never repeated, than with the sprinkling 
 of Christ's blood, of which, in order to the removal 
 of guilt, believers need the renewal day by day. 
 
 2. The sacramental action is THE WASHING WITH 
 WATER IN THE NAME OF THE FATHER, AND OF 
 
 THE Son, and of the Holy Ghost. In gene- 
 ral, this may be said to signify the Spirit's cleansing 
 of our souls from the pollution of sin. But though 
 he does this throughout the whole course of our 
 sanctification, yet because, as has just been re- 
 marked, the baptismal washing is an initiatory rite 
 observed once for all, it must be regarded as repre- 
 senting the instantaneous and decisive effect of 
 the Spirit's first coming into saving contact with 
 the soul — that is, our regeneration. Thus under- 
 stood, this action in infant baptism is peculiarly 
 
THE SACRAMENTAL ACTION. 15 
 
 significant, and emphatically illustrates and con- 
 firms several important and primary Scripture doc- 
 trines. 
 
 (1.) It teaches the doctrine of man's original 
 depravity. The baptism of infants implies that they 
 stand in need of spiritual cleansing ; but, as they 
 have not committed actual sin, nor contracted pol- 
 lution from education or example, it is evident that 
 their sinfulness is inherent and original, that they 
 have derived a corrupt and sinful nature from our 
 first parents. 
 
 (2.) It teaches that the renovation of our hearts 
 must he effected from without ourselves. The water 
 poured upon the body by the appointment of God, 
 exhibits the Holy Spirit as the alone author of our 
 spiritual regeneration. It is not by the develop- 
 ment of any good qualities which are latent in us, 
 nor by any efforts originating in ourselves, that the 
 depravity of our hearts is to be overcome and re- 
 moved, but by an act of divine power, in which we 
 are as truly passive as is the most unconscious in- 
 fant under the dispensation of the baptismal water. 
 
 (3.) It teaches that our renewal and salvation are 
 entirely of grace ^ and not of works. Infants have 
 performed no good works. They have done "neither 
 good nor evil." Whatever may have been at any 
 time said of the goodness, or purity, or innocence 
 of the souls of infants, no one has ever attributed 
 to them the possession of a meritorious righteous- 
 ness of their own. When, therefore, on them, all 
 
16 INFANT BAPTISM. 
 
 unrighteous as they are, the emblematical water is 
 poured, can there be a more expressive illustration 
 of the doctrine that we do not become the objects 
 of God's favour because of anything good in us ? 
 Can there be a more exact representation of the 
 subject of the Church's thankful acknowledgment, 
 ''Not by works of righteousness which we have done, 
 but according to his mercy he hath saved us, by the 
 washing of regeneration and the renewing of the 
 Holy Ghost ? " And does it not cast some light 
 on our Saviour's saying, '' Except ye be converted 
 and become as little children" — except ye stand 
 before him as destitute of righteousness of your 
 own as little children are — '' ye cannot enter the 
 kingdom of God? " 
 
 (4.) It teaches that infants are not incapahle of 
 heing the subjects of saving grace. If infants were 
 known to be in no case capable of receiving the 
 thing signified, the sign could not be imparted to 
 them without impropriety and profanation. It 
 does not declare with regard to any particular in- 
 fant that he is saved, far less does it regenerate and 
 save him ; but it teaches that infants may be saved, 
 and thus is in harmony with our Saviour's gracious 
 words, '' Suffer little children to come unto me." 
 
 (5.) Baptism (not infant baptism merely) teaches 
 the connexion between the ivorh of the Holy Ghost 
 and the work of Christ. The sacrament does not 
 consist merely in the washing with water, but in 
 " the washing with water in the name of the Father, 
 
THE SACRAMENTAL ACTION. 17 
 
 and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." What- 
 ever fitness there is in both the element and the 
 bare action to symbolise the great things of salva- 
 tion, yet they do not receive this symbolical signi- 
 fication, any more than their sacramental virtue, 
 without the accompanying word.* When, there- 
 fore, the baptismal water is poured out, and along 
 with this we hear the proclamation of the thrice 
 blessed name, we are taught that the outpouring of 
 the Spirit in regenerating efficacy is one of the 
 fruits of the covenant of grace. For not otherwise 
 than in this covenant are the three persons of the 
 Godhead revealed to us. And while the very men- 
 tion of their distinctive names suggests that each 
 has his several part in the work of our salvation, 
 the ordinance, as thus administered, reminds us that 
 the Spirit imparts his grace in harmony with the 
 purpose of the Father and the Son, and in orderly 
 dependence on their counsel and operation ; that he 
 does not come to any soul except in consequence 
 of that work of Christ in which the covenant has 
 
 * " For as tbere cannot be a seal, but that quhilk is the seal of 
 ane evident, and gif tbe seal be separated fra the evident, it is not a 
 seal ; bot look quhat it is be nature, it is na mair ; sa there cannot 
 be a sacrament, except it be hung to the evident of the word ; bot 
 look what the sacrament was be nature, it is na mair. Was it a 
 common piece bread, it remains common bread, except it be hung to 
 the evident of the word. Therefore the word only cannot be a sacra- 
 ment, nor the element only cannot be a sacrament ; but word and 
 element conjointly make a sacrament ; and sa Augustine said weill, 
 Let the word come to the element, and ye sail have a sacrament." — 
 Robert Bruce's Sermons on the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper. — 
 Wodrow Society Edition, p. 7. 
 
 B 
 
18 INFANT BAPTISM. 
 
 been confirmed and irrevocably sealed ; that he 
 cannot regenerate any single soul beyond the limits 
 which Christ's redemption embraces, or except as 
 he is sent forth by the Father to apply the blessings 
 which the Son has purchased, to manifest and 
 magnify the virtue of his precious blood. 
 
 (6.) It teaches that regeneration, which the 
 washing with water represents, produces faith in 
 the name^ and subjection to the authority^ of the 
 triune God. The expression employed in the 
 baptismal formula is not '' in the name," as if it 
 were merely meant that baptism is administered 
 under the sanction and by the appointment of God, 
 but '' into the name," as if this name were, in some 
 sense, the end or object to which baptism points. 
 The Israelites are said to have been " baptized 
 into Moses in the cloud and in the sea " (1 Cor. 
 X. 2), because that deliverance in which Moses 
 had been their leader was the last and brightest 
 of a long series '^i attestations to his being the 
 vicegerent of God, and implied their obliga- 
 tion to surrender themselves to him in most 
 implicit confidence and submission, to be so 
 thoroughly one with him, as if their own wills 
 and purposes were absorbed into his. Our being 
 baptized " into the name of the Father, and of the 
 Son, and of the Holy Ghost," implies a similar 
 devotedness — implies our cherishing a soul-sub- 
 duing ireverence to that thrice holy name, or 
 rather to Him who, in that name, makes himself 
 
THE SACRAMENTAL ACTIOX. 19 
 
 known to us as the God of the everlasting cove- 
 nant, the knowledge of whose glory is revealed ^' in 
 the face of Jesus Christ." This reverence maybe 
 described as comprised in faith on his testimony 
 concerning Jesus, and obedience to his command- 
 ments ; and the fact of its being by water that we are 
 baptized, emphatically signifies, that regeneration, 
 our being '^ born of water and the Spirit," produces 
 in us these results — not only washes the soul from 
 sin, but also implants faith and new obedience — 
 not only destroys " the old man with his lusts," 
 but creates the elements of the new man after the 
 image of God, " in righteousness and true holiness " 
 (Eph. iv. 24). 
 
 (7.) It teaches that an immediate consequence of 
 regeneration is the union of the soul to Christ. It 
 signifies '^ our ingrafting into Christ and partaking 
 of the benefits of the covenant of grace." This is 
 not merely an inference from what has just been 
 stated regarding faith as one of the fruits of rege- 
 neration, but it is the distinct and independent tes- 
 timony of numerous Scripture passages. One of 
 these is Gal. iii. 27, " As many of you as have 
 been baptized into Christ have put on Christ." 
 The expression ^' baptized into Christ " very evi- 
 dently cannot mean sacramentally baptized with 
 watevy for both the context and the analogy of 
 Scripture language demand an interpretation of 
 " putting on Christ," which is far from being appli- 
 cable to ^^ as many as " have received the outward 
 
20 INFANT BAPTISM. 
 
 ordinance. The apostle is not speaking of profes- 
 sion and sacrament, but of spiritual standing and 
 spiritual experience. The " baptized into Christ" 
 can, therefore, be only those who are vitally united 
 to him by a union close, absorbing, and identifying, 
 as we have already seen to be in some measure 
 portrayed by the " being baptized into Moses." 
 But what could have suggested or warranted the 
 transference of the name of the outward ordinance 
 to figure forth this most hidden and heavenly exer- 
 cise of the Spirit's office, had not the ordinance 
 itself been its selected symbol ? And if so, what 
 does the baptism with the Holy Ghost include ? 
 How much of blessing does his first contact ^vith 
 the sinner's soul communicate? It not merely 
 creates a right spirit — it not merely writes the 
 Divine laws upon the '' fleshy tables " of the new 
 heart — but, at the same moment, effectively re- 
 vealing tlie glory of Christ, enables the soul, in the 
 earliest exercise of its new dispositions, unhesi- 
 tatingly, thankfully, adoringly, to embrace Christ 
 as its sole righteousness and sufficient salvation ; 
 and thus uniting the sinner by faith to the Saviour, 
 brings liim into the position of unassailable safety, 
 as if hiding his life in the very body of Christ. 
 ^' For by one spirit we are all baptized into one body." 
 Still more distinctly and forcibly, perhaps, is 
 this signification of baptism unfolded in other 
 passages*. For when the apostle speaks of be- 
 lievers as not only ''baptized into Jesus Christ," 
 
THE SACRAMENTAL ACTION. 21 
 
 but " baptized into liis death," nay, " buried with 
 him by baptism into death" (Hom. vi. 3, 4), and 
 '^ buried Avith him in baptism " (Col. ii. 12), he is 
 evidently describing not the sacramental, but the 
 spiritual baptism — '^ baptism with the Holy Ghost." 
 His meaning is rendered very plain by similar ex- 
 pressions which he uses elsewhere. Thus he speaks 
 of believers as '' dead with Christ " (Eom. vi. 8), 
 " dead to the law by the body of Christ " (Rom. 
 vii. 4), and ^' crucified with Christ" (Gal. ii. 20), 
 in the sense of their having his sufferings and death 
 accounted to them for the expiation of their sins. 
 So soon as by that faith, which is ''of the opera- 
 tion of God," we accept and trust the death of 
 Jesus as our sufficient atonement, we are regarded 
 in the eye of the eternal and righteous laAv as one 
 with him, yea, as having been comprehended and 
 represented in him throughout all his vicarious 
 work, as having shared in his death and grave, 
 because, indeed, they were our punishment, and as 
 entitled to the reward of his finished obedience, as 
 if it had been rendered by ourselves. When, 
 therefore, the apostle speaks of our being '' bap- 
 tized " by the Holy Ghost " into Christ's death," 
 and by this baptism " buried with him," he not 
 only vividly represents our spiritual oneness with 
 the Redeemer's person, but describes this oneness 
 as effected through the Holy Ghost's bringing us 
 to realise the Saviour's death as oiu' ransom, and 
 thus securing us in the participation of all the 
 
22 INFANT BAPTISM. 
 
 blessed realities of his righteousness and resun-ec- 
 tion. 
 
 Of these truths, then, baptism, and especially 
 infant baptism, is significant. And thus under- 
 stood, how beautifully does it combine with the 
 other sacrament, in giving a complete representa- 
 tion of the work of grace in the soul from its com- 
 mencement to its consummation ! In the Lord's 
 Supper, we see the believer in the house of God, 
 enjoying communion with him, offering spiri-i 
 tual sacrifices, living on the most plentiful and 
 costly provision which Heaven can supply, en- 
 gaged in the services which shall occupy him, and 
 enjoying the gifts which shall be sufficient for 
 him, to the last moment of his earthly existence. 
 Yea, through this ordinance, we are permitted to 
 see him even after he has passed within the veil ; 
 for is it not the emblem and the earnest of " the 
 marriage-supper of the Lamb," of the " gathering 
 together unto God of all his saints, " of the 
 eating of the ^^ tree of life which is in the midst 
 of the Paradise of God." And in baptism we 
 read all the preceding part of the believer's spi- 
 ritual history — from the time when he was ^^ by 
 nature a child of wrath, even as others" — lost and 
 helpless — till, of God's mere mercy, he is made, 
 through the Holy Spirit, the partaker of a heavenly 
 life and a divine nature, and is, through union to 
 the Saviour, advanced to reconciliation with God, 
 " put among the children " in the Father's house, 
 
IS BAPTISM A SEAL ? 23 
 
 and, on the very threshold, welcomed with the glad- 
 dening salutation, " Wherefore thou art no more a 
 servant, but a son ; and if a son, then an heir of 
 God through Christ." 
 
 But is baptism no more than a sign ? We do 
 not undervalue or lightly estimate its function of 
 teaching heavenly truths through earthly elements, 
 of illustrating the doctrines of salvation, and ad- 
 dressing to the eye the messages which the words 
 of Scriptm-e address to the ear. But still we ask — 
 Does it serve no other purpose than this ? When 
 a child has this ordinance administered to him, is he 
 merely used as a convenient instmment upon which 
 to repeat to the Church this exhibition or scenic re- 
 presentation of Divine truth? Does the baptism 
 say nothing with regard to that particular child 
 more than with regard to all other children in the 
 world? Does it neither create nor indicate any 
 special relation between that child and God ? If 
 so, then baptism holds a peculiar and isolated place 
 amongst the many ritual observances which God 
 has from the beginning instituted in the Church. 
 The sacrifices not merely held forth to view the 
 doctrine of a promised atonement, but marked the 
 relation of the worshipper to God — were under- 
 stood to express his confession and confidence ; and 
 if he was intelligent and sincere in his observance, 
 they conveyed a message of peace to him from God. 
 
24 INFANT BAPTISM. 
 
 The Lord's Supper, by tlie very terms of its insti- 
 tution, can be fitly observed only by those who are 
 within the limits of that covenant of which it speaks. 
 And, finally, circumcision, into the place of which 
 we understand baptism to have come, is expressly 
 described as a seal of the covenant, marking the 
 children of Abraham as embraced within it, and con- 
 firming to them its promises as their inheritance ? 
 And how can we suppose that baptism — which is 
 symbolical of the same spiritual purity as circum- 
 cision, " the circumcision of the heart " (Col. ii. 11) 
 — has a lower place among the ordinances of the 
 Church — that it is not also a seal to those to whom 
 it rightfully belongs ? 
 
 II. Let us then, secondly, inquire of what bap- 
 tism, especially as administered to infants, is a seal. 
 
 When we consider the manner in which Scrip- 
 ture warrants us to employ this word to describe a 
 ritual observance, we cannot avoid the conclusion 
 that it has its proper and accurate analogy in the 
 use of a seal amongst men to confirm covenant 
 engagements — to add a stronger security to the 
 obligation which a signature imposes.* The rain- 
 bow, called the tohen^ was, in this sense, the seal 
 of God's covenant that He would not overwhelm 
 the earth with a second deluge. It was not the 
 covenant itself — nor did it enter into the making 
 of the covenant — nor was it merely an evidence or 
 commemoration of the covenant's having been made; 
 
 * Neh. ix. 38. 
 
CIRCUMCISION A SEAL. 25 
 
 but it was the evidence or pledge that the covenant 
 would be kept — so that, on the one hand, God 
 thus speaks of it, '' I will look upon it, that I may 
 remember the everlasting covenant between God 
 and every living creature;" and, on the other 
 hand, when man looks on it, he may assure him- 
 self that as certainly as that bow is in the cloud, 
 so certainly will God never again send " a flood to 
 destroy all flesh" (Gen. ix. 11, 16). 
 
 Circumcision, in a somewhat similar manner, 
 was a seal of God's covenant-promise to Abraham. 
 The apostle speaks of the " sign of circumcision" 
 as '''■ a seal of the righteousness of the faith which he 
 had being yet uncircumcised " (Rom. v. 11), that 
 is, a seal of God's promise to account to him for 
 justification that righteousness — the law-fulfilling 
 righteousness of the Saviour — which Abraham had 
 already by faith accepted. It was not, on the part 
 of God, the seal or attestation of Abraham's faith, 
 or of his being a believer. On Abraham's part, 
 his having received this sign may have been an 
 evidence of his faith ; but, on the part of God, it 
 was a seal or attestation to the sufficiency and 
 availableness of the '^righteousness" which was 
 the substance of the promise — a seal superadded to 
 the covenant which had been founded on the pro- 
 vided "righteousness," and into which Abraham 
 had by faith previously entered — a seal or assur- 
 ance to Abraham that if he was indeed a believer, 
 or as certainly as he was a believer, so certainly 
 
2!5 INFANT BAPTISM. 
 
 would all God's promises to him be fulfilled. And 
 when, from this statement of the apostle, we look 
 back to the original institution of the rite,* we 
 find that it was the pledge and attestation, on the 
 part of God, to those who received it, not that they 
 were Abraham's children (it might be erroneously 
 or deceitfully administered by man), but that, as 
 surely as they were in the line of prescribed 
 descent, would they possess the temporal inherit- 
 ance, and as surely as the spiritual condition was 
 fulfilled in them would they be '' justified with 
 faithful Abraham." 
 
 The Lord's Supper presents us with another 
 obvious illustration. It is not the covenant itself 
 — nor is it the making of the covenant — nor is it 
 the means or the occasion of bringing us into it. 
 We are understood to have previously become, 
 by faith, personally interested in the covenant. 
 In the very act of observing the supper, each wor- 
 shipper professes his faith in Christ, his having 
 accepted the death of Jesus as the sacrifice for his 
 sins, and his reliance on him for all spiritual 
 blessings. He is understood to say, '^ As truly 
 as I now take this bread and this cup into my 
 hands, as truly as I eat this bread and drink this 
 wine, so truly do I take the crucified Jesus to be 
 my only Saviour, and rely on him alone for par- 
 
 * Gen. xvii. 10, " This is my covenant," evidently meaning, this 
 is the seal of my covenant, "which ye shall keep, between me and 
 you, and thy seed after thee ; Every mau-child among you shall be 
 circumcised." 
 
lord's supper a seal. 27 
 
 don, for spiritual nourishment, for eternal life." It 
 is on the supposition of his intelligence and sin- 
 cerity that tlie sacramental elements are put into 
 his hands, as a seal of God's promise to him indi- 
 vidually. And God, through these, is saying to him, 
 '' If you are what you profess to be — a believer, 
 then as surely as you now eat of this bread and 
 drink of this cup, so surely will I give you Christ's 
 body and blood, the things which these elements 
 signify, to nourish and feed you unto life eternal." 
 If the heart-searching One were himself directly 
 the administrator of this ordinance, and if only 
 those were admitted to it whose faith, like that of 
 Abraham, was manifest in His sight. He would 
 address them no otherwise, except that the condi- 
 tion would be no longer necessary to be announced, 
 and the promise would be as absolute in form as 
 any example which Scripture contains.* In this 
 case, to each communicant God might be under- 
 stood as saying, '' As surely as I now put this 
 bread and this cup into your hands, so certainly 
 give I unto you the body and blood of Jesus to 
 nourish you to life eternal." This same promise 
 is distinctly held forth in the Bible to every be- 
 liever. And the Lord's Supper, as a seal^ is only 
 
 * Heb. viii. 8-11 ; Jer. xxxi. 31-34, afford a specimen of a pro- 
 mise absolute in appearance. But tlie promise is exhibited as part 
 of the covenant ; it is, indeed, called "the covenant." The condi- 
 tion is implied, viz. — the work of Christ. This condition is not 
 stated, only because it is regarded as having been fulfilled, and there 
 consequently rested no contingency on the fulfilment of the promise. 
 
28 INFANT BAPTISM. 
 
 a repetition of this promise. Is it asked, Of what 
 use can it be, if it amounts to no more than this ? 
 It is like the oath (Heb. vi. 17, 18), an attestation 
 superadded to the promise, for helping the infir- 
 mity of our faith ; and the statement made regard- 
 ing the one is applicable to the other, ''God, willing 
 more abundantly to shew unto the heirs of promise 
 the immutability of his counsel, confirmed it by an 
 oath; that by two immutable things, in which it 
 was impossible for God to lie, we might have a 
 strong consolation, who have fled for refuge to lay 
 hold upon the hope set before us." 
 
 In baptism, also, as administered to adults, the 
 signs not only represent gospel truth, but also ex- 
 hibit gospel promise. The sacramental signs, 
 and the New Testament instances, define the 
 position of the adult in receiving this ordinance. 
 He professes to have those feelings which are the 
 earliest fruits of regeneration — repentance of his sins 
 — a desire to wash them away * — and faith, for the 
 
 * Mark i, 4, 5 ; Acts ii. 38. It is important to notice the con- 
 nexion wliicli these passages seem to recognise between baptism and 
 the spiritual blessing, John's baptism is called the "baptism of 
 repentance for (unto) the remission of sins." The outward rite itself 
 did not ensure pardon, but repentance did. Repentance was " unto 
 forgiveness;" and baptism, which was the sign, or implied the pro- 
 fession of repentance, was therefore called the baptism of (or, signify- 
 ing) that repentance which is unto forgiveness. The exhortation of 
 Peter on the day of Pentecost sets forth this same connexion between 
 these three. The command of Ananias to Paul (Acts xxii. 16), 
 •'Arise, and be baptized, and wash away thy sins, calling on the 
 name of the Lord," rnay be understood either as meaning that, by 
 being baptized, he would openly and conclusively abjure his former 
 
WHAT DO SACRAMENTS SEAL ? 29 
 
 realisation of this, in the name of the Father, and 
 of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost ; and in the ad- 
 ministration of it, God says, " If yon are what yoa 
 profess to be, then as surely as this water is now 
 applied to you, so assuredly are you, and shall you 
 be, ' engrafted into Christ,' and made a ' partaker 
 of all the blessings of the covenant of gTace.' " 
 Baptism does not make him a partaker, but is a 
 means of enabling him, if he have faith, to cherish 
 the assurance that he will partake for ever. 
 
 From these instances, then, it appears that the 
 sacraments are at once signs of gospel doctrine and 
 seals of gospel promise. They are not seals or 
 attestations, on the part of God, to the character 
 of the receiver.* Their function, as seals, pre- 
 supposes that the receiver has a certain character ; 
 and on this supposition they seal or confirm to 
 him the promise that God will bestow certain 
 blessings. They do not seal the same grace which 
 constitutes the supposed character, nor any grace 
 as presently or previously possessed, but the pro- 
 mise that future grace will be imparted. AYhat- 
 ever else they may be as channels of grace, or 
 badges of Christian profession — that will be after- 
 profession, and all the sins which it implied, or as ascribing the 
 washing away of sins to his "calling on the name of the Lord," his 
 believing prayer for the blessings signified and sealed in baptism. 
 
 * The sealing of the Spirit must not be confounded with the seals 
 of the covenant. The Spirit seals, or inwardly marks, individuals as 
 the children, or people, or property of God, Eph. i. 13, iv. 30. The 
 sacraments outwardly seal the promises of the covenant to believers 
 as their inheritance. 
 
30 INFANT BAPTISM. 
 
 wards considered — yet as seals^ they are nothing 
 more than outward significant pictorial proposals 
 to the individual believer of those promises as 
 made to him individually, which, in the word, 
 are made to all believers in common, and they are 
 designed so to set both the substance and the 
 security of the promises before every receiver who 
 believes in Christ, that he may be able, with 
 increased confidence and joy fulness, to appropriate 
 them, and to anticipate their fulfilment to himself. 
 They rank along with God's written luord of pro- 
 mise, as a ''visible word" of promise, and although 
 they tell us nothing more than the written word, 
 yet they tell it more impressively ; and by this 
 twofold proclamation, God appears as " willing 
 more abundantly to shew to the heirs of promise 
 the immutability of his counsel, that those might 
 have a strong consolation,''^ in the confidence and 
 expectation of future blessing, '' who have fled for 
 refuge to lay hold of the hope set before them" 
 (Heb. vi. 17, 18).* 
 
 * " The sacraments serve to this end also, to seal up and confirm 
 the truth that is in the Word ; for as the office of the seal hung to 
 the evident is not to confirm another truth than that quhilk is in the 
 evident ; and suppose ye believed the evident of it before, yet by the 
 seals ye believe it the better. Even so, the sacrament assures men 
 of no other truth than is contained within the Word ; yet, because it 
 is a seal annexed to the Word, it persuades men the better of the 
 same ; for ay the mair that the outward senses be awakened, the 
 mair is the inward heart and mind persuaded to belief. Now, the 
 sacrament awakens all the outward senses, such as the eye, the 
 hand, and all the rest; and the outward senses being moved, no 
 question but the Spirit of truth concurring therewith moves the 
 
WHAT DO SACRAMENTS SEAL ? 31 
 
 In this same meaning the sacraments have been 
 explained to be seals by the confessions of the 
 Reformed Chmxhes. The definition in om- Shorter 
 Catechism is accordant with it — " A sacrament is a 
 holy ordinance instituted by Christ, wherein, by 
 sensible sio'ns, Christ and the benefits of the new 
 covenant are represented, sealed, and applied to 
 believers." In the 25th Article of the Church of 
 England it is said, " Sacraments ordained of Christ 
 be not only badges or tokens of Christian men's 
 profession, but rather they be certain sure icitnesses 
 and effectual signs of grace and God's goodwill 
 toicards us; " and in the 27th Article it is more- 
 particularly said, that by baptism " the promises of 
 forgiveness, &c., are visibly signed and sealed." 
 In language still more explicit, the Heidelberg 
 Catechism [Qu. 66) teaches that " sacraments are 
 holy visible signs and seals appointed by God for 
 this end, that, by the use thereof, he may the more 
 fully declare and seal to us the promise of the Gospel, 
 in that he grants us fully the remission of sin and 
 life eternal, for the sake of that one sacrifice of 
 Christ accomplished on the cross;" and {Qu. 69) 
 " that Christ appointed this external washing with 
 
 heart the mair. The sacraments are then annexed to the Word, to 
 seal up the truth contained in the Word, and to confirm it mair and 
 mair in thy heart. Then quhat have ye to dol The Word is 
 appointed to work belief, and the sacrament is appointed to confirm 
 you in this belief; but except ye put the truth of this inwardly in your 
 hearts — except ye have your hearts as ready as your mouths, think 
 not that any thing will avail you." — Robert Brace's Sa'inons on tfie 
 Lord's Sapper, p. 29. 
 
32 INFANT BAPTISM. 
 
 water, adding thereto this promise, that I am as 
 certainly washed by his blood and spirit from all 
 the pollution of my soul, that is, from all my sin, 
 as I am washed externally with water, by which 
 the filthiness of the body is commonly washed 
 away ; " and again, that in the Lord's Supper 
 ^^ Christ has commanded one and all believers to 
 eat of this broken bread, and to drink of this cup, 
 in remembrance of him, adding these promises — 
 first, that his body was offered and broken on the 
 cross for me, and his blood shed for me, as certainly 
 as I see with my eyes the bread of the Lord broken 
 for me, and the cup communicated to me ; and 
 farther, that he feeds and nourishes my soul to 
 everlasting life with his cnicified body and shed 
 blood, as assuredly as I receive from the hands of 
 the minister^ and taste loith my nioxitli^ the bread and 
 cup of the Lord as certain signs of the body and 
 blood of Christ." To these statements may be 
 added Calvin's definition of a sacrament as " an 
 outward testimony of divine love towards us, which, 
 by a visible sign, represents spiritual blessings, for 
 the sealing of the promises of God upon our hearts, 
 that their truth may be the more confirmed" [Cate- 
 chism of Geneva) , and his explanation of the reason 
 of God sealing his iwomises ivith sacraments ^ viz., 
 " According to the definition which we have given, 
 we understand that a sacrament never is without 
 a preceding promise, but rather is joined to it as a 
 certain appendix, to the end that it may confirm 
 
WHAT DO SACRAMENTS SEAL ? 33 
 
 and seal the promise itself, and make it to us more 
 attested, yea, in a manner ratified. In this way 
 the Lord makes needful provision, first, for our 
 ignorance and dulness, then for our weakness ; and 
 yet, properly speaking, not so much to confirm his 
 holy word as to establish in us the belief of it." 
 — [Institutes iv. 14, 3.)* 
 
 But of what is baptism a seal, as administered to 
 
 * The argument of Dr Halley against this view, and in snpport of 
 the idea that the sacraments are mere symbols, seems to be founded 
 on a simple misunderstanding. When the sacraments are called 
 seals, he regards this as meaning that they are seals not of grace 
 promised, but of grace already possessed. Thus he says, " It would 
 seem to follow that the adherents of the latter opinion (the Reformed) 
 ought to administer the sacraments or seals only tu those who have 
 pi'eviously received the grace which they attest; whereas the adherents 
 of the former (the Romish) ought to administer them only to such 
 as are destitute of that grace. If baptism, for instance, be the 
 seal of regeneration, it should be administered only to the regenerate ; 
 if the means of regeneration, only to the unregenerate." — {The Sacra- 
 ments, vol, i. p. 78.) This smart saying is at once set aside by the fact 
 that baptism, though it may be called the sign, is not counted the 
 seal of regeneration, but the seal of God's promise to bestow upon the 
 regenerate the blessings which follow regeneration, or, as we shall 
 immediately see, to bestow the blessing of regeneration itself upon 
 the children of the regenerate. Under the influence of the same 
 misunderstanding he says again, " This doctrine of sealing God's 
 grace to individuals by a sacrament, can amount to no more than a 
 hypothetical sealing, a sealing of God's grace upon the supposition 
 that the person is already possessed of that grace ; a seal which, to 
 be of any worth, must be itself accredited or attested by the grace 
 which it is said to seal or ratify" (p. 87); and proceeds to argue 
 against this notion as inconsistent with the doctrine of justification by 
 faith. He supposes it to mean that the "worthy observance of the 
 sacrament" is the '' obsignation of grace," that is, of being in a state 
 of grace ; and hence maintains that this makes the " worthy reception, 
 the good work of the man, the seal and assurance of eternal life, so 
 that, instead of looking entirely and exclusively to Christ Jesus, he 
 G 
 
34 INFANT BAPTISM. 
 
 infants ? Of what promise does it recognise them 
 to be heirs who can make no profession of faith ? 
 Are all infants equally entitled to this seal ? Or if 
 not, on what principle can it discriminate or mark 
 a spiritual difference or distinction amongst them, 
 since they are all equally born in sin, and, at the 
 same time, are all equally unconscious of their state? 
 The solution of this difficulty is furnished in 
 
 is looking upon himself, amidst the deceitfulness of his own heart, 
 for seals and verifications of his own justification." — (P. 86.) It 
 needs only to be answered, that as our worthy reception is not the 
 seal, but is only our believing acceptance of the seal, and is nothing 
 different from our appropriating faith in God's promise, all this 
 jealousy for the purity of evangelical doctrine is singularly misplaced. 
 The seal is the outward sacrament, not our feelings or actings towards 
 it, and is Grod's bringing the word of his promise liome more visibly 
 and impressively to the faith of the individual believing receiver. If 
 a believer can, without impropriety, self-righteousness, or false logic, 
 appropriate to himself the word of promise — can hear God speaking 
 to himself in the word of promise — he may surely appropriate to 
 himself the seal of promise, hear God's voice more clearly in it, 
 have a more vivid and realising assurance of his interest in the 
 promise, when the seal of it is put into his own hand, and he is 
 thus individualised in God's announcement of it. The sacra- 
 ments are, in a certain sense, seals or attestations of God's promises 
 to all spectators — signs which confirm and illustrate the promises as 
 part of divine doctrine ; but if they are not more as seals to the 
 receiver than they are to all other men, even to all believers — if 
 in receiving he is only part of the symbolic instrumentality, this 
 is his own fault, his crime, in not being a believing or worthy receiver. 
 If he were so, the sacrament would be, in the act of receiving it, a 
 seal to himself individually of divine promise, not as mere doctrine, 
 but as promise made to himself. It is worthy of remark that Dr 
 Halley concurs with Bellarmine in interpreting the text noticed 
 above, Rom. iv. 11, as meaning, that circumcision was a seal to 
 Abraham in the sense of being a "testimony of his faith" (p. 83, 
 note), and does not even advert to the idea of its being a seal of God's 
 promise of justifying righteousness on the condition of faith. 
 
COVENANT AVITH ABEAHAM. 35 
 
 God's covenant as renewed with Abraham at the 
 institution of the rite of circumcision — '' I will 
 establish my covenant between me and thee and 
 thy seed after thee in their generations for an ever- 
 lasting covenant, to be a God to thee, and to thy 
 seed after thee. And I will give unto thee, and to 
 thy seed after thee^ the land wherein thou art a 
 stranger, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting 
 possession ; and / icill he their God^ — (Gen. xvii. 
 7, 8.) To whatever extent this covenant refers to 
 the temporal inheritance, the apostle Paul places 
 bejond a doubt that it includes a spiritual promise 
 (Eom. iv. 11-13 ; Gal. iii. 14-18) ; and the apostle 
 Peter, in his sermon on the day of Pentecost, makes 
 it farther evident that this spiritual promise be- 
 longs to Abraham's children by natural descent — 
 " Eepent and be baptized every one of you in the 
 name of Jesus Christ, for the remission of your 
 sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy 
 Ghost, for the jjroviise is unto you and to your 
 children, and to all that are afar off, as many as the 
 Lord our God shall call."— (Acts ii. 38, 39.)* The 
 
 * It has been not uncommon to restrict the promise spoken of by 
 Peter in the 39th verse to the prophecy of Joel quoted in v. 16-21. 
 And Baumgarten, in his most valuable commentary, not only 
 adopts this view, but also understands " all that are afar off" to 
 be not the Gentiles (Eph, ii. 17), but simply those Jews who were 
 not now present in Jerusalem. There are strong reasons against this 
 interpretation. Great part of that special prophecy quoted from Joel, 
 e. g.," Your sonsandyour daughters shall prophesy," &c., is not appli- 
 cable to all those whom the promise embraces. The quotation of that 
 prophecy stands at a great distance, even in the repwted discourse, 
 from this mention of the promise. Other important prophecies are 
 
36 INFANT BAPTISM. 
 
 children spoken of in both these passages must be 
 understood not in the figurative sense in which the 
 word sometimes describes those who are partakers 
 of the same faith (Gal. iii. 7), or points out the 
 instrumentality of their conversion (1 Cor. iv. 14,15, 
 Philem. 10), but primarily and literally as offspring 
 according to the flesh. For if not, in the first 
 passage the temporal inheritance would be promised 
 to a people distinct and different from the nation of 
 Israel ; and in the second passage, there would be 
 no distinction between the " children" and those that 
 are afar off, whom God ivould call. We must, 
 therefore, face the inevitable conclusion — explain 
 it how we may — that God has taken into cove- 
 nant with himself the children of believers by 
 reason of their natural descent ; that He is their 
 God in that same spiritual sense in which He is 
 the God of their believingparents; that the promises 
 of the gospel are made to them, not merely as they 
 may be said to be extended to all men, if they will 
 accept of them, but in a more definite and special 
 sense, as promises made to those for whom the Lord 
 has a purpose of redeeming mercy ; that in this 
 sermon of the apostle Peter, those whom he addresses, 
 because descendants of Abraham, though so long 
 
 quoted in the interval, to which, rather than to the prophecy of 
 Joel, the emp'iatic appellation of " the promise" might be understood 
 to belong. For this expression seems to have had a recognised and 
 definite meaning, as denoting that great fundamental covenant pro- 
 mise of the seed of Abraham, " in whom all the families of the earth 
 shall be blessed" (Acts xxvi, 6, 7). 
 
37 
 
 impenitentj and not yet more than anxious and 
 inquiring, are, along with their children, ranked 
 as equally subjects of promise with those whom 
 the Lord will effectually call from among the 
 families of the heathen. 
 
 To understand and vindicate this statement of 
 God's relation to the children of his people, it is 
 necessary to view it in the light of two Scripture 
 principles which regulate his dealings with them. 
 
 From one set of Scripture passages, we learn 
 that God cherishes towards them feelings of peculiar 
 affection and friendship. They are '' beloved for 
 the fathers' sake^'' not only within the limits of 
 the Jewish covenant, but in all the habitations of 
 his saints. On their fathers' account he visits them 
 with both temporal and spiritual blessings : " I have 
 been young, and now am old, yet have I not seen 
 the righteous forsaken, nor Ms seed begging bread. 
 He is ever merciful, and lendeth, and his seed is 
 hlessedy — (Ps. xxxvii. 25,26.) ^^ His seed shall be 
 iniglity u])on earthy the generation of the upright 
 shall be blessed." — (Ps. cxii. 2.) "In the fear of 
 the Lord is strong confidence ; and Ms cMldreyi 
 shall have a place of refuged — (Prov. xiv. 26.) " I 
 will gather them out of all countries whither 1 
 have driven them, and they shall be my people, 
 and I will be their God : and I will give them one 
 heart, and one way, that they may fear me for ever, 
 for the good of them, and of their children after 
 them:'— {Jqi\ xxxii. 37-39.) '' The mercy of the 
 
38 INFANT BAPTISM. 
 
 Lord is from everlasting to everlasting, and liis 
 righteousness to children^ s cliildrenr — (Ps. ciii. 17.) 
 " When thou shalt return unto the Lord thy God, 
 then the Lord will turn thy captivity, and will cir- 
 cumcise thy heart, and the heart of thy seed^ to love 
 the Lord thy God with all thy heart." — (Deut. xxx. 
 2-6.) And, finally, as if in order to mark more 
 strongly the principle according to which he re- 
 gards the family as identified with the parent, and 
 like the branches of a tree partaking of the sap or 
 of the decay of the stem, he says, ^' I am a jealous 
 God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the 
 children unto the third and fourth generations of 
 them that hate me, and shewing mercy to thou- 
 sands (of generations) of them that love me and 
 keep my commandments." — (Ex. xx. 5, 6.)* 
 
 But as God does not promise either temporal 
 prosperity or divine favour to the children of his 
 people irrespective of their spiritual character, so 
 he does not promise to form that character in them 
 except in connection with the fidelity and diligence 
 of the parents. 
 
 One great and manifest design of the institution 
 of the family arrangement was the salvation of the 
 young, and the preserving and perpetuating of the 
 true religion in tlie world. Thus Malachi, re- 
 proving his fellow-countrymen for the frequency 
 and facility with which in his day they allowed tlie 
 marriage tie to be unloosed, says, " The Lord hath 
 * See also Isa. lix. 21, Ixv. 23 ; Deut. x. 15. 
 
CHILDREN OF GOD's PEOPLE. 39 
 
 been witness between thee and the wife of thy 
 youth, against whom thou hast dealt treacherously : 
 yet she is thy companion, and the wife of thy 
 covenant. And did he not make one? Yet had 
 he the residue of the spirit. And wherefore one? 
 TJiat he might seek a godly seed^ — (Mai. ii. 14, 16.) 
 And in order that this godly seed might be found, 
 how often and how^ solemnly does God enjoin on 
 parents the religious instruction of their children, 
 and the faithful and affectionate employment of all 
 the means which he has appointed for the conver- 
 sion of their souls. " These words, which I com- 
 mand thee this day, shall be in thine heart : and 
 thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, 
 and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine 
 house, and when thou walkest by the way, and 
 when thou liestdown, and when thourisest up." — 
 (Deut. vi. 6, 7.) ^' He established a testimony in 
 Jacob, and appointed a law in Israel, which he 
 commanded our fathers, that they should make 
 them known to their children : that the generation 
 to come might know them, even the children which 
 should be born, who should arise and declare them 
 to their children : that they might set their hope 
 in God, and not forget the works of God, but keep 
 his commandments." — (Ps. Ixxviii. 5-7.) " Ye 
 fathers, provoke not your children to wrath, but 
 bring them up in the nurture and admonition of 
 the Lord."— (Eph. yi. 4.) 
 
 These commands are accompanied with a pro- 
 
40 INFANT BAPTISM. 
 
 mise. God animates and encourages his people to 
 this assiduous care of their children by the assur- 
 ance that he will render it effectual — that he will 
 reward it by the renewal of the children's souls, 
 and by rendering them meet for all the good he 
 has spoken concerning them ; that " for the fathers' 
 sake," for the sake of the fathers' personal godli- 
 ness and parental care, the children will be owned 
 as the " beloved " of the Lord. '' Train up a child 
 in the way he should go, and when he is old he 
 will not depart from it." — (Prov. xxii. 6.) " These 
 my words ye shall teach your children^ that your 
 days may be multiplied, and the days of your 
 children, in the land which the Lord sware unto 
 your fathers to give them, as the days of heaven 
 upon earth."— (Deut. xi. 18-21.)* On the exist- 
 ence throughout the families of Israel of the 
 reciprocal affection which implies parental godli- 
 ness and fidelity, God suspends the welfare and 
 preservation of the kingdom itself. '' Behold I 
 will send you Elijah the prophet, and he shall 
 turn the hearts of the fathers to the children " first, 
 and then, as if in consequence of this, '^ the hearts 
 of the children to the fathers, lest I come and smite 
 the earth with a curse." — (Mai. iv. 5, 6.) And, 
 farther, we have another and still more notable 
 declaration of this purpose of God, to follow up the 
 godly diligence of the parents with a saving bless- 
 ing to the children, in the very covenant with 
 * See also Deut. iv. 9, 10, 40. 
 
PROMISES TO CHILDEEN. 41 
 
 Abraham. For the covenant portion which his 
 posterity were to receive is set forth as the conse- 
 quence and reward of Abraham's faithfulness — 
 ^' Walk before me and he thou perfect^ and I will 
 make my covenant between me and thee, and will 
 multiply thee exceedingly. And I will establish 
 my covenant between me and thee, and thy seed 
 after thee." — (Gen. xvii, 1, 2, 7.) We are not left 
 to conjecture whether this 'perfect or upright walk 
 of Abraham, on which these promises both to him 
 and his seed were made to depend, included the 
 proper discharge of his parental duties. The cer- 
 tainty of his being found faithful in this depart- 
 ment of obedience God himself sets forth in this 
 very connexion with his bestowal of the covenant 
 blessing. " Shall I hide from Abraham that thing 
 which I do ; seeing that Abraham shall surely 
 become a great and mighty nation, and all the 
 nations of the earth shall be blessed in him ? For 
 I know Mm^ that he will command Ms children and 
 his household after hini^ and they shall keep the 
 way of the Lord; that the Lord may bring upon 
 Abraham that which he hath spoken of him." — 
 (Gen. xviii. 17-19.) 
 
 But these promises, are they strictly and pro- 
 perly promises — declarations of God's determina- 
 tion and resolve? Or do they merely indicate 
 what is likely to occur, or wdiat will generally be 
 realised in the given circumstances ? Are they to 
 be classed along with such a statement as this, 
 
42 INFANT BAPTISM. 
 
 " The hand of the diligent maketh rich," — which 
 expresses the tendency of diligence in the ordinary 
 course of things, but does not assure us that wealth 
 will actually be its recompense in any particular 
 case ? The great and lasting influence of family- 
 life in the formation of character is familiar to the 
 observation and experience of every one. Beyond 
 and above that influence for the salvation of the 
 soul which is exerted by faithful ministers, or 
 godly companions, or earnest labourers in Chris- 
 tian societies, is to be ranked, in point of intensity 
 and efficacy, the influence of believing parents 
 within the limits of the family circle. When the 
 strongest affections that nature knows are sancti- 
 fied and directed by Divine grace, when they are 
 combined with intelligence and spiritual wisdom, 
 when they have scope in the constant and confiding 
 intercourse of domestic life, and when they have 
 for their field the tender mind of childhood, 
 with all its susceptibility to deep and permanent 
 impressions, what circumstances can be conceived 
 more favourable, or what means more likely for 
 conversion ? There is no cause to wonder that God 
 should have formed mankind into families, and 
 that to the wholesome and persuasive influences 
 which circulate among their members he should 
 assign so higli a place among the means for con- 
 tinuing his name and memorial " throughout all 
 generations " (Ps. cxxxv. 13). 
 
 But is this all ? Do these passages only mean 
 
PROMISES TO CHILDREN. 43 
 
 that parental training is a suitable and very likely 
 means for the conversion of children? Do they 
 not secure that this will be its effect in any parti- 
 cular case ? If we had nothing else to guide us to 
 an answer than the text, " Train up a child in the 
 way he should go, and when he is old he will not 
 depart from it," we might, perhaps, have cause to 
 hesitate. It might be thought to be no more than 
 a statement, like many other similar texts in the 
 Book of Proverbs, of what was likely to happen, 
 — a statement, indeed, not expressing the result of 
 man's guesses or probabilities, or of man's observa- 
 tion or experience, but proceeding from God, and 
 therefore much more reliable, because in every in- 
 stance the promised fruit of parental training must 
 be the gift of God, the effect of his own blessing. 
 But yet it might be said it is not strictly and pro- 
 perly a promise, — a declaration of what God intends 
 and resolves to do in every case in which the con- 
 dition is fulfilled, — but only in the generality of 
 these cases. We might, indeed, reply that this is 
 not according to the recognised principles of his act- 
 ing within the kingdom of grace. In the distribu- 
 tion of the things of this world, and amongst those 
 who are without the bonds of his covenant, he very 
 often — for reasons that we cannot penetrate — allots 
 opposite results to equal diligence. But is it in 
 accordance with his ordinary procedure amongst 
 his people, or his covenant engagements to them, 
 that he should bestow on them the grace of parental 
 
44 INFANT BAPTISM. 
 
 fidelity in all its fulness, and then, not on account 
 of any failure in its use, but for a reason alto- 
 gether apart from them, that he should disappoint 
 the expectation which such a declaration warrants ? 
 
 But even on this scarcely doubtful ground we 
 do not need to stand. For this very declaration is 
 substantially embodied in the covenant with Abra- 
 ham, and has all the sanction with which every 
 other of its promises was secured. If it was in any 
 spiritual sense that God promised to make Abra- 
 ham a great and mighty nation, and to be the God 
 of his seed after him, then the integrity of his walk 
 before God (Gen. xvii. 1), the fidelity with which 
 he trained his children in the way they should go 
 (Gen. xviii. 19), was not so much the condition on 
 which the temporal possession was to be held, as 
 the condition on which his children were to inherit 
 the spiritual blessing, on which God was to be their 
 God, and they were to be his people. And they 
 who partake of Abraham's faith are heirs also of 
 the same promise. On the same condition as in 
 the case of Abraham, he takes their children along 
 with themselves into his covenant. He promises 
 to be their children's God, when he knows that 
 they will command them to keep the way of the 
 Lord. 
 
 Any remaining doubt on this point, baptism, as, 
 on scriptural warrant, administered to infants, 
 should remove. The promise of God's sustaining 
 a peculiar relation to the children of his people, 
 
INFANT BAPTISM A SEAL. 45 
 
 baptism at once illustrates and seals. In no other 
 case is there a more exact accordance between the 
 sign and the thing signified, between the covenant 
 promise and the seal. In the Lord's Supper, God 
 is to be understood as saying to the communicant, 
 " If you are what you profess to be, — a believer, 
 — then as surely as you eat this bread and drink 
 this wine, so surely shall I give you to eat of 
 Christ's flesh, and to drink of Christ's blood, unto 
 eternal life." In baptism, God is to be understood 
 as saying to the parent, " If you are what you 
 profess to be, — a believer, — and if you do what you 
 undertake to do, ^ to train up this child in the 
 nurture and admonition of the Lord,' — then as 
 surely as this water is now poured upon its body, 
 so surely shall I pour the regenerating Spirit upon 
 its soul." God did not indeed speak so hypotheti- 
 cally and conditionally to Abraham, for " he knew 
 Abraham;" and if man had the same certainty 
 about the character and future history of any 
 parent as the All-seeing One had regarding the 
 father of the faithful, the language of the ordinance 
 would be expressed in the same form as the state- 
 ment of God regarding him, " Because you are a 
 believer, and will command your children to keep 
 the way of the Lord, as surely as this water is now 
 poured on this child, so surely will I be its God." 
 Baptism does not constitute the promise ; nor does 
 God's entering into this covenant engagement de- 
 pend upon the ordinance. The promise was made 
 
46 INFANT BAPTISM. 
 
 previously , on the parent entering into covenant with 
 God, and would have been as valid and as ample, 
 though baptism had never been instituted. But 
 baptism, though not needed to bind or to renew 
 the promise, is a confirmation of it to the parent's 
 faith, and a help to enable him to apply it to the 
 individual child, and thus more firmly to rely upon 
 the Word of God, and more confidently to cherish 
 the expectation of the blessing.* 
 
 * The testimonies of tlie Reformed Churches are mostly in the direc- 
 tion of this view of the warrant and meaning of infant baptism. 
 Our Larger Catechism says, — " Infants, descending from parents, 
 either both or but one of them professing feith in Christ and obe- 
 dience to him, are, in that respect, within the covenant, and to be 
 baptized." Calvin, in the Geneva Catechism, in answer to the ques- 
 tion, " Why, then, are children to be baptized?' says, — " That it may 
 be testified that they are heirs of the blessing promised to the seed of 
 believers ; tliat the truth of their baptism being recognised after they 
 have grown to maturity, they may receive and bring forth fruit from 
 it." And in the order for the administration of the Sacraments in 
 the Church of Geneva, we find him saying, — '^ Therefore, although 
 the children of the faithful are of the corrupt stock of Adam, God 
 nevertheless receives them to himself, on account of his covenant 
 with their parents, and reckons them his own children. On this 
 account, from the beginning of the Church, he commanded them to 
 receive circumcision, a sign which signified the same things which at 
 present are represented in baptism." And the Heidelberg Catechism 
 answers the question, " Are infants also to be baptized ? " in these 
 words, — " Yes, for since they as well as the adult are included in the 
 covenant and Church of God, and since redemption from sin by the 
 blood of Christ, and the Holy Ghost, the author of faith, are pro- 
 mised to them no less than to the adult, they must therefore by 
 baptism, as a sign of the covenant" be also admitted into the Chris- 
 tian Church, and be distinguished from the children of infidels (un- 
 believers), as'ftfas done in the Old Covenantor Testament, by circum- 
 cision, instead of which baptism is instituted in the New Covenant." 
 -(Qu.Ti.) 
 
CONDITIONAL PROMISE. 47 
 
 It is necessary to consider whether any valid ex- 
 ception can be taken to this interpretation of the 
 covenant promise as setting forth, and of the sacra- 
 ment as sealing, this relation of God to the children 
 of believers. 
 
 1. It is no valid objection that this promise is 
 conditional^ its fulfilment being suspended upon 
 man's fidelity and holiness. The covenant-pro- 
 mises, as made to Christ on behalf of his people, 
 may be said to be absolute, because Christ's execu- 
 tion of his covenant work was always certain, and 
 is now completed. They are, indeed, not only 
 absolute, but definite, arranging, according to God's 
 eternal counsel, the every step of the course along 
 which He is to conduct His elect, and determining 
 the point of saving attainment to which He is to 
 carry them with reference to the measure of grace 
 which He may resolve previously to impart. But 
 the promises, as made to his people in the adminis- 
 tration of the covenant, are necessarily general, as 
 when a believer is assured that he shall be saved, 
 that he shall make progress in the life of holiness, 
 that his prayers shall be heard ; or when not thus 
 general, they must be conditional. Without enter- 
 ing further into the doctrinal topic, we may merely 
 adduce as an illustraftion the promise to answer 
 prayer. This promise is suspended on a condition, 
 — " If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, 
 ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done 
 unto you." — (John xv. 7.) No otherwise is the pro- 
 
48 INFANT BAPTISM. 
 
 mise which is sealed in baptisnij on behalf of a 
 child, conditional. ^' If you are a believer, and if 
 you act a believing parent's part, this child shall 
 be saved." In the one case, the worshipper must 
 offer the proper supplication, the prayer of faith, 
 for things according to Christ's will. In the other, 
 the parent must employ the appropriate means, the 
 work of faith, in the exercise of holy diligence. 
 In each case the result is certain only upon the 
 condition being fulfilled. 
 
 2. It cannot be fairly objected that this view is 
 inconsistent with the doctrine of GocVs sovereignty^ 
 in that He "has mercy on whom He will have 
 mercy" (Rom. ix. 15), without rendering to any 
 a reason for his choice. For, (1.) It is of His sove- 
 reign pleasure that He gives or withholds, in the 
 case of any believing parent, the grace of which 
 parental fidelity is the fruit. This parental 
 fidelity, therefore, being the gift of God, His 
 sovereignty is not excluded or nullified by its 
 being the infallible antecedent of an ulterior dis- 
 pensation of sovereign grace. And, (2.) While God 
 acts as an absolute sovereign among those that are 
 without, so that we cannot discern the reason of 
 His choosing one and passing by another ; yet 
 among those who are brought within His spiritual 
 household. He dispenses His grace according to 
 principles which are not only fixed, but revealed. 
 His sovereignty within His kingdom is not, indeed, 
 a limited sovereignty, but is exercised according to 
 
DIVINE SOYEEEIGNTY. 49 
 
 laws which He himself has fixed, and according to 
 promises bj which He has bound Himself to His 
 people. When they are obedient, He comforts 
 them ; when they transgress, He chastises them ; 
 when they are broken-hearted, He revives them ; 
 when they are humble, ^' He gives more grace" 
 (James iv. 6) ; when they pray, He answers them. 
 And no otherwise than in these cases does He 
 either renounce or limit His sovereignty, when, 
 looking on His people as identified with their 
 children, He promises to reward their parental 
 fidelity by their children's salvation, by giving them 
 their souls for their hire. It was not a limitation, 
 but an illustration of His sovereignty, that from 
 amons: all the families of the earth He chose the 
 seed of Abraham and the tribes of Jacob to trans- 
 mit the knowledge of His name, and to constitute 
 His Church and people ; and, in like manner, it is 
 no infringement of His sovereignty that He now 
 designs to preserve and perpetuate His Church 
 along the line of natural descent in the families of 
 those whom He has chosen to be His people. 
 
 For again, (1.) He does not confine His Chmxh 
 within the limits of descent from a godly parent- 
 age, but just as in Judah there was provision for 
 receiving amongst the families and into the con- 
 gregation of Israel, individuals from different na- 
 tions ; so now also, yea, and much more extensively, 
 are the privileges of God's people extended to as 
 many out of ungodly or heathen families as may 
 D 
 
50 INTANT BAPTISM. 
 
 flee for refuge to the Hope of Israel, — to ^^ as many 
 as the Lord our God shall call." He does not bind 
 Himself that He will save none who have not had a 
 godly ancestry. Of such He saves whom He will, 
 and makes them, thus saved, the commencement of 
 so many additional lines along which His promise 
 may run and His Church be perpetuated. 
 
 And (2.) He does not promise to perpetuate His 
 Church in the line of descent from every godly 
 parentage, nor in all cases and for ever to include 
 the families of the godly within his spiritual Church. 
 His promise is made not simply with His people, 
 but with His people on the condition of their train- 
 ing up their children in the nurture and admoni- 
 tion of the Lord. The godly are not exempt from 
 the danger of falling into any sin. Their sins and 
 inconsistencies are oftentimes grievous and aggra- 
 vated ; and, in the orderly discipline of His house, 
 the Father unfailingly visits them with needful 
 and appropriate chastisement. Though He does 
 not cast them out of His family, or recal His cove- 
 nant, He does not allow them to go without rebuke. 
 ^' If he commit iniquity, I will chasten him with 
 the rod of men, and with the stripes of the children 
 of men : but my mercy shall not depart away from 
 him."— (2 KSam. vii. 14, 15.)* When their trans- 
 gressions assume the form of parental unfaithful- 
 ness or neglect, — as indeed every sin committed 
 by a parent is in its influence, if not in its form, — 
 
 * See also Ps. Ixxxix. 30-34. 
 
DIVINE SOVEREIGNTY. 51 
 
 they may cut off tlie entail of covenant standing 
 and promised blessing from the children. Even 
 the temporal part of the covenant was administered 
 upon this principle. On account of the sins of 
 previous generations^ the children of Israel were 
 dispossessed of their earthly inheritance. " For 
 the Lord is a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of 
 the fathers upon the children." And how many 
 parents, like Eli, though saved themselves, have 
 had to mom-n the visitation of their own transgres- 
 sions in the ungodliness of their children, in their 
 families losing the link of spiritual connexion witli 
 the inheritance of grace, in the sad prospect that 
 now '' the iniquity of their house should not be 
 pm-ged with sacrifice and offering for ever " 
 (1 Sam. iii. 14). 
 
 But (3.) God does not allow himself to be ex- 
 cluded, by the sins of parents, from making their 
 childi*en the subjects of His grace. The relation 
 between Himself and the children of His people, 
 so far as it is fixed by the covenant, is altogether 
 one of grace and of promise. The children whom 
 godly parents have nurtured in the Lord, have 
 grace and salvation as their promised inheritance. 
 These have the same sure standing as they whom 
 '^ the Lord our God shall calV^ from amongst the 
 families of the heathen or the ungodly (Acts ii. 
 39). Those, on the other hand, who, though under 
 the roof of godly parents, have (alas ! that it should 
 ever be so) not been the objects of holy, watchful, 
 
52 INFANT BAPTISM. 
 
 constant, tender care, this promise does not em- 
 brace. To the promise they stand in the same 
 relation as the children of ungodly families, — not 
 reprobated because of their fathers' neglect, but 
 yet not chosen or beloved for their fathers' sakes. 
 With more, it may be, of advantage or disadvan- 
 tage, in the spiritual influences to which they have 
 been subjected, than the children of the ungodly, 
 they are equally with them the objects of the Gospel 
 offer, and may equally with them be the subjects 
 of saving mercy. 
 
 3. Nor can it be justly objected that this view 
 attaches to parents an undue amount of res])onsi- 
 hility. 
 
 The condition of the promise involves nothing 
 more than is implied in that parental care which, 
 even without a promise annexed, God is unques- 
 tionably entitled to exact of all parents ; nay, 
 which it is admitted on all hands that he does 
 most solemnly and distinctly require. For what 
 more comprehensive than the injunction, " Ye 
 fathers, provoke not your children to wrath, but 
 bring them up in the nurture and admonition of 
 the Lord." Nor is it necessary, in order to this 
 promise, any more than in order to the promise of 
 an answer to prayer, becoming obligatory, that per- 
 fect and sinless perfection be attained in our per- 
 formance of the condition. The obedience of the 
 believer, which is, through Christ's merits, well pleas- 
 ing to God, and which ensures the recompense of 
 
PAEENTAL RESPONSIBILITY. 53 
 
 grace, is distinguished by sincerity, spirituality, 
 willingness, and constancy.* Xor are we asked to 
 discharge this or any other part of evangelical 
 obedience in our own strength. The responsibility 
 is indeed great, and on the contemplation of it the 
 believing parent cannot avoid exclaiming, ^^ Who 
 is sufficient for these things?" But the answer 
 is intended for this and every duty undertaken 
 in honesty and faith, " My grace is sufficient 
 for thee, for my strength is made perfect in 
 weakness." And all the elements that are included 
 in the required exercise of parental care are the 
 gifts of God's grace, and are placed as surely within 
 the reach of the believer as any other of the most 
 needful blessings of Christ's purchase. It is the hand 
 of the Lord that first of all " turns the heart of the 
 father to tlie children," to desire and long after 
 their spiritual welfare. It is He who inspires 
 prayerfulness in their behalf, and constant depend- 
 ence on himself for all the guidance and strength 
 which parental responsibility demands — who leads 
 parents in the path of a holy example, maintains 
 within them a constant and careful watchfulness, 
 enlightens their minds as the medium of godly 
 instruction, and enables them to combine firmness 
 of discipline with tenderness of affection. And if 
 it be said how inadequate all those, without the 
 modifying and regulating influence of wisdom and 
 judiciousness, we have only to remember that these, 
 
 * John xiv. 21, 23 ; 1 Cor. xv. 58 ; Heb. vi. 10, &c. 
 
54 INFANT BAPTISM. 
 
 SO far as applicable to this or any spiritual case, are 
 also gifts of God's grace, and, on the same conditions 
 as all others, attainable in needful measure by every 
 believer. " If any of you lack wisdom j let him ask 
 of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraid- 
 eth not ; and it shall be given him." — (James i. 5.) 
 If the promise, though not altering the nature, 
 yet increases the felt weight of the responsibility, 
 consider how it also counterbalances and relieves 
 the load. For how great is the encouragement 
 and stimulus which the promise supplies ! The sal- 
 vation of children thus cared for is assured. And 
 if the salvation of some is thus certain, let it be 
 considered whether the others are placed in any 
 worse condition than if there had been no such 
 promise, or than they are on the supposition that 
 the promises referred to are no more tlian declara- 
 tions of what may generally be expected. Yea, 
 what unspeakably augmented encouragement to 
 parental diligence — beyond what mere general 
 declaration can inspire — is contained in the pro- 
 mise, and in the seal, when faith discerns the seal's 
 assurance of the Divine faithfulness and love. 
 Parents have thus as great encouragement to watch, 
 and labour, and suffer, and pray for their children's 
 souls, as they have to ^' work out their own salva- 
 tion with fear and trembling," from the consi- 
 deration that " it is God that worketh in them both 
 to will and to do of his good pleasure." And 
 when we remember the peculiar value which God 
 
PARENTAL RESPONSIBILITY. 55 
 
 sets on the family relation, and the affection which 
 He has for the children of His people, we need not 
 wonder that He, to this extent, identifies the parents 
 with the children, that He so closely binds toge- 
 ther the holiness of the parents and the salvation 
 of the children — that no relation of ecclesiastical 
 office, or of civil or social affinity, or of spiritual affec- 
 tion should so secure a blessing on the best-directed 
 efforts for the souls of others as the parental tie. 
 Ministers may ^' labour in vain, and spend their 
 strength for nought," having only this certain en- 
 couragement, that " their judgment is with the 
 Lord, and their work with their God" (Isa. xlix. 4). 
 Moses, when he longs for the forgiveness of the 
 chosen race, can only hope, " Peradmnture I shall 
 make an atonement for your sin " (Ex. xxxii. 30). 
 The most devoted and affectionate labourer in the 
 vineyard cannot cherish a larger measure of hope 
 regarding the conversion of any particular one 
 among the objects of his prayers, and anxieties, 
 and cares, than this peradventure^ — " it may he the 
 Lord will work for us " (1 Sam. xiv. 6) ; or ^' it 
 may he the Lord God of hosts will be gracious " 
 (Amos V. 15). What unspeakably greater encou- 
 ragement if, in duly caring for the salvation of 
 his children, equally as in working out his own, 
 a godly parent knows that he '' runs not as uncer- 
 tainly ; that he fights not as one that beateth the 
 air" (1 Cor. ix. 26). 
 
 4. But does the testimony of experience sustain 
 
56 INFANT BAPTISM. 
 
 this view of the promise and the seal ? The diffi- 
 culty which presses here is precisely of the same 
 nature as when it is asked, Does experience con- 
 firm the truth of the promise that in every case the 
 prayer of faith is heard ? In both cases, how large 
 and various the testimony to God's faithfulness ! 
 How numerous the instances, from all ages of the 
 Church's history, in which the families of the 
 godly have been a seed to serve the Lord in their 
 generation ! Is it not the case, that whilst there 
 are many striking instances of conversion from 
 amongst the ungodly, yet the Cliurch receives by 
 far its most numerous accessions from among 
 the children of professing Christians ? How 
 frequent the instances, as of Augustine and 
 others less illustrious, in which, after years of 
 forgetfulness and sin, and after the hopes of the 
 most sanguine were well-nigh gone, the children of 
 believers have been at last converted to their 
 fathers' God! How interesting that in so many 
 instances it should be known that it has been the 
 recollection of a father's example, or of a mother's 
 prayers, or of childhood's early lessons, that has 
 been the means of bringing the wanderer within 
 the household of faith ! And how important the 
 testimony to this view of the covenant promise, by 
 its accordance with the feelings of experienced and 
 devout Christians, as so often expressed in the hope, 
 which they refuse to surrender during the long and 
 dreary years of the alienation of the children of 
 
TESTIMONY OF EXPEEIE^X'E. 57 
 
 godly parents — ^^ the child of so many prayers can- 
 not be lost." 
 
 It happens, indeed, with lamentable frequency, 
 that the line of the spiritual posterity is ab- 
 ruptly arrested. But in how many instances can 
 we not discern the cause of this as clearly as 
 in the example of Eli. In some it happens that 
 excessive indulgence, in others that undue severity, 
 in many that prevailing listlessness, or smaller in- 
 consistencies visible only to the observant eye of 
 youth within the domestic circle, have counteracted 
 all the influence which might otherwise have 
 radiated from a life in which, notwithstanding 
 these things, the undoubted marks of a gracious 
 character existed. In many instances the worldly 
 prosperity which was the fruit and recompense of 
 godliness, has induced conformities to the world, 
 which have nullified the profession of parental 
 watchfulness, and arrested the extension of the 
 covenant lineage and the covenant blessing. And 
 whilst there are numerous instances in which we 
 cannot, as in these, see the precise reason for the 
 entail of mercy being cut off — though there are or 
 may be instances in which, with the appearance or 
 the consciousness of equal carefulness among the 
 children of the same family, one is taken and 
 another is left; yet let it rather be granted that 
 human discernment fails, and that human con- 
 sciousness is imperfect, than that God's promise is 
 unreal. How often, in the history of a Christian's 
 
58 INFANT BAPTISM. 
 
 experience, are there prayers to which he sees no 
 answer. And how often does it baffle all the 
 efforts of the nicest consciousness and the most 
 painful scrutiny to tell what was the fatal element 
 that mingled in certain of his supplications, and in 
 what specific particular it was that others differed, 
 so as to have had the power which belongs to the 
 prayer of faith. And when we think how many 
 influences there are that contribute to mould the 
 character of a child — when we consider how unre- 
 mitting the care and prayerfulness that are de- 
 manded from the earliest dawn of its susceptibility 
 to external impressions — when we see how ready 
 good men are to fail in the constant control that 
 should be sustained over their words, and conduct, 
 and dispositions, is it wonderful that somewhere, in 
 the course of years, and amidst the various circum- 
 stances of domestic intercourse, there may have 
 been in this one, and not in that other case, some 
 fatal remissness, or some levity or inconsistency, at 
 a moment so critical in the child's spiritual state 
 as to have rendered it fatal, and yet which even the 
 most nicely-exercised consciousness cannot trace?* 
 
 * The following remarks by Dr Bushnell of America are very im- 
 portant : — " Many persons seem never to have brought their minds 
 down close enough to an infant child to understand that anything of 
 consequence is going on within it, until after it has come to language 
 and become a subject thus of instruction. As if a child were to learn 
 a language before it is capable of learning anything ! Whereas there 
 is a whole era, so to speak, before language, which may be called the 
 era of iinpressions ; and these impressions are the seminal principles, 
 in some sense, of the activity that runs to language, and also of the 
 
TESTIMONY OF EXPERIENCE. 59 
 
 " Where is the parent/' says an American writer, 
 " whose children have turned aside from God, 
 whose heart will not rather reproach him, than 
 charge God with forgetting his promise ?" * 
 
 whole future character. I strongly suspect that more is done, in the 
 age previous to language, to affect the character of children, or when 
 they are waiting in indolent security, by nurses and attendants, than 
 in all the instruction and discipline of their minority afterwards ; for 
 in this first age — the age of impressions — there goes out in the whole 
 manner of the parent, the look, the voice, the handling, an expression 
 of feeling, and that feeling expressed streams directly into the soul, 
 and reproduces itself there as by a law of contagion. What man of 
 adult age, who is at all observant of himself, has failed to notice the 
 power that lies in a simple 'presence, even to him ] To this power 
 the infant is passive as wax to the seal. When, therefore, we con- 
 sider how small a speck, falling into the nucleus of a crystal, may 
 disturb its form, or how the smallest mite of foreign matter present 
 in the quickening egg will sufl&ce to produce a deformity ; considering 
 also, on the other hand, what nice conditions of repose in one case, 
 and what accurately modulated supplies of heat in the other, are 
 necessary to a perfect product, then only do we begin to imagine 
 what work is going on in the soul of a child during the age of im- 
 pression. . . . Now what I have endeavoured in my tract, and 
 what I here endeavour, is to wake in our churches a sense of this 
 power, and of the momentous responsibilities that accrue under it. 
 I wish to produce an impression that Grod has not held us responsible 
 for the effect only of what we do or teach, or for acts of control or 
 government, but quite as much for the effect of our being what we are, 
 — that there is a plastic age in the house, receiving its type, not from 
 our words, but from our spirit, one whose character is shaping in the 
 moulds of our own." 
 
 * This sentence is taken from a very able and interesting article 
 (to which we are also indebted for the extract in the preceding note) 
 in the PHnceton Reviexc, which was transferred to the British and 
 Foreign Evangelical Revieio for December 1853. The writer does 
 not fully adopt the views stated above, and yet he speaks of the 
 divinely-instituted connexion between faithful parental training and 
 the salvation of children ; and says, " Our very want of faith in the 
 promise is one great reason of our failure." Yet the hesitation which 
 
60 INFANT BAPTISM. 
 
 This view of the ordinance, therefore, completely 
 satisfies all that is required by its being defined to 
 be a seal ; whilst, more than any other, it is fitted 
 to impress parents with a solemn sense of their 
 responsibility, and to encom-age and animate them 
 to diligence and prayer. It remains only to add, 
 that it affords an easy and obvious solution of two 
 questions which have sometimes been the occasion 
 of difficulty. It distinctly indicates what children 
 ought to be baptized ; and it fixes their relation to 
 the Church. 
 
 1. It implies that only those children are to be 
 baptized who, by reason of the faith of one or both 
 of their parents, are presumed to be within the 
 covenant; or those who are so adopted by a be- 
 liever, that he makes himself thoroughly respon- 
 
 the writer feels to admit the strict and proper idea of a covenant- 
 engagement in these promises, betrays him into some inconsistency. 
 After speaking very forcibly and justly of the conditions regarding 
 the parents, he adds — '' Then^ again, there is a condition to be per- 
 formed by the children themselves. God promises to be their God, 
 but they must consent to be his people. He promises them his 
 Spirit, but they must seek and cherish his influence. If they renounce 
 his covenant, and refuse to have God for their God, and to walk in 
 the way of his commandments, then the promise no longer pertains 
 to them." We would not be surprised at this language in the mouth 
 of an Arminian. But the promise, if it be a promise at all, is a 
 promise of regenerating grace ; and whenever that is bestowed, it 
 efl'eciually and irresistibly produces the consent to be His people — the 
 gracious character and the obedient heart, which are all here 
 represented as contingencies. The promise as stated by the writer 
 does not recognise any peculiarity in the position of the children of 
 covenant-keeping parents ; — it is only the Gospel offer, as it is 
 addressed universally to the children of men at large. 
 
HEIRS OF GRACE. 61 
 
 sible for their godly up-bringing, and surrounds 
 them with the hallowing influences of a godly 
 family. The directions given with regard to the 
 rite of circumcision teach that these latter are to 
 be regarded as heirs of the covenant blessing. For 
 they who were to be the subjects of this rite were 
 described as being not only " every man-child in 
 your generation," but also '^ he that is born in thy 
 house, or bought with money of any stranger, 
 which is not of thy seed " (Gen. xvii. 12). 
 Abraham's slaves were a portion of his " house- 
 hold," whom, equally with his children, he was to 
 command to keep the way of the Lord (Gen. 
 xviii. 18) ; and co-extensive with his responsibility 
 was his encouragement, in the hope which he might 
 cherish regarding them as regarding his own chil- 
 dren. They had a permanent standing in his 
 household similar to that of children, and there- 
 fore they also had a standing within the covenant 
 — they enjoyed its privileges, they incurred its 
 obligations. 
 
 2. It defines the relation of baptized children to 
 the Church. They are to be regarded as, if not al- 
 ready the recipients, at least the heirs of grace.* If 
 
 * Calvinistic Baptists ought not to feel that difficulty whicli they 
 so much urge, about the administration of an ordinance of the Church 
 to unregenerated children, and about recognising, as in any sense mem- 
 bers of the visible church, those who had made and could make no pro- 
 fession of belonging to the invisible : for Calvinists hold, that " the 
 catholic or universal church, which is invisible, consists in the 
 whole number of the elect that have been, are, or shall be gathered 
 into one under Christ, the head thereof ; and is the spouse, the body. 
 
62 INFANT BAPTISM. 
 
 there is no mistake as to the character of the 
 parents, either as to their personal godliness or 
 their parental fidelity, then, by reason of the 
 parents' faith, the children are, and in baptism 
 they are recognised as being, the heirs of covenant 
 promise — those to whom there now pertain ^' the 
 adoption, and the covenants, and the promises" 
 (Rom. ix. 3). And if so, with what interest ought 
 they to be looked on by the Church ! Having 
 recognised them as those who, so far as man can 
 judge, will yet be manifested as the elect of God, 
 with what affection ought she not to watch over 
 them, with what diligence to train them, with 
 what wholesome influence to surround their every 
 path, with what constant prayerfulness to bear 
 them before the mercy-seat, in the sure expectation 
 of " the time appointed by the Father," when they, 
 though now " differing nothing from a servant," 
 and being under '' tutors and governors," shall 
 receive " the adoption of sons." 
 
 But, again, is this all ? Is its operation merely 
 external? Is its use exhausted in the objective 
 sign and seal? Is it neither the source nor the 
 channel of any spiritual virtue to the child ? In 
 the Lord's Supper, we see " Christ and the benefits 
 of the new covenant" not only represented and sealed^ 
 
 and the fulness of him that filleth all in aX\" — Westmimter Confes- 
 sion, XXV. i. 
 
BAPTISM A MEANS OF GRACE. 63 
 
 but also applied to believers. If infant baptism 
 does not fulfil this threefold function, is it worthy 
 of the name of a sacrament ? Does it in this point, 
 and in this point only, come short of a sacramental 
 nature ? 
 
 III. Let us then consider, in the third place, in 
 what sense spiritual blessings are applied to 
 infants in baptism, or how infants derive from it 
 any spiritual benefit. 
 
 1. As it is through their parents that they are 
 interested in the covenant, and thus have a right 
 to this sacrament, we may expect that, through 
 their parents also, they obtain some benefit from it. 
 The parents are the parties with whom, in the admi- 
 nistration of the ordinance, God transacts, to whose 
 faith he speaks both in the promise and the seal ; 
 and therefore it is reasonable to ask, do the?/ receive 
 no immediate spiritual benefit from its administra- 
 tion? In the Lord's Supper, the worthy receiver 
 is " by faith made a partaker of Christ's body and 
 blood, with all his benefits." He obtains the 
 spiritual benefit not by any magical charm which the 
 sacrament can work, nor by any virtue which the 
 carnal elements contain or physically convey, but 
 by his faith being quickened and strengthened 
 through God's word and seal of promise being 
 brought so close to him, and by it, as thus invi- 
 gorated, largely deriving the blessings of salvation 
 out of the fulness of Christ.* In infant baptism, 
 
 * " Wherefore are, then, sacraments and seals annexed, seeing we 
 
64 INFANT BAPTISM. 
 
 the parent, and not the child, is the party who has 
 that faith by which the effect of the sacrament is 
 realised. It therefore becomes a means of grace, 
 as it is the ^^ visible word" of God's promise, which, 
 coming with the power of the Spirit to the parent's " 
 eye and understanding and heart, quickens his 
 faith in the covenant, his hope of the salvation of 
 his child, his resolution to train the child for God, 
 his diligence and fervour in parental care. Of the 
 heavenly impulse then given — of the clearer view 
 and firmer assurance which he, in the moment of his 
 child's baptism, obtains of the well-ordered cove- 
 nant, the parent never ceases to feel the influence ; 
 and the child experiences the blessed result in his 
 early training, and consequently all the days of his 
 life. If this fruit of baptism is not more frequently 
 realised in the consciousness of God's people, is 
 there not cause to fear that the defect may be 
 traced to the inadequate preparation of the heart, 
 with which too often even they present their off- 
 spring before the Lord, in their practically esteeming 
 the ordinance as little higher than a solemn cere- 
 mony, in their failing to perceive and apprehend the 
 
 get na mair in the sacrament nor we get in the Word ; and we get 
 als meikle in the very simple Word as we get in the sacrament ? . . . 
 The sacrament is appointed that we may get a better grip of Christ 
 nor we get in the simple Word — that we may possess Christ in our 
 hearts and minds mair fully and largely nor we did before in the 
 simple Word ; that Christ might have a larger space to make resi- 
 dence in our narrow hearts nor he could have by the hearing of the 
 simple Word ; and to possess Christ mair fully it is a better thing." 
 — Robert Bruce on the Saa^amcnis, p. 29. 
 
BAPTISMAL REGENERATION. 65 
 
 voice of God in the seal of the covenant, or the real 
 covenant nature of their own transaction with him? 
 2. As baptism does not infallibly mark the spi- 
 ritual character of the children to whom it is ad- 
 ministered, so neither do we know that it directly 
 and immediately conveys divine grace to any one 
 of them. If the principles already stated are cor- 
 rect, the doctrine of bajyttsmal regeneration is, under 
 all its modifications,* utterly destitute of scriptural 
 authority. God may bestow his regenerating 
 
 * The Eomish dogma, as propounded by the Council of Trent, is, 
 ** that a sacrament is a sensible thing, which, by the appointment 
 of Grod, has the power both of signifying and of effecting {efficiendae) 
 holiness and righteousness" (Catechism, part ii. c. 1, qu. 8). 
 Others state it thus — that the regenerating grace is dispensed not by 
 the sacrament, but invariably along with it. The most evangelical 
 modification of the doctrine is — that the regenerating grace is dispensed 
 at the moment of baptism only as the answer to believing prayer, 
 and consequently only in those instances in which the infant has the 
 benefit of one or more believing parents or sponsors. The regenera- 
 tion is, in this case, not the opus operatum, the result of the mere 
 priestly act, according to the bare Romish theory, but the opm ope- 
 rantis. And yet even this view, greatly as it seems to magnify the 
 prayer of faith, contains this vitiating principle, that the prayer of 
 faith is of no eff'ect without the sacrament. It implies that Grod can- 
 not impart the grace of regeneration (whatever be the measure of 
 grace which they understand by this term) — that He must wait until 
 it suit the convenience of a man, perhaps a worthless, ignorant, im- 
 moral priest, by administering the sacrament, to permit Him to do 
 so. This man, if he cannot command, can at least hinder the de- 
 scent of the Spirit till his own judgment or caprice consent. This is 
 just the same hierarchical element, though not so grossly developed, 
 as is involved in the doctrine of tran substantiation. Archdeacon 
 Wilberforce adverts to this objection in his Doctrine of Holy Bap- 
 tism, but he does not condescend to answer it. He combines it with 
 another objection, and says, ** This is to return to the ancient Gnostic 
 error."— F. 34. 
 
 E 
 
66 INFANT BAPTISM. 
 
 Spirit on an infant at the very moment of its bap- 
 tism. We have no scriptural warrant to expect 
 that He will do so. We have, perhaps, no ground 
 for believing that He lias ever, in any one instance, 
 actually done so since the world began. In the 
 accurate and careful language of our Confession of 
 Faith — language of which the meaning is neither 
 ambiguous nor difficult to be reconciled with Scrip- 
 ture, '' the efficacy of baptism is not tied to that 
 moment of time when it is administered ; yet, not- 
 withstanding, by the right use of this ordinance, the 
 grace promised is not only offered, but really exhi- 
 bited and conferred by the Holy Ghost to such 
 (whether of age or infants) as that grace belongeth 
 unto, according to the counsel of God's will, in his 
 appointed time " (chap, xxviii. 6). The benefits 
 derived from baptism are not exclusively interme- 
 diate through the parents, but are also direct. For 
 afterwards, as understood and contemplated, it is 
 a fit means by which the Holy Spirit may awaken 
 gracious affections. Before conversion, how appro- 
 priate and pungent the appeals which may be de- 
 rived from the parent's prayers and faith, of which 
 his presentation of his child in baptism was the 
 evidence and pledge. In a season of conviction 
 and anxious inquiry, how strong the encourage- 
 ment which the promise sealed in baptism sug- 
 gests, if there is reason to believe that it was in- 
 deed sealed to a godly parent. And when the 
 transition from death to life has been effected, what 
 
BAPTISM A DEDICATION. 67 
 
 thankfulness and wonder must be excited when 
 one can say, My baptism was ^^ the sign and seal of 
 my ingrafting into Christ, and partaking of the 
 benefits of the covenant of grace." Whatever bless- 
 ings can be conveyed to children by the promise 
 made to godly parents on their behalf, these very 
 blessings, and none other, become, in God's own 
 time and way, the actual fruits of their baptism ; 
 and who can tell in what degree the actual reali- 
 sation of these fruits is owing to their baptism hav- 
 ing been believingly received by their parents, or 
 solemnly and thankfully remembered by them- 
 selves ? 
 
 But yet again, even this does not exhaust the 
 meaning of the ordinance. In every covenant 
 transaction there are mutual engagements, so that 
 the sacraments, while called, on the one hand, 
 seals of God's grace to us, are also, on the other, 
 called seals or pledges of om* devotedness to Him. 
 In the Lord's Supper, the communicant not only 
 professes faith in Christ, but also vows obedience 
 to Him. Receiving from God the assurance of 
 all-sufficient grace, reminded also of the greatness 
 of redeeming love, he binds himself to God in a 
 perpetual covenant, and promises, " All that the 
 Lord hath said will we do and be obedient." — 
 (Exod. xxiv. 7.) In baptism, the parent, assured 
 by God's promise, and animated and subdued by 
 
68 INFANT BAPTISM, 
 
 His overflowing love, solemnly engages to train up 
 his child " in the nurture and admonition of the 
 Lord." And the child, which in this very act is 
 recognised as the heir of promise, and for which 
 the invaluable blessing of parental care is thus 
 strictly secured, is itself, at the same time, brought 
 under corresponding obligations. For, 
 
 IV. Baptism is also the solemn dedication of 
 the infant to God. It signifies and seals ^' our en- 
 gagement to be the Lord's." 
 
 The consecration of the priests, the dedication 
 of the temple, the presentation of its offerings, 
 meant the setting of them apart for the Lord's 
 service, the permanent surrender of them to be 
 employed, not according to the will of man, nor 
 for the common purposes of life, but according 
 to the Lord's will, and for the service of His 
 house. And the dedication of an individual soul 
 to God must mean that he is recognised as no more 
 his own, but that he becomes God's servant, God's 
 property ; * or " that he no longer should live the 
 rest of his time in the flesh to the lusts of men, but 
 to the will of God " (1 Pet. iv. 2). 
 
 But it maybe said. We understand how men may 
 alienate their property from themselves and devote 
 it to God's service, and how one can bind and de- 
 vote himself to a life of obedience to the Lord ; 
 but is it consistent with the nature of spiritual re- 
 ligion that a man should incur the responsibility of 
 * 1 Cor. vi. 19, 20. 
 
BAPTISM A DEDICATION. 69 
 
 a dedication to which he did not consent, or that 
 a parent can really impose such a weighty obliga- 
 tion on a yet unconscious infant ? In answer to this 
 it has only to be remembered that, in circumstances 
 rendering their own consent impossible, God him- 
 self commanded that all the first-born of the fami- 
 lies of Israel should be ^' sanctified/' or set apart to 
 His service, and that in the covenant of old He en- 
 joined a similar consecration of Abraham's seed ; 
 and farther, that we recognise no impropriety in 
 Hannah, without any special warrant from God at 
 all, dedicating the infant Samuel unto the Lord, 
 from the period of his birth, all the days of his 
 life (1 Sam. i. 11, 28).* 
 
 In the baptismal dedication, there is the authority 
 both of the parental relation and of the Divine war- 
 rant. Encouraged by this promise, and warranted 
 by the covenant standing into which, through the 
 exercise of gracious sovereignty, the child has al- 
 ready been advanced, the parent gladly acknow- 
 ledges the Divine relationship and ratifies the 
 claim. He brings his child before the Lord, say- 
 ing — This thou gavest me, and in so far as I have 
 any property in it, or authority over it, I give it 
 unto thee, to be thy servant ; be thou its God, ac- 
 cept of it, and make it thine, renew and consecrate 
 
 * " Even among heathens this law (the jus parentis) has been 
 acknowledged, as appears from the well-known fact of the Cartha- 
 ginian general, who took his son Hannibal, when only eight years old, 
 to the altar, and swore him to eternal enmity against the Romans." 
 — Dr M'Ckie 071 Christian Baptism. 
 
70 INFANT BAPTISM. 
 
 it with thy Holy Spirit ; I hold it not back, but 
 yield it wholly up to Thy Spirit's gracious opera- 
 tion. I surrender it to be sprinkled with atoning 
 blood, and sanctified by the Holy Ghost, possessed 
 and inhabited by thine own presence as a spi- 
 ritual temple. And in testimony of the sincerity of 
 tliis my dedication, I on my part undertake ever 
 to regard it as lioly^ carefully to protect it from the 
 corruption that is in the world, remembering that 
 ^' if any man defileth the temple of God, him shall 
 God destroy," (1 Cor. iii. 17), and continually to sur- 
 round it with those means and appliances through 
 which the doors of the heart may be flung open, 
 that the King of Glory may enter, and the conse- 
 cration be consummated. 
 
 But more particularly, the Church is not a 
 voluntary society, which men are equally free to 
 enter or not as they choose. It is the kingdom of 
 Him who has dominion over the hearts and con- 
 sciences of all. Wherever the proclamation of His 
 authority and of His redeeming love is made, men 
 are laid under an instant and irrevocable obligation 
 to bow before the sceptre of His grace. And just 
 as by the very circumstance of our birth, our place 
 as subjects of an earthly kingdom, and our position 
 in this world's society, are fixed with all their 
 corresponding obligations, so God may, by some 
 act or circumstance, without our consent and pre- 
 vious to our consciousness, bind us over to be 
 
 * See 1 Cor. vii. 14. 
 
BAPTISM A DEDICATION. 71 
 
 members of His spiritual kingdom ; and our first 
 cognisance of the fact will in this case be our in- 
 curring the full responsibility of an actual obliga- 
 tion. Kow, the family arrangement, with its 
 important characteristics of parental authority and 
 covenant privilege, presents one of the most appro- 
 priate provisions by which such an obligation can 
 be imposed and the transmission of the kingdom 
 secured from age to age. The very circumstance 
 of being born and nurtured in a home where one is 
 surrounded by Christian example and Christian 
 influence constitutes an obligation. The anticipa- 
 tion of these influences, and the certainty of the 
 blessing with wdiich they are to be accompanied, 
 might be suflicient warrant for the believing parent 
 to dedicate his child to God from earliest infancy. 
 But this is not left to the parent's discretion. For 
 God, who makes his children at once the heirs of 
 promise and the subjects of responsibility, requires 
 this at his hand. Their baptism is therefore not 
 an arbiti'ary act of will-worship on the parent's 
 part, but his solemn recognition of the obligation 
 which God has already imposed upon the child by 
 including him within the covenant, while it is 
 God's declaration of the parents' spiritual authority 
 over their children, and spiritual identification with 
 them. In the exercise of this authority, the parent, 
 instead of leaving his children unfettered to choose 
 or to reject the service of God, vows, like Abraham, 
 to command them to keep the ways of the Lord. 
 
72 INFANT BAPTISM. 
 
 And because of this identificationj as having a 
 consciousness of his own fidelity and an assured 
 hope of God's promised grace, he is not chargeable 
 with presumption when, in presenting his children 
 at baptism, he solemnly declares, like Joshua, " As 
 for me aiid my house we will serve the Lord." — 
 (Jos. xxiv. 15.) The dedication is real, and war- 
 rantable, and righteous. The child may indeed 
 refuse to recognise it — as a bom subject may prove 
 a traitor to his country, and the son of a prince may 
 act unworthily of his lineage and his place. But 
 if so, he is not blan\eless. And if, on the other 
 hand, humbly recognising the fact of this dedi- 
 cation, he realises all that is secured for, as well as 
 reflects on all that is required of him, he vnW grate- 
 fully exclaim, " Lord, truly I am thy servant, 
 the son of thine handmaid ; thou hast loosed my 
 bonds. I will offer to thee the sacrifice of thanks- 
 giving, and will call on the name of the Lord. I 
 will pay my vows unto the Lord now in the pre- 
 sence of all his people, in the courts of the Lord's 
 house, in the midst of thee, Jerusalem." — (Ps. 
 cxvi. 16-19.) 
 
 Baptism is thus not an arbitrary, but a signifi- 
 cant hadge of Christian discipleship. It is not the 
 mark simply of having adopted the name and the 
 outward profession of Christian ; but it is the 
 symbol of all that Christianity, internally and spi- 
 ritually, is. It is in the highest sense a badge and 
 
BADGE OF DISCIPLESHIP. 73 
 
 symbol of Christian discipleship, because it is the 
 sign and seal of a vital relationship to God, of a 
 right and title to the enjoyment of sa^dng mercy, 
 and of a consecration to the holiness and obedience 
 of the Christian life. 
 
 How abundantly precious, then, to the believing 
 parent the sacrament in which his children are 
 sealed with the sign of the covenant. But its 
 observance is not merely a gracious privilege — it 
 is also a matter of peremptory duty. Not that it 
 is, in the highest and most absolute sense, neces- 
 sary to eternal life. But still it is an imperative 
 obligation. If there is great danger of unduly 
 exalting the sacrament, as if the dispensation of 
 grace were tied to it, there is also no little danger 
 of unduly depreciating and disesteeming it. God 
 never separates between privilege and duty. When 
 He sets before us gospel salvation, He not merely 
 invites, he commands us to accept of it. And 
 when He institutes an ordinance for the strengthen- 
 ing of his people's faith, and the testifying of their 
 love to him, he not merely permits, but enjoins 
 them to avail themselves of it. As in the case of 
 the Lord's Supper, the undue and improper ob- 
 servance of baptism He resents as a profanation. 
 But that it be worthily observed is not a matter of 
 indifference. He does not allow it to be neglected 
 or despised with impunity. A parent is not guilt- 
 less of this neglect, because, being an unbeliever, 
 
74 INFANT BAPTISM. 
 
 he forbears to profane it. He has, indeed, no right 
 to the seal of a promise which he does not believe ; 
 but his very unbelief is itself a contempt of the or- 
 dinance, and of all that it teaches and promises. 
 And a parent who claims for his children the in- 
 heritance of promise, and neglects or disesteems the 
 sacrament, both sets at nought the authority by 
 which it was appointed, and undervalues, if not 
 the grace which is sealed, at least the graciousness 
 which provided the seal. The one occupies the 
 position of the heathen, who, being a stranger to 
 the covenant and the ordinances of promise, was 
 without God and without hope in the world. But 
 the other can be likened only to the Israelite who 
 wilfully neglected the rite of circumcision, and 
 against whom the sentence was, " That soul shall 
 be cut off from his people, for he hath broken my 
 covenant." — (Gen. xvii. 14.) 
 
 But, once more, precious as baptism is to the 
 children of covenant-keeping parents, of what ad- 
 vantage or significance is it to those whose parents 
 have not faithfully nurtured them, still more to 
 those whose parents are ungodly, and who, in the 
 baptism of their infant children, made no acceptable 
 approach to God, but only profaned his ordinance 
 by ignorance, unbelief, or levity? In all these 
 cases no promise was sealed, no spiritual blessing 
 promised. Was, then, the sacrament a mere nul- 
 lity to the children, bearing to them no message, 
 
CHILDREN OF THE UNGODLY. 75" 
 
 and leaving on them no impress ? No, by no 
 means. "What if some did not believe? shall 
 their unbelief make the faith of God without effect?" 
 — (Rom. iii. 3.) Though, through the parents' sin, 
 it in such cases sealed no promise, and may have 
 been the means of no blessing, yet it was the 
 appointed act of solemn dedication to the service 
 of God ; and the impress and seal of this dedication 
 cannot be so easily erased. Though the parent 
 had no such intention, and was destitute of the 
 faith without which he could not please God, yet 
 still the sign of dedication, the solemn oath of God, 
 has been received. And if the man who " eats 
 and drinks unworthily" at the Lord's table is 
 nevertheless held to have taken upon him all the 
 vows of a Christian profession, and to subject him- 
 self to the charge of covenant breaking, by the sin, 
 or unbelief, or apostasy of his future life — so, in 
 like manner, the child who has, in any circum- 
 stances, been baptized " in the name of the Father, 
 and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost," is really 
 bound over and dedicated to the service of the 
 Lord; and if he withhold his heart and his life 
 from the Saviour, he is guilty of breaking the seal 
 of solemn dedication, and sacrilegiously despoiling 
 the temple of its offering. To what extent, in such 
 a case, ignorance, inadvertence, want of opportu- 
 nity, or defects of education, may extenuate the 
 guilt, or how the load of guilt is to be distributed, 
 we do not undertake to say. But the guilt of 
 
76 INFANT BAPTISM. 
 
 thoughtlessly presenting an offering to the Lord 
 does not nullify the obligation which the act im- 
 plies, nor atone for the crime of wilfully withdraw- 
 ing what has thus been consecrated. In personating 
 God's people, and wilfully intruding into their 
 sacramental standing, unbelieving parents do not 
 acquire their privileges, but they take upon them- 
 selves their responsibilities. 
 
 Nor, again, let it be replied. It is unjust to hold 
 such a dedication valid, when the subject was un- 
 conscious and unconsenting, and when no blessings 
 have been sealed and secured. For, 1. consent is 
 not a necessary condition of obligation. Indeed, 
 our weightiest obligations to God are antecedent to, 
 and irrespective of, our consent. How great our 
 responsibility for the offer of salvation ; and yet 
 the work of salvation has been accomplished, and 
 the offer of it is made without our consent ; and 
 the unwillingness of a sinner to hear the Gospel 
 invitation does not diminish his guilt in rejecting 
 it. Nay, our obligations to God as the God of crea- 
 tion and providence are coeval with our being, and 
 antecedent to the possibility of our consent. We 
 are therefore not at liberty to renounce our bap- 
 tismal dedication, or to choose to whom we will dedi- 
 cate ourselves, except on a principle which would 
 involve that we must '^ needs go out of the world." 
 
 2. With as little truth can it be alleged, that such 
 a dedication is oppressive, discouraging, unjust, be- 
 
CHILDREN OF THE UNGODLY. 77 
 
 cause it only binds down on its subject the heavy 
 burden of obligation, and offers no blessing, con- 
 veys no promise. For even in such a case bap- 
 tism has a voice of mercy as well as a voice of 
 command. Let a man, under whatever disadvan- 
 tages he may have been nurtured, and in whatever 
 circumstances he may now be placed, make use 
 of his baptism aright — learn the lessons which it 
 teaches, and perform the part which it prescribes — 
 and he will not fail of realising, in all their fulness, 
 the promises which it is designed to seal. And if 
 the dedication by which in baptism he was bound 
 over to God's service impel or stimulate him to 
 this, it will be proved not to have been in vain. 
 
 THE END.