that the old man and the sinful birth of flesh and blood should be entirely drowned by the grace of God, as we shall hear. Therefore satisfaction should be done to this signification, and a truly perfect sign should be given. Secondly, Baptism is an outward sign and symbol, that separates us from the unbaptized man, that we may be known thereby as people of Christ our Leader, under whose banner, that is the holy cross, we are constantly to war against sin. Therefore we must regard three things in the holy sacrament-the sign, the signification, the faith. The sign consists in this, that the man is plunged into the water in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit; but he is not left in it, but again lifted out of it, therefore we say, 'LIFTED OUT OF BAPTISM.' Therefore both parts must be in the sign-the_baptizing and the lifting out again. Thirdly, The signification is a blessed death to sin and a resurrection in the grace of God, that the old man begotten and born in sin is here drowned, and comes forth a new man, and arises born by grace. Thus Paul calls baptism a bath of the new birth-that in this bath we are newborn and renewed. Christ also says, Unless you are born again out of the water and the Spirit, you cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven;' for just as a child is taken and born out of its mother's womb, and by such a birth is a sinful man and a child of wrath, thus also man is lifted and born out of baptism spiritually, and is by such a birth a child of grace and a justified man. Thus sin is drowned in baptism, and righteousness arises instead of sin. Fourthly, The signification, the death and drowning of sin, occurs not perfectly in this life, until man dies also in body and returns to dust. The sacrament or sign of baptism is quickly done, as we may see with our eyes; but the signification, the spiritual baptism, the drowning of sin, lasts as long as we live, and is only finished in death. Therefore this life is nothing else than a spiritual baptism unceasingly till death. And whosoever is baptized is condemned to death, as if the priest said when he baptizeth, Behold, thou art sinful flesh, therefore I drown thee in the name of God, and condemn thee to death in his name, that all sin may die and perish (lit gounder) with thee.'

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Therefore says St. Paul, 'We are buried with Christ by baptism into death.' 'Thus a Christian man's life is nothing else than the beginning of a blessed death at baptism, to continue even to the grave; for God will make him anew at the last day.'"-Erlangen Edition, vol. 21.

Among the princes of the holy ecclesia there can be no harm in introducing a dignitary of the other kirk. Though surely of the camp of Antichrist, yet he is unquestionably a ripe scholar, deeply acquainted with the Semitic languages and familiar with the ground where John the Baptist labored. In this manner speaks Ernest Rénan in his "Life of Jesus," "This practice [the practice of John] was baptism, or total immersion. Ablutions were already familiar to the Jews, as they were to all religions of the East. The Essenes had given them a peculiar extension. Baptism had become an ordinary ceremony on the introduction of proselytes into the bosom of the Jewish religion, a sort of initiatory rite. Never before John the Baptist, however, had either this importance or this form been given || to immersion. John had fixed the scene of his activity in that part of the desert of Judea which is in the neighborhood of of the Dead Sea. At the periods when he administered baptism he went to the banks of the Jordan, either to Bethany or Bethabara upon the Eastern shore, probably to Jericho or to a place called Enon, or the Fountains, near Salim, where there was much water" (Enon is the Chaldean plural, Enawan, Fountains.)—Authorised Translation, chap. vi. p. 96.

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On the same subject we now summons a man of a different stamp, but quite as eminent-Dr. Ebrard, Professor of Theology in the University of Erlangen, perhaps the most masculine and thorough of the men who have grappled with Strauss. Apart from all this, the notion that the rite of baptism was a symbol of purification is utterly inadmissible. The symbol of purification was washing. John must have had some reason for regarding the rite already existing as insufficient. The Old Testament idea of washing was at any rate so far intensified that John the Baptist declared the whole nation, as such, unclean. But the mode of the symbol itself was of pre

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eminent importance. In the place of simple washing he introduced immersion. Every one who passed through this new rite of being dipped by John completely under the water, was led to seek the meaning of the rite in something more than simple purification. And since what John required was not mere improvement, but the most thorough confession of sin and change of heart, (metanoia) the most natural interpretation of this immersion in the waves would be, that it was a symbol of their confession of utter unworthiness and condemnation. The baptism of John was a sign that the man was deserving of death. So much has the baptism of John in common with Christian baptism. (Rom. vi. 4.) The difference is, that in the latter the penitential submission to death is followed by the communication of new life, the coming forth of a new man; the latter is more, therefore, than a mere symbol. This signification of the rite of baptism is in perfect harmony with the word baptizo, which embodies simply the notion of immersion, not of washing away. So far, the baptism of John was something entirely new, and was introduced in consequence of divine revelation-i. e. of a command from God."-Gospel History, translated by Martin, pp. 194-195.

Compare with these testimonies the foolish special pleading of Mr. Gall, who finds the Jordan over deep in the current and over shallow in the fords, and ergo, finds no immersion. A little acquaintance with the common literature of the day would have saved him from all such blundering. Fredrika Bremer, whose Travels in the Holy Land were issued in 1862, beheld the very work which Mr. Gall supposes impossible. "Beneath a shady tree, upon some elevated ground near the bank of the river [Jordan] men and women removed their outer attire, and then went down in merely linen garments to the water's edge, where beside an old dry tree trunk which leaned over the water, stood an athletic figure with black shaggy head and chest covered with hair, more like Hercules than John the Baptist, naked to the waist and standing to his middle in water. This man received in his arms the pilgrims as they stepped down to the river, into which, by the help of an

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assistant, he gave them a hasty plunge. This was repeated three times to each person. The baptized then mounted the hill again and resumed their garments in the shade of a large tree, women helping one another in so doing, and men performing the same good office for men."

Let us now call Neander. "Baptism at first was administered only to adults, as men were accustomed to conceive baptism and faith as strictly connected. There does not appear to be any reason for deriving infant baptism from an apostolic institution, and the recognition of it which followed somewhat later, as an apostolic tradition, serves to confirm this hypothesis." "In respect to the manner of baptizing, in conformity with the original institution and the original import of the symbol, it was generally administered by immersion, as a sign of total baptism into the Holy Spirit, of being entirely penetrated by his grace. It was only in the case of the sick that any exception was made; then, if the exigency required it, baptism was administered by sprinkling. Many superstitious persons, clinging to the outward form, imagined that such baptism by sprinkling was not fully valid, and accordingly they distinguished those who had been so baptized by the term clinici. Cyprian protested strongly against this delusion. The breast of the believer, he says, is washed in one way, but in another it is that the soul of man is cleansed by the merits of faith. In the sacraments of salvation the divine thing, though outwardly abridged when necessity compels and God gives permission, bestows all that it implies on the faithful. And even if any one really believes that these persons have obtained nothing because they have been merely sprinkled with the water of salvation, let not the latter be deceived into thinking that in case they recover from their sickness they ought to be baptized over again. But if those who have once been consecrated by the baptism of the church cannot again be baptized, why fill them with perplexity in regard to their faith and the grace of the Lord? Or perhaps they have indeed partaken of the grace of the Lord, but in a smaller measure of the divine bounty, and of the Holy Spirit; so that while they must be cousidered as

Christians indeed, they may not be placed on the same level as the rest? No, the Holy Spirit is not given by measure, but poured out in full on the faithful. For if the day breaks alike on all, and if the sun pours his light equally on all, how much more shall Christ, the true sun and the true day of his church, distribute the light of eternal life with unstinted equality!"Neander's Church History, vol. i. pp. 429-430, translated by Joseph Torrey.

As an historian well acquainted with the facts, the testimony of Neander is of great value. Both in this work which we have quoted and in his History of the Planting of the Early Church, he distinctly bears testimony to the human origin of infants as subjects and sprinkling as the action. The apos tolic thing was, the man of intelligent faith plunged beneath the water. But when we part with him as a witness to fact, and begin to examine his opinions and speculations, we speedily discover that, like those of Cyprian himself, they are of little value. The jargon of Cyprian and Neander requires translation in some places and exposure in others. The superstitious persons described by Neander were evidently men of reverence, who believed in preserving the integrity of divine truth, and maintaining inviolate the ordinances delivered by the Lord. In the article of common sense as well as of reverence they were superior to the historian, for they knew that the institution had no inward form; hence, if the outward form vanished the substitute was merely a nullity. Cyprian provokes a smile when he tells us, that in sprinkling the divine thing was abridged. It was such an abridgment as the actors once threatened or made when, in the performance of a great drama, they left out the part of Hamlet; or such an abridgment as the Hebrew race might have made if they had substituted for circumcision the paring of their nails. The abridgment proceeded, however, first abridging immersion into sprinkling, then abridging the penitent believer into the unconscious babe, until

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the great reality given by the Lord passed entirely away, and there was left only a futile human ceremony, which has no roots in reason or religion, but is condemned by all the high courts of conscience and revelation. Our rhetorician, Cyprian, only renders himself ridiculous by his closing image. The sun indeed pours his flood of glory impartially over the face of nature, and all the people in the field or on the river share in the brightness if they are in a right relation to the orb. But those who are in the glooms of a tropical forest, or in the bed of a deep ravine, or at the bottom of a coal mine, are shut out from the splendor which is spread over sea and shore. The Lord of the higher day shines indeed in his most holy church, but his glory is only poured through his own channels of illumination. Will-worshippers are in the ravine or the coal mine, and cannot share in the radiance which is revealed.

I had marked passages carefully verified under my own eyes, from Dr. Lange, Dorner, Dr. Schaff, from Mosheim, Bossuet, and Moses Stuart, all bearing testimony to immersion as the apostolic ordinance; but I find too much space would be occupied for the limits of this article. I shall, therefore, conclude by a few remarks on the extract from Mr. Gall which opens the present notice. The statement of the gentleman that immersion was a Patristic superstition, and took its rise among the impure things specified, is an unblushing falsehood, which sets all historical evidence at defiance. fact alone might have corrected our author, had he been capable of using it rightly. In the great corporation where the corruptions all met and mingled in one mystery of iniquity, immersion perished and sprinkling lives and reigns. For the rhantism, as well as for all other corrupt and evil things, she provided home and sanctuary, and it is from such defiled well-head that Mr. Gall and his Presbyterian friends derive their present practice.

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