01.05 - Lecture 5

LECTURE V. THE MODE OF BAPTISM concluded. THE SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM INTRODUCTORY. IN previous lectures we have dealt with the question of Mode in Baptism. We have shown, and shown conclusively, that there is no foundation in Scripture for the doctrine that Baptism is immersion, and nothing but immersion. We have seen that the Baptist contention for modal exclusiveness is not sustained by the use of baptizo in the Classics; is not sustained by the nature of the Levitical and Pharisaic baptisms to which reference is made in the New Testament; is not sustained by the practice of John the Baptist; is not sustained by any one of the recorded instances of Christian Baptism; is not sustained by subsequent New Testament references; and is not sustained by the testimony of antiquity. It is no reply to say that immersion was the practice of the ancient Church. The practice of the ancient Church is not the rule of faith for Presbyterians. But even the practice of the ancient Church, notwithstanding early deviations from Apostolic freedom and simplicity, was not exclusive immersion, and, therefore, does not conform to the requirements of the Baptist case. It is not a reply to quote statements about the prevalence of immersion which do not refer to exclusive immersion. It is not a reply to give the names of more or less distinguished men who were in favour of immersion as an allowable mode, but who were not in favour of immersion as an exclusive mode. Why that, as I have stated again and again, is our own position. I do not know that there is anyone who holds that immersion is unlawful. At any rate our position is, that immersion is lawful, that pouring is lawful, and that sprinkling is lawful.

We hold that the essence of the ordinance, so far as administration is concerned, is the application of water to the person baptized, and that the mode of application is a matter of indifference. But the admission of a man who holds that immersion is a lawful mode cannot, in fairness, be represented as the contention of a man who holds that immersion is the only lawful mode. And yet this is a favourite artifice with the lower type of Immersionist.

BAPTIST QUOTATION. In this connection we give a pertinent quotation from Dr. Witherow’s little handbook. He says:

“ Now, of these well-known facts Anabaptist writers are constantly taking an unfair advantage. They find many theologians who admit that dipping was an ancient and Scriptural mode of Baptism, just as they believe pouring to have been an ancient and a Scriptural mode. In these circumstances one of the most common devices of Anabaptist writers (I mean, of course, the smaller fry such men as Carson were above it), is to extract sentences from the works of Paedobaptist writers in which they speak favourably of immersion, taking good care to conceal, at the same time, that these writers believed that Baptism by pouring was no less Scriptural and valid. They seek to convey the impression to the unwary and ignorant by quoting half truths from great authors, that the whole Christian world is on their side, only that from some unworthy motives they did not act up to their convictions.” l To put forward as in favour of the Baptist position of immersion and nothing but immersion, the names of men who were in favour of pouring or sprinkling as well as immersion, and who, as a matter of fact, preferred pouring or sprinkling to immersion, is to betray gross ignorance or to descend to downright dishonesty, and the cause that needs to defend itself with such weapons is a cause that, to say the least of it, is in rather a bad way.

ANABAPTISTS AND IMMERSION. An ex-Moderator of the Church of Scotland has been brought forward to prove that Infant Baptism led to Baptism by sprinkling. If the bare ipse dixit of an ex-Moderator is sufficient proof for Baptists that is their own affair; but Presbyterians must be excused if they prefer to have a more substantial basis for their convictions. As a set-off 1 Scriptural Baptism: Its Mode and Subjects, pp. 28, 29. against the statement the absolutely unsupported and absolutely unfounded statement that Infant Baptism led to Baptism by sprinkling, I venture to submit a simple statement of fact. It is a matter of history that the Anabaptists, as the Baptists were originally called, did not, for a considerable number of years after their first appearance in the sixteenth century, baptize by immersion, and it is said that they were led to adopt immersion and to insist on it as a necessity with the view of putting an end to Infant Baptism. In this connection I may be permitted to give you an extract from a work by the Rev. Robert Baillie, one of the members of the Westminster Assembly, minister at Glasgow and afterwards Principal of the University of Glasgow. He says:

“Among the new inventions of the late Anabaptists, there is none which with greater animosity they set on foot than the necessity of dipping over head and ears than the nullity of affusion and sprinkling in the administration of Baptism.

Among the old Anabaptists, or those over the sea to this day, so far as I can learn by their writs or any relation that has yet come to my ears, the question of dipping and sprinkling came never upon the table. As I take it, they dip none; but all whom they baptize they sprinkle, in the same manner as is our custom. The question about the necessity of dipping seems to be taken up only the other year by the Anabaptists in England as a point which alone, as they conceive, is able to carry their desire of exterminating Infant Baptism; for they know that parents upon no consideration will be content to hazard the life of their tender infants by plunging them over head and ears in a cold river. Let us, therefore, consider if this sparkle of new light have any derivation from the lamp of the Sanctuary, or the Sun of righteousness, if it be according to Scriptural truth or any good reason. 1 “ l This question is exhaustively discussed in a volume- recently published by an eminent American Baptist, Mr. W. H. Whitsitt, President of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville, Ky. President Whitsitt proves that the Anabaptists generally were not, at first, Immersionists, that the Anabaptists in England did not practise immersion before the year 1641, and that immersion was an innovation and a departure from the original practice of the Anabaptists. As might have been expected, this Baptist author was rather roughly handled by his Baptist brethren for his unaccountable indiscretion in acknowledging a fact that, according to the approved Baptist tactics, should have been kept a profound secret.

It would appear that, according to the Bishop of London, the coldness of our climate is responsible for the universality of sprinkling. 1 have been informed by a respected citizen of Derry that a Baptist movement which originated in this city after the Revival of 1859 came to an untimely end, and that subsequently the English organ of the denomination had an explanatory paragraph, which 1 Anabaptism (Loud. 1647), c. vii, p. 163.

2 A Question in Baptist History Whether the Anabaptists in England practised Immersion before the Year 1641? (Louisville Ky, Charles T. Dearing, 1896, he read, attributing the collapse of the Londonderry mission to “ the wetness of the climate and dissensions among the brethren.” Verily our Anti-Baptist climate has much to answer for. And it is said that there are climates which, from the Immersionist standpoint, are even viler than ours. Surely this inclemency of climate must be an invention of the Evil One to interfere with the spread of Baptist principles, and so retard the coming of the Kingdom. At this point, I think, we may, with great propriety, take leave, for the present, of the question of immersion.

SUBJECTS OF BAPTISM POSITION DEFINED.

We come now to deal with the other department of the subject that remains to be investigated the Subjects of Baptism. The Mode of Baptism having been considered, the more important question arises, Who are to be baptized? And here, as before, it will be well, at the outset, to define our position.

For, as in relation to the question of Mode, we admit the lawfulness of immersion side by side with the lawfulness of pouring or sprinkling, so, in relation to the question of Subjects, we hold the rightness and the necessity of baptizing those who, not having been baptized in infancy, are led to make, on their own responsibility, a profession of faith in Christ, side by side with the tightness and the necessity of baptizing the infant children of those who are in the membership of the Church. That is to say, we baptize professing believers who wish to enter the fellowship of the Church, and we baptize the children of professing believers who are in the fellowship of the Church. The Baptism of adults is not a common occurrence with us in the home section of the Church, because nearly all of those to whom we minister have been brought up under, at least, some degree of Christian influence, and have been baptized in infancy. Sometimes, however, cases of adult Baptism occur. I have had three or four cases of it in the course of my own ministry. But in the mission Held I am happy to say that such cases occur in hundreds. You will see by the circular placed in the pews to-day l in reference to the work of the Foreign Mission of our Church that in connection with our Indian Mission 122 adults were received into the Church by Baptism during the first ten months of the year. In China the number of baptisms for the year ending 1st May 1898 was about 2000, and this year the number must be still greater. I am pleased to find that my old college friend, Mr Fulton, who is labouring in China, and who is one of the most effective of our effective foreign missionaries, baptized no less than 469 persons in the course of his last missionary journey. Many of these, and probably most of these, were adults. When our missionaries speak of baptisms they naturally give 1 January 15th, 1899. most prominence to the Baptism of adults, and sometimes they speak of the Baptism of households. That is exactly what we find in connection with the missionary labours of the Apostles as recorded in the New Testament, and that is exactly what we should expect. Thus it will be seen that we baptize infants where, as we shall show, infants ought to be baptized, and that we baptize others where others ought to be baptized. The phrase “ infant sprinkling,” by which our Baptist friends, with that excess of charity which is characteristic of the more select spirits among them, describe our Baptism, is, therefore, as inadequate as it is impertinent, and, from their stand point, would require to be supplemented by at least a fraction of the phrase “ believers Baptism,” by which, with that excess of modesty which is also characteristic, they are accustomed to describe their own immersions. But, in truth, we repudiate both phrases as being inaccurate and misleading, because we baptize more than infants and they immerse more than believers. I suppose one may be permitted the distant suggestion that some of the “ believers “who are immersed are not believers. Or, are we to take it that the Baptist Church is an exception an impossible exception to all the Churches in Christendom? At any rate, we are not so presumptuous as to speak of “ believers Baptism “ in connection with the administration of the ordinance in the Presbyterian Church, not that I think our members lag far behind their neighbours in respect of the marks of discipleship, but that we are scrupulously anxious to keep well within the limits of the truth in describing our members and our ordinances.

Hence we speak not of “believers,” but of professing believers, and not of “believers Baptism” but of the Baptism of professing believers. The only difference here, in point of description, between our Baptist friends and ourselves is that we call a professing believer a professing believer, and they call a professing believer a “ believer.”

“With this explanation we may proceed to note that the Baptists, in common with ourselves, baptize professing believers who have never been baptized before (I am not now speaking of Baptist proselytes who may have been baptized in infancy), while we baptize not only professing believers who have never been baptized before, but the infant children of professing believers who are in the membership of the Church. In this matter, as in the matter of Mode, the Baptist stands for exclusiveness. He insists on exclusive immersion, and he insists on the exclusive immersion of professing believers exclusively. On the other hand we stand in both cases for liberty, the liberty which is as wide, and only as wide, as the; revealed will of God. The Baptist conception of the visible Church differs from ours. I am sure I do not need to remind you that the “ invisible Church “ is the Church as it is in the sight of God or the collective company of all true saints, and that the “ visible Church “ is the Church as it is in the sight of men, or, as we hold, the collective company of all who profess the true religion and their children. Now, the Baptists hold that the Church visible consists only of professing believers. The children who are not old enough to make a profession of faith have no Church standing in the Baptist communion. The sheep are carefully folded, but the lambs are kept outside. It is this difference of view as to the constitution of the visible Church that gives rise to the difference of view that exists between the Baptists and our selves in regard to the Subjects of Baptism, because Baptism is immediately and directly related to the constitution of the visible Church, and is the ordinance by which those who are entitled to the privilege are received into the fellowship of the visible Church.

BAPTIST INDIVIDUALISM.

Now, I think there is something to be said at this point by way of objecting to this rigid Individualism which is characteristic of the Baptist denomination, and which prevents Church recognition of children. It is not found in the State.

It is not found in our civic arrangements. It is not found in society. The family and not the individual is the social unit. Society is made up of families. Nations are made up of families. The world is made up of families. If it were not made up of families it should soon cease to be. The child from birth has a recognised position in the State.

He enjoys the recognition, and protection and guardianship of the State from the first. If a foreign Power, through one of its agents, were to lay an unfriendly hand on any infant born of British parents in the most obscure region of the earth the whole resources of the British Empire would instantly be available to right the wrong that had been perpetrated on a British subject. The State recognises children infant children. The State insists that every child of every subject shall be suitably nourished and clothed and educated, to the end that, when he comes to take his place as a citizen he may be able to discharge the duties of citizenship with advantage to himself and to the community at large. And surely, on the ground of analogy, there is at least a presumption that the Church, as a Church, should have some way of recognising the children born to its members, and surely the children, as the children of Church members, should have some recognised place and some recognised position within the pale of the Church. That is, if we may presume so far as to suppose that the Church, in its care for the wellbeing of the young, should not be, in any respect, behind the State. Of course the Church is spiritual and the State is natural. But the truly spiritual and the truly natural are alike from God, and there is no reason why the spiritual should be unnatural. In the ideal condition of things to which we look forward the spiritual shall be natural and the natural shall be spiritual.

We may observe, too, that in the arrangements of Divine Providence children are bound up with their parents. They participate with their parents in the privileges and advantages and pleasures and in the privations and hardships and troubles that come to the home. Not only so, but in many cases the parent acts for the child, and is regarded as the rightful representative of the child, and the child is bound by the act of his parents until he is in a position to act for himself. Of course this is part of the Providential order under which we live. Thus we see that the principle by which the parent represents the child when he is unable to represent himself is embedded, by Divine appointment, in human life, and plays a very large part in the formation of human character and the determination of human destiny. We shall see in the course of this inquiry that this great principle has received prominent recognition in all God’s dealings with men in the unfolding and fulfilment of His great purpose of redemption.

MODE OF DETERMINING THE QUESTION. So much in a general way. But coming now to close quarters with this question as to the Church position of children, which divides the Baptists from ourselves, let us think for a moment of the way in which the question is to be determined. For it is a question as to the Church status of the children of parents who are in the membership of the Church, and as to the recognition, on the part of the Church, of that Church status by the appropriate ordinance. The question, in brief, is this: Have the infant children of professedly believing parents a right to a place in the visible Church, and is it the duty of the Church to recognise that right and to receive such children into its fellowship in the only way they can be received, that is by Baptism?

How is this question to be determined? Of course our appeal must be to the Word of God, and our Baptist friends are ready to prescribe the precise form in which the matter must be settled. They take it upon themselves to say that God’s will, in this regard, should be revealed according to their prescription. They want a text. And if they can not have a text they practically say that they will not be satisfied with anything else, or at least they do not show themselves disposed to look patiently at anything else. Now, I am not going to undervalue the importance of texts. They are all important, and they are all sufficiently important to be considered in their proper setting and in their proper connection. But I think that the method of presenting isolated and dislocated texts in proof of great doctrinal principles is somewhat out of date. I think there is something still more important than texts, even when they are rightly considered and rightly construed. If we can find a great, broad fundamental principle running all through the Word of God, if we find that that principle reveals itself again and again in the arrangements that God has seen fit to make for the uplifting of human life, if we find that that principle has been distinctly enunciated in connection with the initiation of the great forward movements that stand out as landmarks in the progress, among men, of the Kingdom that is from above, and that, in the mercy of our God, is yet to be universal universal in its comprehensiveness and in its supremacy if, I say, we can find a principle like that, then we have something more important than a text, something that will dominate and illumine many a text, and something that will give men more insight into the will of God, and more guidance in regard to Church practice and the administration of Church ordinances, to which it is relevant, than any single text or passage of Scripture could be expected to do. THE PRINCIPLE OF REPRESENTATION.

We claim that there is, in Scripture, such a principle that bears immediately and directly upon the question in hand, and that is the Principle of Representation, the principle in accordance with which God deals with men through a representative, the principle in accordance with which God deals with families as families through their representatives or heads. That principle, we believe, binds up parents and children together, and makes over to them the benefits of the New Covenant together, and gives them Church standing together. In this way it comes to bear on the question of baptizing the infant children of Church members. And in order to get a grasp of this great governing principle, in this connection, we go away back to the time of Abraham, and to the time when God was pleased to enter into Covenant relationship with Abraham, and to give him a sign and a seal of the Covenant in which He pledged Himself to be a God to him and to his seed, and in which He revealed n. great purpose of love to mankind in general. The Baptist may object to this plan of procedure, but if we are to submit to God’s will we must first of all find out what God’s will is, and if we are to find out what God’s will is we must be content to look for it just where God has been pleased to make it known, and to receive it just as it has been conveyed. It does not look very like submission to God’s will to prescribe the particular way in which God shall declare Himself, if His declaration is to be honoured with Baptist acceptance. Most of the Baptists seem to think that we ought to begin our discussion of this question at the Commission, apparently on the ground that the past is irrelevant. But, in the nature of things, some part of the past is always relevant to the present, and in order to understand the Commission aright, it is necessary to go back into the past and look at what led up to it, and what would inevitably dominate and determine the interpretation of it by the Jewish minds, to which it was immediately addressed. Moreover, the Baptist does not ignore the past in his discussion of the question of Mode. He goes away back into the Classics, as far, at least, as his scholarship will carry him, that he may get light on the meaning of baptizo, and that he may be the better able to show what meaning he considers it to have in the Commission. Of course this is the correct method. But if he allows him self the liberty of this method in discussing the question of Mode he must allow us the liberty of the same method in discussing the more important question of Subjects. In all such cases the historical method is the scientific method and the proper method, and the method that, when rightly followed, is most likely to lead to the apprehension of the truth. We have followed that method in the other department of this inquiry, and we have arrived at the truth. We shall continue to follow it in the department of the subject into which we have now come, and which we mean to investigate as far as may be necessary; and we do not doubt that, here too, we shall be conducted along the leading line to the goal of truth, which it is our one desire to reach. But it may be asked: Why go back as far as Abraham, and why no farther? We go back to Abraham and no farther, because Abraham stands at the beginning, so far as our present purpose is concerned. We have to deal in our present inquiry with the constitution of the visible Church, and the call of Abraham marks the beginning of the Church visible. No doubt God had His saints in the world before the time of Abraham, but they were not, previous to his time, brought together in one continuous visible community. Clearly enough Abraham stands at the place where we must begin our investigation of this question, and accordingly we begin with Abraham.