To see a lady get into a quarrel with her babe, in time of preaching; slap it, jerk it, hold it, and thus keep it squalling for about half an hour. If the preacher can keep the thread of his discourse, in a case of that kind, he is a pretty good preacher.
To have some man standing near the preacher, in time of prayer, chewing an enormous quid of tobacco, and about once in half a minute, hear a large spoonful of the filthy spittle splash upon the floor.
[ONE IMMERSION.]
CERTAINLY not, but one immersion “into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” There is but one immersion commanded in Scripture; that one is in water, and “into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” Peter said, “Can any man forbid water that these should not be baptized, who have received the Holy Spirit as well as we?” Here the water is mentioned as the element in which they were to be immersed, and they had already been immersed in the Holy Spirit; and in the next verse we are informed that “he commanded them to be immersed in the name of the Lord.” The immersion in water, then, is the one commanded, and the only one.
The immersion in Spirit is not commanded; and the command, if it existed, to be immersed in Spirit could not be obeyed. Suppose the Lord would command any one to be immersed in the Spirit, how would he obey? No man ever was commanded to be immersed in the Spirit, nor was any man ever commanded to immerse any one in the Spirit. Man can not immerse in the Spirit. The immersion in water is commanded, and is the immersion “into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,” “into Christ,” “into one body,” the initiatory rite into the New Institution. Immersion in the Holy Spirit never initiated any one into any institution or anything. It was never commanded. No man ever administered it. The Lord was the only administrator of the baptism of the Spirit. It was a promise. It was a miracle. It imparted miraculous power. It never occurred except on Pentecost, and at the house of Cornelius. On Pentecost the subjects of it were in Christ before it occurred, and at the house of Cornelius they were not in Christ after it occurred till they were immersed in water. In both instances they spake with tongues and prophesied.
When Paul wrote the letter to the church in Ephesus there remained but “one immersion,” the one of the last commission, connected with salvation, the remission of sin, or induction “into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” This is Paul’s “one immersion.” It is not “one pouring,” “one sprinkling,” or “three immersions,” but “one immersion.” Three immersions has not one scrap of authority in the commission or anywhere else. In the same sentence where the apostle has “one body, one Spirit, one hope, one faith,” he has “one immersion,” and it would be in no more direct violation of his language to talk of three bodies, three Spirits, three hopes, three faiths, than of “three immersions.” There is no method by which the language can be so tortured as to get three immersions out of the words, “immersing them into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” Such a thing was never thought of till the dispute about the Trinity sprung up. This dispute originated it. There is not a trace of trine immersion till more than a hundred years after the apostles were gone; till the shallow nonsense of infant sin, infant regeneration, infant immersion and infant damnation were introduced. Here, and not in the Bible, the friends of trine immersion go to find it, and here they find it among those who taught that infants were guilty of original sin and liable to eternal damnation; that infants must be regenerated; that the stain of Adam’s sin must be washed away; that this can not be done except in baptism, to prepare them for heaven. They practiced no infant sprinkling, but infant immersion, and, in time, trine immersion, or immersed them three times. We think some of the Greeks do this to the present day.