[RECEIVING SINNERS WITHOUT BAPTISM.]
IT is an unfavorable step toward “educating a man up to the importance of being buried with his Lord and Master in baptism,” to set the law of God requiring it aside, and receive him without it. This would only lead him to doubt whether we saw or cared for the importance of it ourselves. It never can have a good influence on any sensible man to see religious people so anxious to get him into their party as to set aside their own established principles, and what they hold to be clearly the law of God, for a man not willing to submit to the law of induction into the heavenly family. This is not liberality, but disloyalty all around. It is not a question about what we will do, but what the Lord will do.
Mere refinement and respectability have nothing to do in the matter. It is a matter of faith and respect to the supreme and absolute authority. Has a man the faith, the humility and the obedient spirit that will learn of Jesus and yield to what he requires? We are not vying with any people in this country in efforts to be liberal and easy in our views and practice, but we desire to see who can live nearest to the Lord and follow him most closely. He laid down the law of induction, or the law for receiving members, and we have no discretionary power in the matter. We do not make the terms, but simply exhort men to comply with them, as found in the Book of God.
[THE FALL OF BEECHER.]
THE American people are so familiar with the name and character of Henry Ward Beecher, that no explanation of what follows, is needed by the present generation. Beecher is the most gifted and noted liberalist and progressionist in America. He is out at sea, without chart or compass. The movements of the wind, and the motion of the current, determine his course. He cares not whither he sails or where he lands, or whether he lands at all or not, so that the breeze is pleasant and the waves smooth. His great mind, glib tongue, and tireless pen, have enabled him to unsettle and pervert the faith of thousands of honest and unsuspecting people. Even some preachers among the disciples, who are noted for their adherence to the fixed principles of revealed religion, have been seduced by Beecher. The good providence of God, in time, revealed the true character of the man of no faith, and men now see it blackened and tarnished by crime and immorality. Let the liberalists and progressionists among the disciples of Christ, take warning from the downfall of the far famed Beecher.
Scandal has come; disgrace and shame that would make any conscience, not seared with a hot iron, tingle; or any face, not past feeling, blush. But the Bible is no way responsible for it, not even in appearance. Beecher was no Bible man. Bible men were not his admirers, nor the men that gathered around him, that liked him only the more for his broad views, his liberality, when he pronounced that beautiful benediction on the Pope, “God bless his old soul,” and said he could commune with the Pope, or worship at a pagan altar; declared that there is not a particle of divine authority, in any church in the world; that he was inspired as much as the apostles; and would baptize a man every month if he desired it; that there is no authority for infant baptism; but he was for it now stronger than ever, because it was a good thing—it had been tried! This man identified with the Bible? Not a word of it. The Bible is responsible for none of the scandal and disgrace that hang upon him and must hang there forever. No, not a word of it, you unbelieving man; we turn all over to you; we have here a specimen of your work; unbelief; what it can do in a short time; how it can drag a man down, and the ruin to which it can bring him. Here is the fruit of unbelief; he can eat of it, and all unbelievers can view it, and see what comes of a man that contemns the Bible and puts its authority at defiance.
Gentlemen, unbelievers, if you like to view the results of unbelief, and the ruin that follows in its train, come up here and see what it has done in the case of an illustrious man; a man whose fame has extended throughout the civilized world; a man of wonderful versatility of thought, and immense gifts as a speaker and writer, with such an opening as no other man on the continent had. This man had reached mature years, and his influence had become so great, that many good people would not hear a word against him, nor believe that his terrible skeptical talk meant any harm. It was only independence. But, in the midst of such a career of popularity, and that not of an ephemeral character either, as no other man in this nation ever had, up springs trouble in the midst of his most intimate friends, and those he knew better, and had associated with more intimately than any others. It comes not from persecutors without, nor from enemies or envious preachers within, but his most intimate friends, who know him better than all others.