Bertha and Her Baptism

by Nehemiah Adams

Mr. Benson. It surely is so, if God truly is a party to such a covenant. But where is the proof that he is? That is my trouble. They tell me that this covenanting with God for a child, and sealing it with an ordinance, ceased with Abraham, who was a Jew; that it was a Jewish custom, which died out.

Pastor. Abraham a mere Jew! God's covenant with a believer and his children a Jewish covenant! Never was there a greater mistake. Paul tells us expressly it was not so. Get me a Bible, Helen, and bring me a lamp. I read these words: "And the promise that he should be heir of the world was not to Abraham and his seed through the law, but through the righteousness of faith." His relation to the world was independent of dispensations; it grew out of that faith which he had in common with all believers to the end of time. "And he received the sign of circumcision, a seal of the righteousness of the faith which he had yet being uncircumcised, that he might be the father of all them that believe, though they be not circumcised." Christ also says: "Moses, therefore, gave unto you circumcision; (not because it is of Moses, but of the fathers.)" Abraham was not a Jew when God covenanted with him, any more than you, madam, were Mrs. Ford, when, at the age of sixteen, as you have told me, you entered into covenant with God. That covenant had chief respect to your immortal soul, and yet it reached in its influences to all the conditions of that soul while here in the flesh. So God covenanted with Abraham as a believer, not as a mere national ancestor; yet temporal and spiritual blessings came in rich measures upon his immediate descendants. But we read, "So then as many as be of faith are blessed with faithful," that is, believing, "Abraham." "And if ye be Christ's, then are ye Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise." Can anything be plainer than this?

Mrs. Ford. My father was a minister, you know, sir, and he used to preach a great deal on this subject.

Pastor. Let us hear your understanding of these passages, Mrs. Ford.

"I am afraid," said she, "I cannot tell you just what he used to say. But my idea of it is this: Though Abraham was the founder of the Hebrew people, he was no more a Jew than a Gentile in his covenant with God, for it was as believer the great believer, that God made a covenant with him. So that he was not circumcised as a Jew, but, as the Bible says, to have a seal of the righteousness which he had by faith. God made a covenant with him as a believer, to be his God and the God of his children, as the children of a believer, not a Jew; so that all believers are blessed with believing Abraham, by having the same covenant extended to them. Then, I take it, God gave him a sign and seal as a pledge, and to remind him of it, and to keep his children in remembrance." She paused, and I said:

"Please to go on." You remember, Bertha, how you used to make this Mrs. Ford discuss doctrinal matters when she was sewing for you.

Mrs. Ford. I remember that father said that God took the rainbow as a sign and seal of his promise, to Noah and all future generations, that there should never be another universal deluge. So he appointed a children's ordinance to mark his covenant with believers to the end of time. Only there was this difference; the way of signing and sealing the covenant not being coupled with the laws of nature, but conforming to the kind of symbols successively in use, it was changed, at the time that the Sabbath was changed, and the whole of the old dispensation; but father used to say, Is the commonwealth and citizenship broken up because the legislature adopts a new state seal? Does that destroy all the old public documents?

Pastor. Good! So the United States' mint is from time to time changing its dies; lately it has abolished copper, and substituted equivalent coins of different composition. But money does not perish. A cent is a cent still, red or white. So, whether the seal be blood or water, the great ordinance which it seals remains the same.

"And now I will tell you," said I, "how it seems to me God's covenanting with parents for their children came to pass. He wished to give Abraham a token and seal of his love to him. So he took his child, the thing which he loved best, and would see oftenest, and thought of most, and made the child, as it were, the tablet on which to write his covenant with the father. That was one reason. 'Because he loved the fathers, therefore he chose their seed.' But this is the least of the reasons in the case.

"Here is one of vastly greater importance. God wished to perpetuate religion in the earth. He knew that the family constitution would be the principal means of doing this, parents teaching and commanding their children, and so transmitting religion. Because he knew that Abraham would do this, he gave it as a reason for his love and confidence in him, in not concealing from him his purpose to destroy Sodom. 'Shall I hide from Abraham that thing which I do? For I know him that he will command his children and his household after him, and they shall keep the ways of the Lord.' So, in order to remind Abraham of what was expected by the Most High in making his children the presumptive heirs of grace, and to remind the children of it when they came to years of understanding, God gave him and them this mark and seal."