Bertha and Her Baptism

by Nehemiah Adams

Though the title of the treatise from which I read is called the Church-Membership of Children, to which expression I have very great objections, and feel that it has done harm, yet this good man held the doctrine of infant church-membership in a sense which is free from all reproach of making people members of the church otherwise than by regeneration. His belief on this point comes out under the following illustration:

"These children may not be the sons of God and his people really and savingly, but God will honor them outwardly with his name and privileges, just as one that adopts a youngster tells the father that if the child carry himself well toward him, when he is grown up to years he shall possess the inheritance itself; but yet in the meanwhile he shall have this favor, to be called his son, and be of the family and household, and so be reckoned among the number of his sons."

One of the chief reasons which brought this excellent man to New England, was that he could not in Old England enjoy the ordinance of infant baptism in its purity. Let me read the following, addressed by him to his little son, who afterward became pastor of the church in Lynn, Massachusetts, and was a burning and shining light. His words will show you that he had no superstitious notion about the church-membership of children, though he represented the common belief at that day, and that he did not count baptism in infancy a saving ordinance; yet you will see how he uses it to plead with his son to be reconciled to God. He writes:

"And thus, after about eleven weekes sayle from Old England, we came to New England shore, where the mother fell sick of consumption, and you my child was put to nurse to one goodwife Hopkins, who was very tender of thee; and after we had been here diverse weekes, on the seventh of February, or thereabout, God gave thee the ordinance of baptism, whereby God is become thy God, and is beforehand with thee, that whenever you shall return to God he will undoubtedly receive thee; and this is a most high and happy privilege; and therefore blesse God for it. And now, after this had been done, thy deare mother dyed in the Lord, departing out of this world into another, who did lose her life by being careful to preserve thine; for in the ship thou wert so feeble and froward, both in the day and night, that hereby shee lost her strength, and at last her life. Shee hath made also many a prayer and shed many a tear in secret for thee; and this hath bin oft her request, that if the Lord did not intend to glorify himselfe by thee, that he would cut thee off by death rather than to live to dishonor him by sin; and therefore know it that if you shalt turn rebell agaynst God, and forsake God and care not for the knowledge of him, nor to beleeve in his Son, the Lord will make all these mercys woes, and all thy mother's prayers, teares, and death, to be a swift witness agaynst thee at the great day."

The practice of infant baptism, and a belief in what is called the church-membership of children, surely had no injurious effect upon a parent who could speak thus to his child. Yet Shepard took as high ground as any with regard to this subject. He derived appeals from baptism to his child, which were both encouraging and admonitory in the highest degree.

O, said Dr. D., what a people the descendants of Abraham might have been forever, had they kept that covenant of which circumcision was the seal. Had they remembered only this, and had they adhered to it, "I will be a God to thee and to thy seed after thee," and had they been a covenant-keeping people, their peace, as God says to them, would have been as a river; an endless, inexhaustible tide of prosperity and blessedness.

And now, if Christian parents will but lay hold on that covenant as they may, that Abrahamic covenant, still in force for them who are Christ's, and so Abraham's, seed, and heirs according to the promise, we should soon see, in family religion, in the early conversion of children, and in their large Christian culture, those promises of God fulfilled which have respect to the great increase, chiefly by this means, of his church in the latter days. This is one thing which makes me love and prize infant baptism so much; its being an expression and exponent of parental love, faithfulness, and zeal, in those with whom it is preceded and followed by the entire consecration of their children to God, their feelings and conduct toward them agreeing with the covenant made for them with God.

But, in saying this, let me guard you against the erroneous notion that infant baptism is primarily a parent's covenant, an expression of his feelings toward God. No, it is God's covenant, an expression of his feelings toward the children of believers. That is the chief thing which gives it value. For, it is not because parents love their children, that God commands that they be offered in baptism; but because God loves them, and has promised to be a God to them, as he is to their parents. People, however, sometimes treat the ordinance as though it were their act toward God, and not primarily his act toward them. They, therefore, are liable to use it with far less effect than if they were receiving in it, and by it, God's own transaction with them and the little child.

Mr. M. In thinking of Pagan and Mohammedan nations, lately, at the Concert of Prayer for Foreign Missions, I was struck with this thought, how error has been transmitted from father to child, and what an awful power for evil lies in transmitted family influence, when it is corrupted. This led me to think whether God did not have this in mind when, in establishing his church in Abraham, he connected children with parents in his covenant, and gave a sign and seal to be affixed to their children as a constant admonition to parental faithfulness. All his former dealings with the world seem to have failed, because of its great wickedness,—fire, plagues, good examples, great riches, and power conferred upon the good; and then he added, as a special means, the family constitution, and by it he secured a seed to serve him to an extent sufficient to keep the world from extinction, and to be the repository and source of divine knowledge. I began to think that, if we would keep religion from dying out, we must fall in with God's great plan; for Satan makes use of it, and holds generation after generation in bondage by means of the family constitution. So I set myself at work to find out ways by which we might promote family religion; and I could find no better plan than the old one, of promoting scriptural and spiritual views of the dedication of children. Then I thought how much discredit has been cast upon that ordinance, which is intended to be the great sign and declaration of parental piety and faithfulness; and that family religion had, proportionably, declined, with the indifference of Christians to this powerful means of promoting the eminent zeal and efforts of parents in behalf of their children's spiritual good. Youths of fifteen to twenty-one years of age are, in a large proportion, the causes of prevailing wickedness,—Sabbath-breaking, profaneness, and other things. They need just what the ordinance of baptism, properly observed and fully carried out by covenanting parents, would do for them. But, in being present at the formation of new churches, I have mourned to see that, instead of declaring infant baptism to be the duty of believers, as was formerly done in our older churches, a compromise with modern lax views is made, by merely permitting infant baptism, saying, in the confession of faith, that, "Baptism is the privilege only of believers and their children."

But the idea of getting up a zeal in favor of infant baptism, or a public sentiment in the churches which should enforce it as a duty, seemed to me unprofitable; but it occurred to me, whether something could not be done to interest Christian parents in the subject, by showing them the infinite privilege of having God for their God, and the God of their seed, and then the naturalness and propriety of using an ordinance to express and to assist it. People need instruction on the subject; instruction which will commend itself to their Christian feelings. We cannot legislate them into a spiritual observance of the Lord's Supper, much less of baptism.