Bertha and Her Baptism

by Nehemiah Adams

Mr. C. I have sinned with you, as to keeping order, if there has been any transgression; but I have been so much interested and instructed, that I forgot my preëminence over you. But to Br. T., I would say, There is a church; and it means something, and something of infinite importance. All our labors have this for their end, to make men qualified for worthy church-membership, on earth, and in heaven,—the conditions of admission here and there, as we hold, being essentially the same. This church, which we thus build up, has children, call them what we may, the objects of God's peculiar love. On that topic I need not dwell. We ought to pay some marks of special regard to these children, for God has done so. As to its being invidious, it is not more invidious than to address our congregations as partly Christians, and partly unconverted; or to invite the unconverted to meetings especially designed for them. Meetings of the children of my church, called by me, and addressed by me, never fail to make very deep impressions upon the young, upon their parents, upon other children, and upon the parents of those children. Another form of effecting the same desirable ends, is, to call meetings of parents in the church, and their children, and to address the parents and the children in sight and hearing of each other. In doing so, if there are any parents in the church who are withholding their children from baptism, we have the best of opportunities to conciliate their feelings to the ordinance of baptism. We all know how little is effected in our minds by abstract reasoning upon any subject, where the feelings are deeply concerned; close argument, invincible logic, absolute demonstrations, and all measures seemingly intended to coërce the will, excite resistance, and confirm us in our prejudices. But open to a parent, who has doubts on the subject, its inestimable benefits to all concerned, and he will be more disposed to see the grounds for it, and the abundant proofs of its divine authority, which the atmosphere of pure reason had not sufficient power of refraction to make him apprehend.

Mr. S. I thank the chairman heartily for those remarks. May I add a leaf from my observation? I have noticed that in such meetings of parents, in the church, and their children, good influences sometimes reach those who are pursuing the mistaken course of withholding their children from baptism, under the plea that they can consecrate their children to God as well without baptism, as with it. They need to learn the spiritual power which God has vested in the sacraments of his own appointment, and to be disabused of the notion that the baptism of a child is, from beginning to end, merely a human act, of which God is only a spectator;—they need to feel that baptism is something conferred upon a child by God; and not merely a sign, but a seal.

"Yes," said Mr. R., "it is an ordinance of God, and the neglect of it is not merely a failure to obtain blessings, but a disregard of a divine ordinance; not merely the withholding a sign of allegiance, but the loss of a seal,—the government seal, not ours, which God would affix to the intercourse between himself and our souls. If we, pastors, feel this deeply, and so perceive the design of God in bestowing baptism upon the children of his people, we shall convey to the hearts and minds of doubting Christian parents, persuasive influences, which will succeed where arguments and appeals, based on mere proofs and obligations, have failed."

Mr. A. It is gratifying, now, to think that these things, and others like them, may be done without calling the children "members of the church." Except discipline, it is obvious that everything in the way of watchfulness may be done for them as children of the church, which it would be proper, or even possible to do, if they were counted as members.

Mr. R. I am aware of the analogy which many, who plead for the term members, seek to carry out between the Old and the New Testament church, making children members of the Christian church, because the church in ancient days included the children. But it seems to me that there is the same difference, now and formerly, between the relation of children to the church, that there is between the relation of the whole religious community, now and formerly, to the church of God. Formerly, all the members of the religious community were, by their association under the same belief and worship, members of the church. To make the case with us parallel, our whole Christian community ought to be members of the church. No examination or discrimination should be used; to belong to the Christian community should constitute church-membership.

But this, we know, is not the case. God chooses now to make up his visible church not as formerly, but of those who give credible evidence of regeneration. They who worship with us, but do not profess to be Christians, are hopeful subjects of effort and prayer, whom we expect to receive hereafter to the visible church, on profession of their faith.

As the Christian church is constituted differently from the Jewish church, in this respect, discrimination and separation taking place between the members of a Christian congregation, have we not analogical reason to infer that it may also be thus with regard to children?—who once, indeed, were members of the church of God, but, under the dispensation of the Spirit, they fall, with other unconverted members of the congregation, out of membership in the church.

Mr. C. And yet, Br. R., the fall is not far, nor hurtful. They are entitled to all the privileges, and they enjoy, or should enjoy, all the care and effort, which they would have under a different name. Only they do not come to the Lord's Supper, as a matter of course, as they did to the Passover.

Mr. S. Suppose that the legislature should incorporate a fish-market, and cede to the proprietors fifteen square miles of the sea, within which they should have the privilege of taking fish. All the fish, within those fifteen miles of salt water, might be said to belong to the market; yet every one of them must be taken by hook and line ere his belonging to the market is of any practicable value. So the children of the church may be said to belong to the church, and are to constitute her chief resource. Rivers, and other distant or neighboring waters, would also send fish to that market, even if they were "far off;" but it is from the bay at her doors that the market would derive her principal supplies. I do not see that children are members of the church, any further than those fishes belong to that market. Go there when you will, you see the stalls filled from those adjacent waters; supplies are continually coming in; they are, in a sense, secured to the market by a covenant; yet every fish is caught and handled, before he has anything like membership in that market, as really as though he swam and were caught in Baffin's Bay;—only he is now far more likely to be caught, and, in a sense, he already belongs to the market by the seal of the state.

Mr. A., the reader of the sermon, not having much ideality, but much plain good sense, yet taking everything literally at first, and from his own honesty supposing that all figures of speech are to be cashed, as it were, for what they purport on their face, immediately challenged his brother to carry out the illustration. He asked him whether the constant passage, in and out, of fishes from and beyond the ceded fifteen miles, allowed of any resemblance, in the migratory creatures, to the children of the church, who are born and remain in the limits of the church, and are designated, individually, by virtue of their parentage.