But, even should we allow the ordinance to be a true and fitting symbol of the burial of Christ, it remains void of all spiritual significance. Study it as we may, it teaches nothing,—it means nothing. In all other sacraments the plan of salvation, in one or other of its grand features, is lucidly represented. The Lord’s supper is the acknowledged symbol of Christ’s atonement and death, and of the manner in which he imparts to his people the benefits of that death,—while they by faith feed upon his broken body. According to the immersion theory, baptism represents and shows forth the burial of the dead body of Jesus, contradistinguished from his death, as symbolized in the Lord’s supper. But that burial is a thing wholly unimportant and insignificant, in itself, whether viewed as to the fact or the mode. No emphasis is ever in the Scriptures put upon either, nor spiritual meaning attributed to them. Thus, if we admit immersion to a place among the ordinances, it must remain a mere form, shedding no ray of divine light,—an opaque spot among the luminaries in the instructive constellation of Scripture rites. The result moreover of accepting this ordinance is, to strip the New Testament church of all sacramental knowledge of the power and glory of Christ’s triumphant sceptre. In Levitical baptism, the Old Testament church had a most beautiful pledge of his triumph over death and a symbol of his grace shed down from the throne of his glory. But, upon the immersion theory, all this is utterly ignored in the New Testament ritual, and all attention directed to the humiliation, sufferings and death,—one sacrament setting forth his death, and the other his burial; whilst both are left void of meaning; since the intent of the abasement can only be found in his exaltation, and the baptizing office exercised from his throne. We are to believe that at the very moment when his exaltation became a glorious reality, and his baptizing office an active function, and when these facts had become the very crown and sum of the gospel thereupon sent forth to the world, all trace of them was obliterated from the sacramental system, to the marring of its symmetry and the utter destruction of its completeness and adequacy as a symbolical gospel.
Moreover, it is the office of the rite of baptism, to seal admission to the benefits of the covenant, in the bosom of the visible church. Appropriate to this office, the Old Testament rite was a symbol of that renewing and cleansing which the Lord Jesus by his Spirit gives, in the bestowal upon his people of the benefits of the better covenant, and the fellowship of the invisible church. The same import is attributed to baptism throughout the New Testament. But in the rite of immersion, as symbolizing the burial of the Lord Jesus, not only is this meaning excluded, but the ordinance has no conceivable congruity to the office which it fills. Dr. Carson attempts to evade this difficulty by the assumption that there are two distinct emblems in baptism,—one, of purification by washing; another of death, burial and resurrection, by immersion.[[66]] Then, we are to understand that in baptism, the administrator represents at once, the men by whom the body of Jesus was laid in the sepulchre, and the Lord Jesus himself, dispensing the baptism of his Spirit! The water symbolizes both the grave which is the abode of death and corruption, and the Holy Spirit of life! And the immersion of the person of the baptized represents at one and the same time, the placing of the body in the grave, and the bestowal of his Spirit by Jesus, for quickening and sanctifying his people! Manifestly, the two sets of ideas thus brought together, as involved and represented in the one form, are wholly irreconcilable. They are not merely incongruous, but mutually destructive. To assert water, in one and the same act, to signify the Spirit of life, and the corruption of the grave; or an immersion to symbolize, at once, the burial of the dead body, and the quickening of dead souls, is to deny it to have any meaning at all. The rite may be labelled with these incongruous ideas. But they can not be made to cohere in it. The theory ignores and contradicts the true nature of the rites of God’s appointment; which are not mere mnemonical tokens, but representative figures, ordained as testimonies, which convey intelligible expression of their meaning by their forms; and are therefore constructed upon fixed and invariable principles, and characterized by definiteness and unity of meaning.
Are these difficulties evaded by falling back to the position of the first Baptist confession,—that baptism “being a sign, must answer the thing signified, which is, the interest the saints have in the death, burial and resurrection of Christ; and that as certainly as the body is buried under the water and risen again, so certainly shall the bodies of the saints be raised by the power of Christ, in the day of the resurrection?” This is, to abandon the very citadel of the cause, which consists in the position that the form and meaning of the ordinance are to be determined by a strict interpretation of the classic meaning of the word baptizo. That word never means “burial and resurrection,”—the immersion and raising up of the subject. It sometimes means a submersion; that, and nothing more. This is now distinctly admitted by the ablest representatives of the immersion theory, as we shall see abundantly evinced before we close.
Such are some of the considerations that present themselves, as, at this point in our inquiry, we view the two diverse rites which assume the name of Christian baptism. Their claims are now to be judged, by a comparison of the New Testament evidence, with what has been already concentrated from the law, the prophets, and the Psalms;—writings all of them equally authoritative and divine.
The Greek Bath.—The god, Eros, presides. From
Sir. Wm. Hamilton’s vases, in Smith’s Dictionary
of Greek and Roman Antiquities; article “Balneæ.”
Part VIII.
THE PURIFYINGS OF THE JEWS.
Section XLVII.—Accounts of them in the Gospels.
The fact has been referred to already that at the great passover, in the days of Hezekiah, to which the remnant of the ten tribes were invited by the king, “a multitude of the people, even many of Ephraim and Manasseh, Issachar and Zebulun, had not cleansed themselves, yet did they eat the passover otherwise than it was written,” not being “cleansed according to the purification of the sanctuary;” that, thereupon, a plague was sent among them; but at the intercession of the king, the Lord healed the people. (2 Chron. xxx, 17-20.) In the law, it appears that, at the entreaty of certain persons, who, at the regular time of the passover, were defiled by a dead body, provision was made for a second passover, to be kept a month later, by such as, by reason of defilement, or absence at a great distance, could not keep it at the appointed time. (Num. ix, 6-11.) These facts illustrate the statement of John respecting a certain occasion when the “passover was nigh at hand; and many went out of the country up to Jerusalem before the passover, to purify themselves.”—John xi, 55. The self-washings could all be performed by the people at home. But, in the later period of Jewish history, the ashes were kept at Jerusalem, and the sprinkling of the unclean usually performed there by the priests alone. Hence, the coming of these Jews to Jerusalem for purifying before the feast. It is thus evident that at all the annual feasts, the preparatory purifying of the people must have been a very conspicuous feature of the occasion, a fact of no little significance, as bearing upon the observances in the Eleusinian mysteries, already referred to.
We have shown the name of baptism to have been used to designate both the Levitical rite of sprinkling with the water of separation and the ritual purifyings invented by the scribes. With the growth of ritualistic zeal, the occasions for the latter observances were multiplied. The earliest allusion to them, in the life of our Savior, appears in connection with his first miracle, wrought in Cana of Galilee at the marriage feast. “There were set there six water pots of stone, after the manner of the purifying of the Jews, containing two or three firkins apiece.”—John ii, 6. That this provision for the purposes of ritual purifying upon such an occasion was absolutely necessary, in obedience to the traditions of the scribes, will presently appear.