The Church of England, of which I was a member, baptizes infants in arms, who, as I have already said, cannot have faith, nor can they repent, and indeed they have no sins to repent of. I have been told that there is the taint within them of the original sin of Adam, but it seems to me that an infant is perfect in Jesus Christ. No one but Adam committed the original sin for which, in God's righteous justice, the sentence was death, and this death passed upon all Adam's descendants. But God, whose very attributes are justice and mercy, made a way for Adam's posterity to escape from the consequences of a sin that not one of them was guilty of. So, in order that His justice should not be cruel, our good Father in Heaven sent His only begotten Son Jesus Christ to the earth to atone for all sins, not only for our own individual sins, but for the sins of our common father Adam. Thus the world was relieved of the curse passed upon Adam; for "as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous."[A] The salvation is just as universal as the punishment; and we have nothing to do ourselves to obtain this salvation from the consequences of Adam's transgression, for which we were in no way responsible. Christ's atonement fully met God's righteous justice, and justice having been satisfied, mercy was able to step in between it and ourselves and to claim her own. For our own individual sins we are of course responsible. We shall reap as we sow, and we shall be judged according to our works, whether they be good or bad, but we shall not be judged for Adam's sin. This is, I think, evident from the scriptures quoted in the foot note.[B]
[Footnote A: Read carefully Rom. 5: 12-19.]
[Footnote B: II Cor. 5: 10. Rom. 2: 6. Gal. 6: 7. Eph. 6: 8. Col. 3: 24, 25. Rev. 22: 12. Matt. 16: 27.]
Children, then, up to the age at which they can clearly distinguish between right and wrong, and can receive the commandments and laws of God, are without sin, for sin is the transgression of the law, known to be God's law. Thus little children have no sins to be repented of and to be remitted, and therefore do not need baptism. Baptism is an ordinance by which we witness to God, that we have repented of our past misdeeds and have taken upon ourselves the name of Christ; that we intend, by being buried with Him in the waters of baptism, and by rising again from that watery grave, to die unto sin, and to rise again to a new life of holiness and good works, in thankful remembrance of Christ's great love in saving us from the dreadful consequences of our own wicked acts. Baptism cannot therefore be necessary until we raise our wills against God and disobey what we clearly know to be His righteous commandments. To say that an infant requires baptism appears to be not only unscriptural but equivalent to denying the tender mercies of Christ. Little children are perfect in Him, and thus He was able to say, "Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not, for of such is the kingdom of God."[C]
[Footnote C: Matt. 19: 14. Mark 10: 14. Luke 18: 16.]
Thus I have tried to show how, in my opinion, the Church of England has turned aside from the early church teachings, and has transgressed this law of baptism, which the Bible instructs us has for its object the remission of sins;[D] has changed the ordinance by substituting sprinkling for immersion, and has broken the everlasting covenant by practically denying the all-sufficiency of Christ's atonement, in holding that an innocent infant cannot belong to Christ's fold unless it is baptized into it; forgetting that it is only after we have arrived at years of discretion and understanding that we wander away from Christ's fold, and that we are required to pass through the waters of baptism in order to get our sins washed away, and to re-enter that fold. The prophecy of Isaiah, which I have already quoted,[E] thus seems to be applicable to the Church of England in respect to this subject of baptism, if in respect to no other ordinance.
[Footnote D: Mark 1: 4. Luke 3: 3. Acts 2: 38. Acts 22: 16.]
[Footnote E: Isaiah 24: 5.]
The next ordinance that I would draw attention to is that of baptism for the dead. This has been altogether done away in the Church of England, though it was extensively practiced in the primitive Church. St. Paul in writing to the Corinthians says: "Else what shall they do which are baptized for the dead, if the dead rise not at all? why are they then baptized for the dead?" [A] This baptism for the dead is one of the most glorious subjects belonging to the everlasting Gospel, because, in order to prove good our title to the kingdom of heaven, we who have sinned are told that we must have the three great witnesses to adoption: namely, the Spirit, the Water, and the Blood.[B] We know by scripture that the Gospel is preached to the dead,[C] and the reason is that the dead are to be judged as men in the flesh, and live according to God in the spirit.[D] Hence the necessity of baptism for those of them who had not during this life been baptized by immersion for the remission of their sins. The dead rely upon us who are living for the performance on their behalf of this ordinance. This is the work that children must do for their progenitors, and on learning this, the hearts of the children are turned to their fathers, and the fathers in the spirit world, learning that they are dependent upon the action of their posterity for the performance of this ordinance of salvation, turn their hearts to their children, or in other words look to them for the necessary performance. This was the work predicted in the scripture by the Prophet Malachi, "Behold I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and terrible day of the Lord: and he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse."[E]
[Footnote A: I Cor. 15: 29.]