There is no case in all the world's history of a sinner being baptized with the Holy Spirit in order to his conversion from sin, or in order to put him into Christ. These disciples who were baptized with the Holy Spirit were by the same means qualified to fill the offices of apostles and prophets—were guided into all truth—preached the gospel with the Holy Spirit sent down from heaven, and that "gospel is the power of God unto salvation, unto every one that believeth." Jesus said, "Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature; he that believeth and is baptized shall be saved, and he that believeth not shall be damned." Paul says, "Christ loved the church and gave himself for it that he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word." On Pentecost, when hundreds were convicted of their sins, and said, What shall we do? the answer from the spirit of God was, "Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. These all entered into Christ—the door, while those disciples who had entered a good while before Pentecost were put into the offices of apostles and prophets by the baptism of the spirit. No man should wait to be put into the open door, to be put into Christ, but should do as all the disciples of Christ did in the days of Christ and of his apostles—flee for refuge into an open door—not wait to be put in, but enter. You can be saved in heaven without being put into the office of an apostle or prophet, but you can not enter heaven without being sanctified and cleansed. Will you come and enter by the Lord Jesus, become a child of God by faith in Jesus Christ, being baptized into Christ? Do you say this is not the way? Then, why? O, why should the pages of this book of books be burthened with such things? Were those disciples who received the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins before Pentecost out of Christ—uncleansed—unwashed? No! They were clean through the word spoken unto them. They were converted—pardoned. Will you enter Christ, or wait to be put into Christ? Why is it that all men are not put into Christ? I answer, men are not put into Christ, they enter in—they come to Christ—they come to God—God is in Christ. The spirit and the bride say, come! And let him that heareth say, Come! And let him that is athirst come! And whosoever will let him take the water of life freely."
"Many of the Corinthians hearing believed and were baptized." "When the Samaritans believed, they were baptized, both men and women." This is our entrance into the door. We have now just entered into the church of Christ—into the family of God—it is God's house—we are at home in the Father's house, and naught will harm us if we live at home, if we are "obedient children not fashioning ourselves after our former lusts." The injunction comes to us here: "Add to your faith virtue, to virtue knowledge, to knowledge temperance, to temperance patience, to patience brotherly kindness, to brotherly kindness godliness, and to godliness charity, and if these things be in you and abound, they make you that ye shall neither be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. But he that lacketh these things is blind and can not see afar off, and had forgotten that he was purged from his old sins. Wherefore the rather, brethren, give diligence to make your calling and election sure, for if ye do these things ye shall never fall. For so an entrance shall be ministered unto you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ." "Blessed are they that do his commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life and enter through the gates into the city." Men in disobedience to the gospel feel, when they approach the cold Jordan of death, that every thing upon which they built their hopes is being swept away. Their thoughts, their treasures, their grandeur, their honors, their little world, their all, fails them here. They have lived at a distance from God, and now they tremble at the thought of approaching before him whose great mercy they have rejected. Death is a terror to sinful man—his afflictions are his darkest hours. It is not so with the Christian. To him death has no sting; over him the grave has no victory to boast, nor has the second death any power. He has unshaken confidence that every thing is safe in the hands of Jesus. What but obedience to the gospel of the blessed God will enable the child of faith, when flesh and heart fail to say, "Thou wilt show me the path of life; in thy presence is fullness of joy, and at thy right hand are pleasures forevermore." What then must be the happiness of fixing the heart on God, where there is nothing unlovely, nothing fickle, nothing false or dying. We may place our affections on the things of earth, and sooner or later we are severed from them. Here all is change, disappointment and consequent sorrow. It is not so in Heaven where all, is pure and immutable. From our best affections towards creatures up to the love of God there is a height as lofty as his ways and attributes are above the attributes and ways of mortals. No fear can haunt the mind that he may change in his character of love. He is beyond the reach of accident or change, perfect in goodness and power, and to those who trust in him, he is a sure and never-ending, and ever-increasing source of joy. "Blessed are all they that put their trust in 'Emanuel.'" Their very sacrifices are more than compensated. If we give up self it is for the love of God. If we give up time it is for eternity, and in the exchange our happiness is not diminished either here or hereafter.
OUR INDEBTEDNESS TO REVELATION.—No. V.
LANGUAGE AND RELIGION.
BY P.T. RUSSELL.
Christian. Having in my last article traced language and religion to their necessary and only possible source, I am now ready to hear any objections that may be entertained. Mr. Skeptic, if you have any, present them.
Skeptic. Suppose that I admit all that you say, it would, in the nature of the case, account for the origin of one language only, while facts show that there are an unnumbered variety. So your argument is at fault. The same difficulty belongs to your conclusion concerning the origin of religion. Can you remove this difficulty?
Christian. Yes but while I am pleased with your frankness, I must say, the difficulty is only apparent, not real. Look at yonder tree. There is but one main stem, or trunk, and many leading branches. These principal branches are each also divided into several minor branches, and these also throw out many lesser limbs and twigs. So it is with languages. As the smallest twig at the extreme end of either of those limbs can be traced to the trunk through the main branches, so all the various languages that are in use to-day, can and may be traced to a few older ones, and these, again, to one principal or parent language. The English language of the present time differs widely from the English of three or four centuries ago. Its number of words have more than doubled. And this has not been the result of the creation of new words, but of borrowing from other and older languages. So extensively has this been carried on, that Dr. Webster says, that in gathering and arranging material for his dictionary, he found himself under the necessity of consulting thirty European and Asiatic languages. Our language may be called an amalgamation from a great many other languages. It is not an original language. We, like the ancient Greeks, have been borrowing extensively, and, like them, we have been careful to keep all that we borrowed. What is true of our language is equally true of all modern languages. Wherever there is commercial or other free intercourse, each party is found borrowing words from the other, and thus their vocabularies are lapping and continually increasing. I am now ready to introduce the important consideration, it is this, all modern languages are shaded by a few ancient ones. The English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, etc., are deeply shaded through borrowing from the Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and ancient languages, while these last, as well as other ancient languages, have never borrowed from the former. This shows that Greek, Latin and Hebrew are older than the others. I shall now take for granted that which all real linguists declare to be true, viz: that the smaller number of languages from which we and our contemporaries have so freely borrowed, are all shaded by their borrowings from one; and, as the younger always borrows from the older, that one must of necessity be the parent language of all languages. This conclusion accounts for the word "babel" in our language, and its equivalent in all others, as well as for the existence of a multitude of words too tedious to mention.