ABOUT BAPTISM | AdventAI

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jul 14, 1868

ABOUT BAPTISM.

The Congregationalist says:

“They have water-proof and tight-fitting garments in many of their churches, that keep the immerser and the immersed quite dry in the administration of the rite. The face is exposed to the wet (rather more than sprinkled), while the rest of the body remains as baptism by sprinkling leaves it—in a state of good Christian comfort.”

Thereupon The Watchman and Reflector calls this “poking fun at a sacred ordinance, dear in its whole symbolism to one of the largest and most enterprising denominations in the land;” declaring that “the best scholarship in the world, the uniform practice of the Greek church, and the general practice of all churches for more than a thousand years, all history, all archæology, philology, go to show that this ridicule is directed against the ordinance as the Master gave and enjoined it.”

The Telescope (United Brethren) adds:

“The primitive church, without doubt, did baptize by immersion; but what ‘scholarship’ ever dreamed of a dry immersion being what ‘the Master gave it?’ This rubber covering to keep the good folks dry was not enjoined by the Master.”

The Telescope’s hit at “dry immersion” is a fair one; but, according to its own confession, it is nearer right than its own practice. But this dry immersion is, to say the least, decidedly lackadaisical—Voice of the West.