A Demand Already Supplied.
By Editor
A Baptist clergyman has expressed a desire for a "Baptist Bible, with immersion written on every page and 'watered' with the paper." On this the Christian at Work suggests that each denomination should have its own peculiar Bible, and then, all of the 75,000 ministers of the country preach sermons synchronously on the text, "That they may be one as we are." It seems to us that there would be no more inconsistency in preaching from different Bibles than in teaching so many varying doctrines from one Bible. As to a "Bible with immersion written on every page" (where that subject is alluded to), we believe the one in common use fills the bill; and we always supposed, judging from their teaching, that the Baptists held that opinion. We have never heard of any one, who had read the Bible in the absence of pedobaptist explanations, having any difficulty in seeing immersion written on its pages. On the contrary we have known many people who had read it under their tutorship who could not even then see baptism in any other light than the example of the Saviour—immersion. And we are of opinion that any set of teachers, acquainted with the original language, who would construe the Greek word baptizo, to mean "sprinkle," would not scruple to misconstrue its English synonym in the same way. As the substitution of sprinkling for immersion was made by order of the Roman Catholic Church rather than by authority of the Scriptures, it makes no difference, in its bearing upon the change, whether the word representing the ordinance be Greek or English. The Baptists have already a version of the New Testament (the Bible Union Version) which has "immersion written on every page," yet they themselves do not generally use it—having practically pronounced the verdict that it adds nothing to the common version in its teachings regarding the original and consequently the only mode of administering the ordinance of baptism.