AN APPEAL TO THE BAPTISTS.
By Carol Lou B. Aurner
What a wonderful book the Bible is! An epitome of eternal wisdom and love. Yet does it not seem as if it was a mistake to permit Matt. 3:16; Rom. 6:4, 5; and Col. 2:12; to go on record? For these make an immersionist volume out of it, altogether a one-sided affair, one which forces our pedobaptist friends into a world of trouble in explaining it away, and hunting church and secular history and the early fathers for proofs of their faith and practice. They say that Jesus was not buried in Jordan. He only knelt on the bank, and John poured a little water on his head from a long-necked pitcher with two handles; that to be buried with him in baptism does not mean to be placed in the semblance of the dead Christ in his sepulcher with the water covering one. That is not the meaning Paul meant to convey. The great apostle got things and ideas sadly mixed considering he was writing under inspiration. “To be risen with him” does not mean to be raised from this liquid grave as Christ was raised from his tomb; it means to arise from your knees from before the minister, and wipe a few drops of water from the forehead or perhaps a stray one from your glove. Christ’s great commission, Mark 16:16, “whosoever believeth, and is baptized, shall be saved,” does not signify that at all. It means a babe an hour old or a year, or indeed it means anybody who can say the Lord’s prayer and the apostle’s creed and the ten commandments without regard to age or faith. What do two million regular Baptists in the United States say to this twaddle? Do they not from thousands of pulpits, by a score of papers, weekly brand it as a falsification of God’s Word? as unwarrantable deductions from plain teachings? as an outrage on philology and comparison? Do they not by faith and practice, as is evidenced by their communion, emphatically declare that they will not countenance such perversions and disobedience? All credit to these two million Baptists, whom God has raised up in the past two hundred years in America as witnesses of the glorious truths of regeneration and believers’ baptism. Step by step, shoulder to shoulder, have they fought their way from the hour that Roger Williams set out on his winter’s march to Providence, to the present—now locked in jail, fined, or paying a compulsory tax in support of a state church which they believed to be wholly of Satan, deprived of the right of suffrage, locked out of schoolhouses which they owned equally with others, branded as heretics, bigots, and fanatics, they have borne all this and much more undaunted, and prayed and fought till to-day they stand high among the Evangelical denominations as defenders of Bible truth, the chief of which among their tenets is believers’ baptism. What heroism do they display in this persistent, abiding defense? Now, Baptists of America, you are as a sun among the galaxy of the great denominations of the day. Your light shines forth as a flaming beacon illuminating some of the darkest recesses of foggish error. Hear this appeal. Can not you see that you are trampling under foot a part of God’s law? Do you not know that you are violating two of the articles of your faith every week? These articles declare that the Bible contains God’s revealed will to man, that it is unchangeable and immortal, that his law is holy, just, and unchangeable, and that the only reason men do not obey it is because their hearts are full of sin. How do you justify yourselves in neglecting to observe his one holy rest-day? There is consistency in the Romish, the Episcopal, the Greek, and the Lutheran churches in making to themselves a day of worship. They acknowledge the validity of tradition, of church councils, of the writings and practices of the early fathers, as guides in this and kindred subjects, baptism for instance; but you do not nor will acknowledge that any one of these claimants has a shadow of authority to guide or dictate in matters of church faith and practice. The Bible, you declare, contains the sum total of all that is necessary and incumbent. Now, where in that book do you find the sanctity removed from the seventh day? or the intention or desire so to do? Where do you find any sanctity put upon the first day? or any desire or intention so to honor it? Not in the Bible surely, for John in A. D. 96 did not know it. Still denying the only authority you have for first-day sanctity, you do as they do who build themselves upon it, appropriate God’s day to your own use, and make one for him of your own selection. Is this right? Is it Scriptural? O Baptists, ye who were supporters and upholders of a bright light in one age of spiritual darkness, is not this written for your benefit? “In vain do ye worship me teaching for doctrines the commandments of men.” Swan Lake, Turner Co., Neb.