Confessing Christ by Baptism.
By A. J. Gordon
"He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved."
HERE we have our faith declared by a symbol. Just as in a book you have engravings here and there to illustrate what is contained in the print, and present it graphically to the eye, so in the system of Christianity we have ordinances, which are a pictorial confession of faith, bringing out into clear and bold relief the confession which we make with the mouth. And you see that it is all-important, in this instance, that the text and the illustrations exactly correspond. A book descriptive of Boston, and filled with engravings representing the principal scenes and streets of London, would be an absurdity. And a Christianity which rests avowedly on the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, must have ordinances which exactly correspond to these ideas. Read, now, the confession of the mouth which the Scriptures require, and then compare it with the symbol which the Scriptures give: "If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead." The death and resurrection of Christ is the confession. "I believe that Jesus Christ died for my sins, according to the Scriptures, and that he rose again from the dead, according to the Scriptures." This is the verbal confession. Now comes the symbolic: "Buried with Christ by baptism into death, that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life." You see how the picture conforms in every line and shade to the original. You see, then, what baptism is for. It is, first, a declaration of faith for all time. Amid all the unbelief and doubt and denial to which the gospel is exposed, there is great danger that its cardinal truths may be perverted or misread in the course of time. They cannot be intrusted to the stream of tradition, in whose depths so much truth has been engulfed, and on whose current so much error has been floated down. They must be stereotyped into unchanging forms, and fresh impressions must be struck off from them every year and every month for the book of church history. Do you ask me what I am doing in administering the ordinance of baptism? I am doing what the printer does with his types. I am striking off impressions of our belief, that "Christ was delivered for our offenses, and was raised again for our justification." If this ordinance had been maintained in the church in its primitive form, the doctrine of the resurrection would not have been forgotten or denied so largely as it has. There can be no doubt that in those churches where this symbol has been kept most constantly before the eye, the blessed faith of the Redeemer has kept its hold most strongly upon the heart. Do you say that it is only a form, and therefore not essential? The picture of your dead child is only a form. It is a shadow thrown upon paper; there is no substance or life there. But will you, on that account, permit any one to throw it away? Or will you consent that it shall be changed for the picture of some other child, on the plea that it is only a form? Neither will we consent that this graphic picture of our Lord's dying and rising shall be set aside or modified because it is only a form. Nay; forms and shadows are among the mightiest forces in the world. The pictures of Raphael and Michael Angelo have influenced humanity more than the battles of Napoleon. The battles were acts and realities indeed, while the pictures are only shadows. But these shadows, becoming reflections of divine things, are living just as truly to-day as in the year when they were painted. Let us see to it that we do not slight the ordinances of God because they are only shadows.—A. J. Gordon, D. D., in Golden Rule.