WELL ANSWERED | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · May 12, 1881

WELL ANSWERED.

THERE is nothing more out of place than the accusation often made against those who practice only immersion in the gospel ordinance, that they "make too much of water," for of all denominations they are the least addicted to this fault. The Michigan Christian Advocate (Methodist) having asked the Baptist Teacher if "Baptists ever get water on the brain, the latter replied as follows:—

"We are obliged to reply, that we think it highly probable that some Baptists do, for, like other denominations, we have all sorts of people, and some of them, with such big heads and such little wits, as to suggest the suspicion that their skulls are not filled with brains entirely, but with either wind or water. But we have never known Baptists of any sort to be so afflicted with water on the brain, as to imagine that the soul of a dying child would go to heaven any more surely if a few drops of water were sprinkled on the brow, where death already was imprinting its seal.

"We never send off at midnight, for a minister to come and administer the ordinances to a dying man, as if he could not be saved by faith in the blood, but must also have the water. We believe in submission to the ordinance of Baptism—to the ordinance just as Christ appointed it, and not to any man-made modification of it—but we do not attribute to water any such magical, mystical, and saving virtue, as do many others who use less of it, but make a great deal more of what they do use."