Buried with Christ in Baptism.
HOLY Baptism! Beautiful emblem of a death to sin, a resurrection to a life of holiness! How plainly it declares old things have passed away; behold all things are become new! We have put on Christ. We are no longer of the world. The fashion of this world passeth away; but we are pilgrims to a holier world, a more enduring habitation. With the sinful pleasures, the gayeties, the follies, the trifles of earth we have nothing more to do. True, while we are in the flesh, sin will stain and mar all we do; but we stay not willingly in its paths, we hold no loving and familiar intercourse with its votaries, but strive only to learn them to walk with us, in wisdom's ways, which are pleasantness, and in those paths of peace. Alas! alas! I am dreaming. This is what I saw in the picture, guided by the word of God. But when I wake and look at those who have dared to take upon themselves those holy vows, and to surname themselves by the name of Christ, I find many, alas, too many, seemingly conformed to the world, following hard after its pleasures and its honors, seeking to be rich; vain and frivolous, fearing to be thought singular. Of how few can it be said, they walk humbly and faithfully with God, as they promised when they went down into the baptismal wave.