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Signs of the Times, Vol. 1, No. 46.

THINKING

Signs of the Times

Sep 23, 1875

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Sep 23, 1875

THINKING.

The demand of the time is for consecrated and trained thinking.
There are thousands of people who have intense longings for usefulness, grievous repentings over their shortcomings, fitful arousings to new resolves, and corresponding lapses into unprofitableness. They "never are, but are always to be" of some account in helping on God's cause. This writing shall not be useless, if some of these are aided to find the why of their repeated failures, and the how of avoiding them.
An item of advice to seamen, given by the London admiralty, in regard to the conduct of a ship in a hurricane, begins with, "Stand erect, and look in the wind's eye." I would say, let those people who have the rotary motion hinted at, who are always planning, and always failing, stand erect, and look the difficulty in the eye. I think in nearly every case the trouble lies in the lack of consecrated, disciplined thought.
Much fine thinking is in the interest of selfishness, mammon, sin, and so under the ban of the good God. It may move men mightily, but it is down the inclined plane of sensualism. Such thinkers may be gifted with "The art Napoleon, Of wooing, winning, wielding, fettering, binding, The hearts of millions, till they move as one." Yet they are doomed by the inherent force of law to sure defeat. The children of their brain may go forth as beautifully clad as angels of light, but they bear only harm and hurt. The simple thoughts of very plain people, with the chrism of God's "well done" upon them, the vitality of his love pulsating through them, are often wonderfully potent in overturning dominant, evil forces, prying the race up toward heaven.
What if your thought force is very little! What if it cannot touch bottom in subjects of any considerable depth! What if it tires before it reaches the hights where strong people stand, enjoying a broad outlook upon the world of facts! So much the more need to insure its success, by bringing it into harmony with God's thought. His purpose is the only engine that moves steadily and surely. Fasten to that and you can not fail. Many consecrate their emotions to Christ, and reserve their mental powers. They sing and shout, praise and pray, perform duties and charities, any thing, every thing, but use their brain to work out the problems that affect the success of God's cause. They think energetically enough about other matters, but their religious life is left to work itself out in a hap-hazard way, as fancy or caprice may dictate. Hence, their efforts are narrow, often mechanical, and lacking freshness. They do good execution sometimes, but oftener they waste force, blunder, and fail. God has use in his service for the entire man, heart, brain, and all. And what is there so worthy our thought as the salvation of men, and our agency in it?
Look at your life, my friend. A regal purpose sways scepter over it—a love, an ambition, or selfishness. You intend to escape hell, and gain heaven; but you mean to have money, place, or power, on the way. You want Christ to save you, but he can not get the consent of your will to dethrone that regnant carnality. You think for it, plan for it, study modes of gratifying it, and the scraps of time left you devote to Him who bought you with his own blood. Perhaps you imagine that, sometime, God is going to send an immense passional force upon you that will bear you up to a higher plane—suddenly making your life what it ought to be, nobly consecrated to him. Not so. Upon your will rests the responsibility. When you decree, "I will consecrate all my powers to Christ," you will find him not "slack concerning his promises."
As the father holds the hand, and points the arrow of his little archer boy, so God will direct our consecrated thought to the mark, and supplement it with his own strength.
Mental faculties thus consecrated to God, must be cultured and developed to the highest possible power. Many mistake here. As if they should say, "yes, my mind is given to Christ. Let him strengthen and use it as he will. I will lie passive in his hands"—forgetting that true Christian passivity is intensely active. As well say, "My body is given to Christ. Let him care for it. His power keeps me alive any way, so I'll save myself the drudgery of eating—spend that time in prayer and praise." It takes but half a glance to see how suicidal such an idiotic conclusion; and yet some pious people starve and cramp their minds to strengthless emaciation, and then wonder at their narrow usefulness.
There is a close analogy between physical and mental hygiene. From the fall both body and mind are diseased, and the Bible remedies are the best possible for each—temperance, moderation, rest from care, activity, and the tonics of hope and joy. The best agencies to keep the body healthy, and to increase its vigor, are proper food and exercise. If a man's body is stout and athletic, it is not a mere happiness. He has grown up according to law. So of the mind. It is impossible to have it firm and robust if it is fed on trash and in idleness.
The unwashed masses, that fester in city lanes, are fattened for the maw of the pestilence by the foul air, decaying vegetables, and diseased meats. They go about with poison in their blood and rottenness in their bones. When the cholera comes it sweeps them into the grave by thousands. The cheap novels of the day, fulsome, sensual, vile, poison the mental life of the masses, and fit them for the pest-winds of free-lovism, Mormonism, spiritism, devilism. That the mind may be vigorous and healthy, let its food be books of history, of art, of science, of pure poesy, and, above all, as a staple, God's Book, that fountain and aggregate of all truth.
The racer in the Olympic games was subjected to the closest diet during his preparatory period. We are under drill for a spirit contest. We must avoid all mental food that can in the least impair our powers; for not the olive wreath, or the applause of excited men, awaits our success, but the crown of glory and the "well done" of God.
We cannot have reliable muscles without constant, judicious exercise. Kaspar Hauser, confined in a small room the first years of his life, was a man in stature, and yet unable to make any but the simplest muscular efforts. There are millions of mental Kaspar Hausers. So hurt are we by the curse, it is necessary to oblige a muscle to repeat a movement thousands of times before it can be done with ease or grace. So we have to force each mental faculty through a required task, again and again, before it can perform it quickly or well. Hence the utility of classical and mathematical culture. There is little in a college curriculum that can be put to practical use in common life; but, as a race-horse has to be driven under lash and rein, day after day, to bring every muscle into reliable action, so the mind has to be disciplined month by month, and year by year, before it can be trusted to attempt any high achievement. I know many drone through collegiate drills, substituting other men's work for their own, and are but little better for it; while others outside the schools have strength enough to hold themselves to the discipline that develops intellectual power.
By what processes shall we develop mental strength? Not by devouring books. Seneca said, "Read much, but read few books." Not by appropriating other men's fine thoughts. The memory is a noble faculty, but it is only one of a commonwealth, in which the rights of each member must be respected to insure the safety of the whole. Having dead men's mental coin rattling from the pen-point or tongue tip may make a clever quotationist, but never a rich, ripe thinker. It may excite the bravos of the crowd, but it shall go hard, if one find time from all this, to think out the mechanism that shall raise the race so much as a hair's breadth toward God. Any faculty of body or mind can be developed to almost superhuman energy. The Indian can track his enemy through forests and over prairies, where the white man could see not the slightest trace of a human foot. He is trained to it. The scholar can weigh the stars, and mark out their orbits, though the red man they are but specks of light that help him find his trail through the woods. The Indian's outer sense is trained, the thinker's inner sense; and each, by practice, doing the thing again and again, undiscouraged by failures, and that unwearied by repetitons, aiming at a mark that must be hit some time. Careful seeing develops sight. The long vision of the sailor, and the close vision of the watchmaker, illustrate this. Careful thinking develops thought. People think enough. We think constantly, and as involuntarily as we breathe. The trouble is, we do not think steadily—to a purpose.
"But my life is crowded with earnest work. I am a man of business—a woman of care. I can't take time for these thought exercises." Then you, of all people, most need them. As a farmer practices gymnastics at the plow handles, so do you exercise your thought upon your work, and you can find out how to lighten it. What makes the difference in the price of wages among people who go out to service? "Some work better." Rather they think more. You have a servant who never forgets how you like a thing done. She thinks. You will give her a dollar a week more than you give another who brings you just as pleasant ways, larger experience, and more muscle, but who does not think. A housekeeper who thinks has her affairs in a compact, manageable shape. Her planning, "executive force" men call it, and when they speak of the same ability used in what they regard more dignified work, addsat least one-half to her strength. And no small item is this, for what worlds of home comfort come from the brain of a good, efficient housewife; and how many important failures are due to the ill-temper and nervous unhinging caused by a smoky breakfast room, burnt steak or muddy coffee! This calls up the old story of the blacksmith causing the loss of the empire by shoeing badly the general's horse.
Among farmers and mechanics the question of success seems to hinge upon the formula—less muscle and more thought. If a man thinks nimbly and strongly enough to keep another set of muscles at work, he becomes two men. If a hundred, he multiplies his producing force a hundred times; and just so far as he can think out the work of these men, better than they can themselves, he gains a profit on their muscle. This is the way honest men get rich. If I can plan so that a man's strength is worth as much again as it would be without my thinking, I am entitled to the extra gains. That is fair. The thought fields are open to all. If he wants the money and the fine home it will buy, let him learn to think. Thinking is work, but it pays. This holds good through all orders of workers, from the freedman, digging under illegal apprenticeship, to Napoleon and Bismark, who are playing their grand European game, with pope and princes for chessmen. The measure of a man's patient, incisive thinking, is generally the measure of his success. The speculating folk who think that the prizes of this world are set up to be gambled for, may ride the wave occasionally, but it is only the steady rowing that brings surely to port.
I suppose one of the most potent agencies for the perpetuity of the Christian church is family religion; and yet how little do good people understand and use its power. In many pious families the religious is done in church, and in prayer and class meetings, and the services of the domestic altar are gone through in a meaningless, mechanical way. A long chapter is read, with no explanations, and a long prayer ground out. Little feet fidget upon chair rounds until they are nervous enough to kick "prayers" out of the calendar. Big boys and girls rebel. Father scolds, and, of necessity lets them do as they please. Mother comes from her private devotions with red eyes, and a resolution to get the church to pray for, and the minister to talk to them, in hopes they'll be "converted this winter." Ah me, what blunderers! The power of music untried. The ability to interest by teaching the truth with note and anecdote—giving Hebrew eyes with which to see into this wonderful Hebrew book, which alone contains the way of salvation—all these unused, and the children growing up Bible-haters—going down from a formal family altar to the world of woe!
Sabbath-school workers need to think. Go to the public schools in our large towns; see what changes have been wrought in the modes of instruction; how object-lessons, pictures, blackboards are used to make truth simple and tangible. Here, again, "the children of this world are wiser than the children of light." Sabbath-school teaching has undergone a change, but there are only a few pioneer thinkers who bring the same acumen to these duties that are so useful in the public schools. Their wonderful modes, that seem to have such power in bringing the children to Jesus, did not come from the intuitions of genius, nor from a religious frenzy. The love of Christ constrained them to work, common sense held them to close thought, and thus they have matured these plans—upon the same principle that thinking wrought Robert Fulton's crude notions of steam navigation into the Great Eastern, a floating city. Probably your brain is as good as theirs. If you will so work it, you may accomplish similar results.
But of all men Christian pastors have the greatest need of earnest thinking. In every department of labor there ought to be improvement. Take, for instance, the prayer-meeting. Its outer mechanism is often left to adjust itself. The shallow and bold are allowed to crowd out the talented and timid, the prayers to be as long and mechanical, the hymns as badly sung and tedious, the exhortations as prosy and tiresome as dullness and formality can make them. One needs a deep degree of piety to attend some church prayer-meetings week by week. The young and moderately religious will not go. Of course they need to, but there's no use in scolding. The only way is to think and pray till you find how to make the meeting interesting and profitable. The people hunger for the bread of life. If they are fed at the prayer-meetings they will go to them. This holds good of all social means of grace. Some ministers run in deeply worn grooves, round and round, year in and year out, doing things just as they did a quarter of a century ago, though mechanics, art, science, teaching, everything has made marked advance in that time. Now and then a revival influence lifts them out of the ruts for a few weeks, but they soon fall back into the old tread-mill processes.
Random shots from the pulpit will never answer in place of well-matured plans, upon which kind common sense can bring all parties to agree. In officering the church the closest thought is necessary. It is an economy of time and force to think a whole day over the filling of an important office, rather than have to manage or piece out an unruly or defective incumbent. With his thinking powers consecrated to Christ, "leaning not to his own understanding," but trusting the divine guidance, let the pastor study his material, arrange and dispose it to the best advantage.
When the thought of the church is fully consecrated and thoroughly cultured, shall she move forth "fair as the moon, clear as the sun, and terrible as an army with banners." —Mrs. J. F. Willing, in Ladies' Repository.

Heavier the Cross.

Heavier the cross, the nearer Heaven; No cross without, no God within— Death, judgment from the heart are driven Amid the world’s false glare and din. Oh! happy he with all his loss Whom God hath set beneath the cross.
Heavier the cross, the better the Christian; This is the touchstone God applies. How many a garden would be wasting, Unwet by showers from weeping eyes! The gold by fire is purified; The Christian is by trouble tried.
Heavier the cross, the stronger faith; The loaded palm strikes deeper root; The vine juice sweetly issueth When men have pressed the clustered fruit; And courage grows where dangers come, Like pearls beneath the salt sea foam.
Heavier the cross, the heartier prayer; The bruised reeds most fragrant are; If sky and wind were always fair The sailor would not watch the star; And David’s psalms had ne’er been sung If grief his heart had never wrung.
Heavier the cross, the more aspiring; From vales we climb to mountain-crest; The pilgrim of the desert tiring Longs for the Canaan of his rest; The dove has here no rest in sight, And to the ark she wings her flight.
Heavier the cross, the easier dying; Death is a friendlier face to see; To life’s decay one bids defying, From life’s distress one then is free. The cross sublimely lifts our faith To him who triumphed over death.
Thou Crucified! the cross I carry. The longer may it dearer be; And least I faint while here I tarry, Implant thou such a heart in me That faith, hope, love may flourish there, Till for the cross my crown I wear.
—From the German.

Arrogance of Popery.

By J. N. Loughborough

PAUL’s statement concerning this power was, “He opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God.” Statements from popes, cardinals, and priests, serve to illustrate how they have sought to exalt themselves, and to arrogate powers which God never gave them.
Pope Innocent III., who was pope from A. D. 1198 to A. D. 1216, says, “As kings and princes must submit themselves to the pope’s judgment, therefore all must be judged by the pope, but he can be judged by no man. Though by his negligence or evil actions, he should draw with him innumerable souls to hell, yet no mortal may be so presumptuous as to reprove him, or to say, Why do you thus ?”
In the Decretalia — second part of the canon law — and this Decretalia each pope declares to be true, we read of the pope: “The whole world is to be taken for his diocese. He can turn a square into a circle, wrong into right, and can make something out of nothing. He can pronounce sentences and judgments in contradiction to the right of nations, to the law of God and man — sentences, however absolute, yet always just. He can free himself from the commandments of the apostles, he being their superior; even from the rules of the Old-Testament age, even from the proscriptions contained in the gospel. For the ‘will’ of the pope is the rule laid down for the administration of justice. What he does is considered by God as being well done. He sits in one consistory with God, and shares the same judicial school with Christ. The pope is God’s equal, except in sin; so that in cases where he changes his mind, it should be understood as if God himself had changed his mind. From the pope there exists no appeal to God, because he himself is God upon earth, and therefore judges like God.
“The pope has power to change times, to abrogate laws, and to dispense with all things, even the precepts of Christ.” —Decretal de Translat. Episcop.
The testimony of these decretals prepares the way for those who receive the pope’s word as infallible to explain all the contradictions that may exist between the doctrines of the Roman Catholic church and the Bible, as well as those discrepancies that may be found on comparing the sayings of different popes, and, in some instances, the yea and nay of the same pope. The explanation is on this wise: First, they claim that they have a right to differ from the Bible, because, as the pope is equal with God, he is above the Bible, and has a right to dispense with its teachings. In the second place, if the pope changes his mind, it is to be understood that it is only because “God,” (who “changeth not”) has changed. What blasphemy! A poor mortal changing the doctrines of the Bible, setting aside God’s laws, and trying to hide his iniquity by saying, “God has changed his mind.” It seems to me that this testimony in the decretals is fatal to themselves, and that it marks their church with certainty as an apostate church, and as the blasphemous little horn of Dan. 7:25.
Isaiah gives us a rule by which to try false spirits: “If they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them.” Isaiah 8:20. The decretals, not only admit that the popes in many things differ from the Bible — a matter very apparent to those who compare papal doctrines with the Bible — but decretals claim a right for the popes, not only to differ from the Bible, but to even dispense with the precepts of the Bible, thus speaking contrary to its teachings, and branding themselves as false prophets.
The testimony respecting the little horn is, “He shall think to change times and laws.” Decretals declare that “the pope has power to change times and to abrogate laws.” This they have attempted to do, in changing God’s ten commandments, as appears from their catechisms, especially those published in Catholic countries. In giving the ten commandments, they either leave out the second commandment entirely, or blend it with the first as one commandment, which in either case, changes the position and number of the commandments that follow, the fourth commandment becoming the third, the fifth, the fourth, and so on; and to make out the complete number of ten commandments, they divide the tenth commandment into two, thus giving us two commandments on covetousness, as follows: Ninth commandment, “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife.” Tenth, “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s goods.” The commandments are so found in the following eight catechisms used in Ireland: Three sizes of Butler’s Catechism, Abstract of the General Catechism, edited by the Christian Brothers, Catechism for the Archdiocese of Tuam, The Most Rev. Dr. Riley’s Catechism, Catechism for First Confession, Dr Cullen’s Catechism, Archbishop of Dublin, and Pope’s Legate, in Ireland.
In the two principal catechisms of England, “Abridgement of Christian Doctrine,” and “Abstract of the Donay Catechism,” the first and second commandments are blended as the first commandment. And so it is found in most of their American Catechisms, as in the Jesuit’s Catechism of F. X. Wexinger, of Cincinnati, Ohio.
The Italian Catechism of the Very Reverend Antonio Rosmini Serbati, D. D., Founder and General of the Institute of Charity, gives the commandments of the first table of the law thus: “1. I am the Lord thy God; thou shalt not have other gods before me. 2. Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain. 3. Remember thou keep holy the days appointed.” —English Translation of Serbati’s Italian Catechism, p. 33.
Serbati’s Catechism, published where and when the church could say what she pleased, not only obliterates the second commandment, but removes from the fourth commandment all idea of a Sabbath; for, in the eyes of a good papist, “the days appointed” may refer simply to those days appointed by the Romish church, as Good Friday, Holy Thursday, Ash Wednesday, &c.
Papists claim that they do not worship images, but that they have them merely to enliven their devotion for the beings that the images represent. It seems, however, that there was a great controversy over their introduction into the church, both in the fourth and eighth centuries. Epiphanius, Bishop of Salamis, at the close of the fourth century, finding a painted image of Christ in a church where he went to pray, tore it, and ordered it wrapped around a poor dead man and buried with him. Thus he showed his indignation against image worship.
A Catholic historian, De Cormenin, says of the Catholic church: “They worshiped images, even in the eighth century. . . . . This adoration, which the court of Rome encouraged constituted a true idolatry, which had been severely proscribed by the founders of Christianity and the fathers of the first ages of the Church.” —De Cormenin, vol. i., p. 206.
If they have no worship for their images, nor consider that there is any virtue in them, how is it that they treat us to the relation of so many miracles accomplished by them? The Holy Bambino at Rome, which is an image of the infant Jesus, magnificently dressed and adorned with costly jewels, is sent for by those who are sick, who can afford to pay for it, and the papists claim that many and marvelous (?) cures are accomplished by it.
Gavazzi, who was once an Italian priest, a chaplain in the Roman army, and who was exiled in 1848 for taking part in the Italian cause, says: “At Rome, in the Franciscan convent of the Aracocli, is a little baby which on Christmas eve was brought by an angel to St. Francis, of Assissi. . . . . It has powers so miraculous that the Franciscans bring it about to sick persons to heal them. . . . It is so ugly, being more like a monkey or a baboon than a baby, that we must say the angels in Heaven are very bad sculptors. . . . The pope himself often sends for ‘the little physician’ as it is called, to help him to recover his health. The devotion, especially of the Roman ladies, to this little wooden image is shown by the presents with which they have loaded it; rich dresses, gold, pearls, rubies, diamonds, and all kinds of gems. It is worshiped more intensely and publicly than the consecrated wafer. When Christ, in the sacrament, passes through the streets, many pay little or no attention; but when the angelic monkey is carried in a rich carriage, they bow and kneel, hat in hand, before it.” —Gavazzi’s New York Lectures, p 348.
The papists are not satisfied with claiming that they can change God’s times, they assert that they actually have done it. They set up the claim that they have changed the Sabbath of God’s law from the seventh day, the day on which God appointed it, to the first day of the week, the day anciently consecrated by the pagans to the sun and its worship. They claim that this change in the Sabbath institution was accomplished by the power of their church.
We will simply say here, We have seen already that they have made, or attempted to make, changes in the decalogue. The prediction concerning them was that they should “think to change [God’s] times.” We are sure, however, that their claim stands relative to the Sabbath, and that they have changed in their practice the sacrament of the Lord’s supper from the form in which Christ instituted it, so that, instead of giving to the believer the bread and wine, the priest drinks all the wine, and gives the communicant a wafer, and tells him that is the actual body and blood of Jesus Christ with soul and divinity, and that each consecrated wafer is a complete and whole Christ.
J. N. LOUGHBOROUGH.

Infant Baptism Impossible.

The nature of baptism renders it impossible for babes to be baptized.
The books on theology call baptism a "sacrament." A Pedobaptist author of note says, "The word 'sacrament' is derived from the Latin word sacramentum, which signifies an oath, particularly the oath taken by soldiers to be true to their country and general."
This is what the Scriptures represent baptism to be. Believers are commanded to be "baptized into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit." We follow nearly all commentators in translating eis, in the Commission, into, rather than in, as in the common version. Every Greek scholar knows that eis, with the accusative, denotes penetration, entrance into. So the candidate is baptized "into the name of the Father," etc. The name of a governor is the same as his authority, his official power. God sets up a kingdom, and claims service, obedience, and loyalty in the gospel. He calls upon all men to become citizens and "soldiers of the cross." Keeping this in mind, we see plainly how it is that we are baptized "into the name of the Father," etc., and why baptism was called a "sacrament" by the early Christians. It is a formal entrance into the service of the King, it is the oath of allegiance, a pledge of loyalty, a vow of fidelity, by which the party binds himself to serve, obey, revere, and honor God, by walking in all the institutions of the gospel blameless. So we read (Rom. 6: 3), "Baptized into Jesus Christ," and (Gal. 3: 27), "For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ." As the oath of allegiance introduces the alien into the privileges of citizenship, and binds him to loyalty to the government. As the marriage vow introduces the woman into the name, fortune, honors and destiny of the husband, so, by baptism the subject enters formally into the responsibilities of citizens of Christ's kingdom, pledge fidelity to Christ, and devotion to his honor and cause. This is the meaning, the object, and design of Christian baptism. If the party is not baptized "into Christ," he has not observed Christian baptism.
But an unconscious babe cannot be baptized "into Christ," because he cannot vow fidelity, cannot pledge loyalty. In order to do this there must be intelligence and faith. No person can come formally into the name of God, if he does not know him and believe on him. The Holy Spirit says (Heb. 11: 6), "He that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is the rewarder of them who diligently seek him." An unconscious babe cannot believe, and, hence, cannot come to God, cannot enter formally into his name,cannot be baptized into his name, can know nothing about God, and can enter into no covenant with him, nor make any vows to him.
Baptism is not, like circumcision, a mark of pedigree, a seal of national descent, a mere physical affair, but it is the act of the candidate as well as the administrator; a covenant in which the subject must be intelligent and active. We have a divinely authorized definition of baptism, which settles this question beyond dispute: "Baptism is not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience toward God." (Peter 3: 21). This is what God says baptism is. This definition is plain, concise, complete, and agrees with the doctrine of the Commission, and all other scriptural allusions to the meaning of the rite. Let us consider this inspired definition. It does not assert that baptism is designed to satisfy our conscience, fancy, prejudice, education, or superstition. Those who thus interpret it are very inattentive to the sense of words. "Answer" is seldom used in the sense of satisfy, and certainly is not so used here. An answer is a response to a question or proposition, a reply back to one who addresses us. "The answer of a good conscience" is the response or reply of a man who has such a conscience, to the Lord, who submits a proposition, and makes a demand that he should serve and obey him. The word translated answer also has the sense of petition, request. Whether the Lord intended to define baptism to be an answer, or a petition of a good conscience, or both, intelligence, repentance, and faith, are indispensable to the act. The Spirit cuts off all chance for mistake here for he says that "it is the answer of a good conscience towards God," a reply, response, or petition to God, not to ourselves, not to man, not to the church, not to custom, feelings, traditions, but to God, and to him alone, and by the baptized alone, for himself, by his own act, and not by the act of another.
According to God's definition, then, baptism is not something done to a passive, unconscious subject. The candidate is necessarily active in it. It is his answer to God, his own vow, his own response of loyalty. It cannot be the response of any other than an active, intelligent agent. It is preposterous that any other character can make this response. An unconscious babe cannot respond to God, cannot know God, cannot accept of God's service. Therefore its baptism is impossible.
Moreover, baptism is the response of a good conscience. But a good conscience is an active one, and an honest and approving one. This is essential to the act. Where there is no conscience, or where there is a wicked or guilty one, there can be no Christian baptism. There may be immersion, or sprinkling, or pouring, but no Christian baptism without a conscience and a good conscience. Now a little babe has no conscience. He cannot have one until he has intelligence. Without this, there can be no conscience of duty, obligation, sin, or repentance. Therefore, Christian baptism is impossible to a babe. The "good conscience" cannot respond to God until it exists; it cannot exist without intelligence, and as the babe has no intelligence, he cannot render the response.
No more is Christian baptism possible to a sinner. He may be immersed a score of times; the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit may be called over him by a minister of Christ, but his immersion is not, therefore, Christian baptism. How can he render the response of a "good conscience," when he has a guilty one? He may observe the form, but that is not baptism. Is the form of prayer real, Christian prayer? Are words on the lips of him whose heart is far from God, Christian prayer? Must there not be devotion of heart, the answer of the soul, as well as words, to constitute prayer? So the form of baptism is not baptism. There must be the response of a consecrated heart, as well as the form of the act. Hence, there can be no baptism where there is not first a good "conscience."
According to God's word, the following. elements are absolutely essential to Christian baptism:—
1. The party must do the act which the law specifies.
2. He must have a conscience of right and wrong.
3. His conscience must be good, i. e., not guilty, not rebellious, not in bondage to sin.
4. With such a "good conscience" he must respond in the required act to God, must use this form as the medium for his answer to God's claims upon him.
Now, it is utterly impossible for an unconscious babe to comply with any one of these essential conditions of Christian baptism. He is as incapable of the formal act as he is of the form of prayer; he has no conscience of right and wrong; he can have no good conscience; he cannot know God, consider a proposition from him, nor respond to his claims. He cannot be baptized any more than he can pray. It is just as rational, scriptural, and truthful for the parents of a babe to pray, and call it the babe's prayer, as to pretend to baptize him, when he is incapable of the first idea essential to the act. When he can answer to God from a "good conscience," baptism will be possible to him, and not before.
Is there any other Christian baptism than this which God has defined? Is there a baptism that is not "into Christ," that is not the "response of a good conscience?" Does the gospel institute a baptism radically different from this? A baptism that involves no intelligence, no faith, no conscience, no knowledge of God, no consecration to him? It certainly does, if it authorizes the baptism of babes, for that rite differs from the one which God defines in every particular. But there is but "one Lord, one faith, and one baptism." This baptism a babe never did observe, never can observe. It is wholly impossible to him. He never can respond to God in this rite. There is not skill nor power enough in the whole Papal church to baptize a babe. All the wisdom and power of protestantism is wholly inadequate to this task. The deed cannot be done. To talk about doing it is to ignore the divine account of the rite. To attempt to practice it is to undertake the subversion of God's well-defined institutions.—Baptist Union.
Continue reading: The Sabbath-Keeping Captain