This ordinance lays a responsibility on parents-the sense of which has, we doubt not, given a mighty impulse to the cause of Christian education. It is well that there should be one sacrament in behalf of the grown up disciple, for the solemn avowal of his Christianity before men, and the very participation of which binds more closely about his conscience all the duties and all the consistencies of the gospel. But it is also well that there should be another sacrament, the place of which in his history is, not at the period of his youth or manhood, but at the period of his infancy; and the obligation of which is felt, not by his conscience still in embryo, but by the conscience of him whose business is to develope and to guard and to nurture its yet unawakened sensibilities. This is like removing baptism upward on a higher vantage ground. It is assigning for it a station of command and of custody at the very fountainhead of moral influence; and we repeat it to be well, that Christianity should have here fixed one of its sacraments-that it should have reared such a security around the birth of every immortal-that it should so have constituted baptism, as to render it a guide and a guardian, whose post is by the cradle of the infant spirit; and which, from coming into contact with the first elements of tuition, has, we doubt not, from this presiding eminence, done much to sustain and perpetuate the faith of the gospel from generation to generation. whom they served, circumcised their chil- | birth, it is he who moved the baptism and dren in infancy, never forgot that they it is he who hath profaned it. were the children of the circumcision; and the mark of separation they had been enjoined to impose upon them, reminded them of the duty under which they lay, to rear them in all the virtues of a holy and a separate generation; and many a Hebrew parent was solemnised by this observance into the devotedness of Joshua, who said, that whatever others should do, he with all his house should fear the Lord; and this was the testimony of the Searcher of hearts in behalf of one who had laid the great initiatory rite of Judaism upon his offspring, that He knew him, that he would bring up his children after him in all the ways and statutes and ordinances that he had himself been taught; and it was the commandment of God to His servants of old, that they should teach their children diligently, and talk to them as they rose up and sat down, and as they walked by the way-side, of the loyalty and gratitude that should be rendered to the God of Israel. Thus was the matter ordered under the old dispensation. The sign was impressed upon the infant, and it served for a signal of duty and direction to the parent. It pointed out to him the moral destination of his child, and led him to guide it onward accordingly. There ought to be a correspondence between the sign and the thing signified. At the very outset of the child's life, did the parent fix upon its person the one term of this correspondence, as a mark of his determination to fix upon its character the other term of it. It was as good as his We have one observation more. Bappromissory declaration to that effect: and tism, viewed as a seal, marks the promise if this be enough to rationalize the infant of God, to grant the righteousness of faith circumcision of the Jews, it is equally to him who is impressed by it; but, enough to rationalize the infant baptism viewed as a sign, it marks the existence of Christians. The parent of our day, of this faith. But if it be not a true sign, who feels as he ought, will feel himself in it is not an obligatory seal. He who be conscience to be solemnly charged, that lieves and is baptised shall be saved. But the infant whom he has held up to the he who is baptised and believes not shall baptism of Christianity, he should bring be damned. It is not the circumcision up in the belief of Christianity; and if which availeth, but a new creature. It is he fail to do this, it is he who has degra- not the baptism which availeth, but the ded this simple and impressive ceremonial answer of a good conscience. God hath into a thing of nought-it is he who has given a terrible demonstration of the utter dissolved the alliance between the sign worthlessness of a sign that is deceitful, and the thing signified-it is he who and hath let us know that on that event as brings a scandal upon ordinances, by a seal it is dissolved. He thus stands stripping them of all their respect and all emancipated from all His promises, and their significancy. Should the child live adds to His direct vengeance upon iniand die unchristian, there will be a pro-quity, a vengeance for the hypocrisy of per and essential guilt attached to him in its lying ceremonial. When a whole circonsequence; but it will at least not be cumcised nation lost the spirit, though the guilt of having broken a vow which he was incapable of making. And yet the vow was made by some one. It was made by the parent; and in as far as the ruin of the child may be resolved into the negligence of him to whom he owes his they retained the letter of the ordinance, He swept it away. The presence of the letter, we have no doubt, heightened the provocation; and beware, ye parents, who regularly hold up your children to the baptism of water, and make their bap tism by the Holy Ghost no part of your concern or of your prayer-lest you thereby swell the judgments of the land, and bring down the sore displeasure of God upon your families. O, when a mother meets on high Hath she not then, for pains and fears- withered here upon its stalk, has been transplanted there to a place of endurance; and it will then gladden that eye which now weeps out the agony of an affection that has been sorely wounded; This affords, we think, something more and in the name of Him who if on earth than a dubious glimpse into the question, would have wept along with them, do we that is often put by a distracted mother, bid all believers present, to sorrow not when her babe is taken away from her-even as others which have no hope, but when all the converse it ever had with to take comfort in the thought of that the world, amounted to the gaze upon it country where there is no sorrow and no of a few months or a few opening smiles, separation. which marked the dawn of felt enjoyment; and ere it had reached perhaps the lisp of infancy, it, all unconscious of death, had to wrestle through a period of sickness with its power and at length to be overcome by it. Oh, it little knew, what We have put forth these remarks, not an interest it had created in that home for the purpose of inspiring a very violent where it was so passing a visitant-nor, distaste towards the practice of others in when carried to its early grave, what a respect of baptism, but of reconciling you tide of emotion it would raise among the to your own; and of protecting you from few acquaintances it left behind it! On any disturbance of mind, on account of it too baptism was imprest as a seal, and their arguments. It forms no peculiarity as a sign it was never falsified. There of the age in which we live, that men was no positive unbelief in its little bosom differ so much in matters connected with -no resistance yet put forth to the truth Christianity; but it forms a very pleasing -no love at all for the darkness rather peculiarity, that men can do now what than the light-nor had it yet fallen into they seldom did before, they can agree to that great condemnation which will at differ. With zeal for the esssentials, they tach to all who perish because of unbe- can now tolerate each other in the cir lief, that their deeds are evil. It is inter- cumstantials of their faith; and under all esting to know that God instituted circum- the variety which they wear, whether of cision for the infant children of Jews, and complexion or of outward observance, can at least suffered baptism for the infant recognize the brotherhood of a common children of those who profess Christianity. doctrine and of a common spirit, among Should the child die in infancy, the use very many of the modern denominations of baptism as a sign has never been of Christendom. The line which measures thwarted by it; and may we not be per- off the ground of vital and evangelical mitted to indulge a hope so pleasing, as religion, from the general ungodliness of that the use of baptism as a seal remains our world, must never be effaced from in all its entireness-that He who sanc-observation; and the latitudinarianism tioned the affixing of it to a babe, will fulfil upon it the whole expression of this ordinance: And when we couple with this the known disposition of our great forerunner-the love that He manifested to children on earth-how He suffered them to approach His person-and, lavishing endearment and kindness upon them in the streets of Jerusalem, told His disciples that the presence and. company of such as these in heaven formed one ingredient of the joy that was set before Him-Tell us if Christianity do not throw a pleasing radiance around an infant's tomb? and should any parent who hears us, feel softened by the touching remembrance of a light, that twinkled a few short months under his roof, and at the end of its little period expired-we cannot think that we venture too far, when we say that he has only to persevere in the faith and in the following of the gospel, and that very light will again shine upon him in heaven. The blossom which which would tread it under foot, must be fearfully avoided; and an impregnable sacredness must be thrown around that people, who stand peculiarized by their devotedness and their faith from the great bulk of a species who are of the earth and earthly. There are landmarks between the children of light and the children of darkness, which can never be moved away; and it were well that the habit of professing Christians was more formed on the principle of keeping up that limit of separation, which obtains between the church and the world-so that they who fear God should talk often together; and when they do go forth by any voluntary movement of their own on those who fear Him not, they should do it in the spirit, and with the compassionate purpose of missionaries. But while we hold it necessary to raise and to strengthen the wall by which the fold is surrounded-and that, not for the purpose of intercepting the flow of kindness and of Christian philan thropy from within, but for the purpose of intercepting the streams of contamination from without-we should like to see all the lines of partition that have been drawn in the fold itself utterly swept away. This is fair ground for the march of latitudinarianism-and that, not for the object of thereby putting down the signals of distinction between one party of Christians and another, but, allowing each to wear its own, for the object of associating them by all the ties and the re.cognitions of Christian fellowship. In this way, we apprehend, that there will come at length to be the voluntary surrender of many of our existing distinctions, which will far more readily give way by being tolerated than by being fought against. And this is just the feeling in which we regard the difference, that obtains on the subject of baptism. It may subside into one and the same style of observation, or it may not. It is one of those inner partitions which may at length be overthrown by mutual consent; but, in the mean time, let the portals of a free admittance upon both sides be multiplied as fast as they may along the whole extent of it; and let it no longer be confounded with the outer wall of the great Christian temple, but be instantly recognized as the slender partition of one of its apartments, and the door of which is opened for the visits of welcome and kind intercourse to all the other members of the Christian family. Let it never be forgotten of the Particular Baptists of England, that they form the denomination of Fuller and Carey and Ryland and Hall and Foster; that they have originated among the greatest of all missionary enterprises; that they have enriched the Christian literature of our country with authorship of the most exalted piety, as well as of the first talent and the first eloquence that they have waged a very noble and successful war with the hydra of Antinomianism; that perhaps there is not a more intellectual community of ministers in our island, or who have put forth to their number a greater amount of mental power and mental activity in the defence and illustration of our common faith; and, what is better than all the triumph of genius or understanding, who, by their zeal and fidelity and pastoral labour among the congregations which they have reared, have done more to swell the lists of genuine discipleship in the walks of private society-and thus both to uphold and to extend the living Christianity of our nation. LECTURE XV. ROMANS iv, 16-22. Therefore it is of faith, that it might be by grace; to the end the promise might be sure to all the seed not to that only which is of the law, but to that also which is of the faith of Abraham who is the father of us all. (As it is written, I have made thee a father of many nations,) before him whom he believed, even God, who quickeneth the dead, and calleth those things which be not as though they were: who against hope believed in hope, that he might become the father of many nations, according to that which was spoken, So shall thy seed be. And being not weak in faith, he considered not his own body now dead, when he was about an hundred years old, neither yet the deadness of Sarah's womb: he staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief; but was strong in faith, giving glory to God: and being fully persuaded, that what he had promised, he was able also to perform. And therefore it was imputed to him for righteousness." V. 16. You may here remark, that faith | into the letter and expression of our evanis not a meritorious work in the business of our salvation. It does not stand in the place of obedience, as the term of a new bargain, that has been substituted in room of an old one. It is very natural to conceive, that, as under the old covenant we had salvation for our works-so, under the new, we have salvation for our faith; and that therefore faith is that which wins and purchases the reward. And thus faith is invested, in the imagination of some, with the merit and character of a work; and Heaven's favour is still looked upon as a premium, not a premium for doing, it is true, but a premium for believing: And this, as we have already said, has just the effect of infusing the legal spirit gelical system; and thus, not merely of nourishing the pride and the pretensions of its confident votaries, but of prolonging the disquietude of all earnest and humble inquirers. For, instead of looking broadly out on the gospel as an offer, they look as anxiously inward upon themselves for the personal qualification of faith, as they ever did upon the personal qualification of obedience. This transfers their attention from that which is sure, even the promises of God-to that which is unsure, even their own fickle and fugitive emotions. Instead of thinking upon Christ, they are perpetually thinking upon themselves-as if they could discover Him in the muddy recesses of their own heart. without previously admitting Him by the avenue of a direct and open perception. They ought surely to cast their challenged and their invited regards on Him, who is the same to-day, yesterday, and for ever, when He calls them by His word, to look upon Him from all the ends of the earth and be saved. But no! they cast their eyes with downward obstinacy upon their own minds; and there toil for the production of faith in the spirit of bondage; and perhaps, after they are satisfied with the fancied possession of it, rejoice over it as they would over any other meritorious acquirement in the spirit of legality. This is not the way in which the children of Israel looked out upon the serpent that was lifted up in the wilderness. They did not pore upon their wounds to mark the progress of healing there; nor did they reflect upon the power and perfection of their seeing faculties; nor did they even suffer any doubt that still lingered in their imaginations, to restrain them from the simple act of lifting up their eyes: And when they were cured in consequence, they would never think of this as a reward for their looking, but regard it as the fruit of Heaven's gracious appointment. Do in like manner. It will make both against your humility and your peace, that you regard faith in the light of a meritorious qualification; or that you attempt to draw a comfort from the consciousness of faith, which you ought primarily and directly to draw from the contemplation of the Saviour. If salvation be given as a reward for faith, then it is not of grace. But we are told in this verse that it is of faith, expressly that it might be by grace. And therefore be assured, that there is an error in all those conceptions of faith which tend to vitiate or to destroy this character; which make the good things of the gospel come down upon you as a payment, and not as a present; which make the preaching of eternal life through Christ any thing else than simply the offer of a gift, and faith any thing else than simply the discerning of this offer to be true, and receiving it accordingly. In the one way, you can only be as sure of the promise as you are sure of yourself; and what a frail and fluctuating dependence is this, we would ask? In the other way, you are as sure of the promise, as you are sure of God; and thus your confidence has a rock to repose upon; and the more firmly you adhere and are rivetted to this foundation, the less chance is there of your ever being moved away from the hope of the gospel; and though this be established, not on what is within but on what is without you, let us not thereby imagine that all the securities for personal worth and personal excellence are there by overthrown-for it is in the very attitude of leaning upon God, that man is upheld not only in hope but in holiness. It is in the very position of standing erect upon the foundation of the promises, that the promised strength as well as the promised righteousness is fulfilled to him. It is in the very act of looking unto Jesus, that the light of all that grace and truth and moral lustre which shine upon him from the countenance of the Saviour is let in upon the soul; and is thence reflected back again in the likeness of this worth and virtue from his own person. We have no fear whatever of a simple dependence on the grace of the gospel, operating as an impediment to the growth of the holiness of the gospel. We believe that it is the alone stay of our deliverance from the power of sin, just as it is the alone stay of our deliverance from the fears of guilt: And, meanwhile, go not to obscure the aspect of this free and generous ministration, by regarding the gospel in any other light, than as an honestly announced present of mercy to all who will; or by regarding the faith of the gospel in any other light, than you would the ear that heard the communication of the present, or than you would the hand that laid hold of it. But, to return from this digression. V. 16. 17. The inheritance is of faith, that it might be by grace, which can be extended to many nations; and not of the law, which would confine it to one nation. This makes it sure to the whole seed of Abraham, not merely to his seed by natural descent, but to that seed which stands related to him from being believers. It is in this sense that it is written of him-he is the father of many nations. It was his faith which introduced him into a filial relationship with God; and in the eyes of God, on whom he believed, all who believed after him were regarded as his children. It was very unlikely that Abraham should in any sense be blest with an offspring. But God calleth out from nonentity such things as be not-and He also sees such an analogy between natural and spiritual things, that He gives to a spiritual relationship the name of a natural relationship. He did both in the case of Abraham. In the face of a very strong unlikelihood, He conferred a real posterity on Abraham. And He constituted him in a mystical sense the father of a still more extended posterity, by making him the father of all who believed. V. 18. Abraham, perhaps, had no suspicion, at the utterance of this promise, of any deep or spiritual meaning that lay under it. He certainly apprehended it in its natural sense, and perhaps in this sense alone. Looking forward to it with most unlikely to the eye of nature and experience; but, in the face of all the improbabilities which would have darkened the hope of other men, did he with confidence hope, that he should become the father of many nations-according to the word that was spoken to him about what his posterity should be. And being not weak in faith, he considered not his own body now dead, when he was yet about an hundred years old, neither yet the deadness of Sarah's womb. He staggered not at God's promise through unbelief, but was strong in faith, thereby giving glory to God's faithfulness. And being fully persuaded, that what He had promised He was able also to perform. And therefore was it reckoned unto him for righteousness.' the eye of experience, he could have no hope; but looking forward to it with the eye of faith in the divine testimony, he might have a confident expectation. It is this which is meant by against hope believing in hope.' The stronger the improbability in nature, the stronger was the faith which overcame the impression of it. He suffered not himself to be staggered out of his reliance on that which was spoken. He thus rendered an homage to the truth of God; and an homage proportional to the unlikelihood of the thing which God testified. It was also an homage to His power as well as to His truth. It proved that He thought Him able to arrest and to turn nature; and if He promised to do so, that what He promised He was able also to perform. And this faith was counted to him for righteous- The lessons we shall try to enforce ness. God was pleased with the confi- from this passage, are all founded on the dence that was placed in Him; and His consideration, that Abraham, in respect pleasure in it was enhanced by the trials of his faith, is set up as a model to us— and difficulties which it had to contend that, in like manner as he believed in the with. It is thus that God's honour, and midst of difficulties and trials, so ought man's interest are at one. We honour we-that we ought to hold fast our confiHim by believing. By believing we are dence in the midst of apparent impossisaved. The fuller and firmer our persua- bilities, even as he did that with us the sion in His truth, the greater is the hom-eye of faith should look above and beage that we render Him, and the more yond all that is seen by the eye of flesh, abundant are both the present peace and even as with him-and that we should not the future glory which we bring down only set out on the life of faith after his upon ourselves. To hope against hope-example, but should also walk in the footto believe in the midst of violent improba- steps of the faith of our father Abraham. bilities to realize the future things which The first thing that strikes us in our are addrest to faith, and are so unlike great pattern, is his tenacious and resothose present things with which nature lute adherence to the truth of God's testisurrounds us-to maintain an unshaken mony. "Let God be true," says the aposconfidence because God hath spoken, tle, "and every man a liar"-If God have though the besetting urgencies of sense spoken, said the patriarch by his conduct, and experience all tend to thwart and to let us abide by it-though all nature and dislodge it-These are the trials which, if all experience should depone to the confaith overcome, make that faith more trary. Amid all the staggering appearprecious than gold in the sight of our ances by which he was surrounded, he heavenly witness; and it will be found to kept by his firm persuasion in God's truth; praise and honour and glory at the ap- and it was this which inwardly upheld pearing of Jesus Christ. him. His heart was fixed, trusting in God. He knew that it was His voice which first called him forth, and he was fully assured of its faithfulness; and that it was his promise which first allured him from the abode of his fathers, and he held it to be certain that what God had promised He was able to perform; and when all that was visible to sense looked unlikelihood upon his expectations, they were kept in full buoyancy and vigour by his unfaltering reliance on the word of Him who is invisible. All the agitations of his varied history, could not unfasten his soul from the anchor of its fixed and unalterable dependence. And it was truly noble in him, who, obedient to the heavenly vision, had torn himself away from the endearments of the place of his nativity; and, at the call of what he deemed a voice of right The following is the paraphrase of this passage. "Therefore the promised inheritance is of faith, that it might be by grace, which can be extended to all-so as to ensure the promise to the whole generation of believers, not only to those who are of the law, but to those who have the faith of Abraham, the father and the forerunner of us all. Agreeably to the scripture,' "I have made thee a father of many nations," which he is in the eye and estimation of Him on whom he believed-even God, who, by quickening that which is dead and dormant, both called forth a real posterity to Abraham, and also constituted him the spiritual father of a posterity far more extended than that of which he was the natural progenitor. This looked |