Jews, and written in the hearts of all men (Rom. xi. 15.) the law holy and spiritual! What was the great point, of which this law, in its own name, offered no solution;-the mystery, which it left behind the veil, or in the cloudy tabernacle of types and figurative sacrifices? Whether there was a judgment to come, and souls to suffer the dread sentence? Or was it not far rather-what are the means of escape; where may grace be found, and redemption? St. Paul says, the latter. The law brings condemnation : but the conscience-sentenced transgressor's question, "What shall I do to be saved? Who will intercede for me?" she dismisses as beyond the jurisdiction of her court, and takes no cognizance thereof, save in prophetic murmurs or mute out-shadowings of mystic ordinances and sacrificial types. Not, therefore, that there is a life to come, and a future state; but what each individual soul may hope for itself therein; and on what grounds: and that this state has been rendered an object of aspiration and fervent desire, and a source of thanksgiving and exceeding great joy; and by whom, and through whom, and for whom, and by what means, and under what conditions-these are the peculiar and distinguishing fundamentals of the Christian Faith! These are the revealed lights and obtained privileges of the Christian Dispensation. Not alone the knowledge of the boon, but the precious inestimable boon itself, is the grace and truth that came by Jesus Christ. I believe Moses, I believe Paul; but I believe in Christ.

T

APHORISM.

ON BAPTISM.

LEIGHTON,

In those days came John the Baptist, preaching. -It will suffice for our present purpose, if by these* words we direct the attention to the origin, or at least first Scriptural record, of Baptism, and to the combinement of preaching therewith; their aspect each to the other, and their concurrence to one excellent end; the word unfolding the sacrament, and the sacrament sealing the word; the word as a light, informing and clearing the sense of the seal; and this again as a seal, confirming and ratifying the truth of the word; as you see some significant seals, or engraven signets, have a word about them expressing their sense.

But truly the word is a light, and the sacraments have in them of the same light illuminating them. This sacrament of Baptism, the ancients do particularly express by light. Yet are they both nothing but darkness to us, till the same light shine in our hearts; for till then we are nothing but darkness ourselves, and therefore the most luminous things are so to us. Noonday is as midnight to a blind man. And we see these ordinances, the word and the sacrament, without profit or comfort for the most part, because we have not that divine light within us. And we have it not, because we ask it not.

By certain Biblical philologists of the Teutonic school (men distinguished by learning, but still more characteristically by hardihood in conjecture, and who suppose the Gospels to have undergone several successive revisions snd enlargements by, or under the authority of, the sacred historians) these words are contended to have been, in the first delivery, the common commencement of all the Gospels karà σápka (that is, according to the flesh,) in distinction from St. John's, or the Gospel KaTà TVEμa (that is, according to the Spirit.)

COMMENT,

Or an aid to reflection in the forming of a sound judgment respecting the purport and purpose of the Baptismal rite, and a just appreciation of its value and importance.

A born and bred Baptist, and paternally descended from the old orthodox Non-conformists, and both in his own and in his father's right a very dear friend of mine, had married a member of the National Church. In consequence of an anxious wish expressed by his lady for the Baptism of their first child, he solicited me to put him in possession of my views respecting this controversy; though principally as to the degree of importance which I attached to it. For as to the point itself, his natural prepossession in favor of the persuasion in which he was born, had been confirmed by a conscientious examination of the arguments on both sides. As the comment on the preceding Aphorism, or rather as an expansion of its subject-matter, I will give the substance of the conversation: and amply shall I have been remunerated, should it be read with the interest and satisfaction with which it was heard. More particularly, should any of my readers find themselves under the same or similar circumstances.

Our discussion is rendered shorter and more easy by our perfect agreement in certain preliminary points. We both disclaim alike every attempt to explain any thing into Scripture, and every attempt to explain any thing out of Scripture. Or if we regard either with a livelier aversion it is the latter, as being the more fashionable and prevalent. I mean the practice of both high and low Grotian divines to explain away positive assertions of Scripture on the pretext, that the literal sense is not agreeable to reason, that is, their particular reason. And inasmuch

as (in the only right sense of the word) there is no such thing as a particular reason, they must, and in fact they do, mean that the literal sense is not accordant to their understanding, that is, to the notions which their understandings have been taught and accustomed to form in their school of philosophy. Thus a Platonist who should become a Christian would at once, even in texts susceptible of a different interpretation, recognize, because he would expect to find, several doctrines which the disciple of the Epicurean or mechanic school will not receive on the most positive declarations of the divine word. And as we agree in the opinion that the Minimi-fidian party err grievously in the latter point, so I must concede to you, that too many Pædo-baptists (assertors of Infant Baptism) have erred, though less grossly, in the former. I have, I confess, no eye for these smoke-like wreaths of inference, this ever widening spiral ergo from the narrow aperture of perhaps a single text; or rather an interpretation forced into it by construing an idiomatic phrase in an artless narrative with the same absoluteness, as if it had formed part of a mathematical problem. I start back from these inverted pyramids, where the apex is the base. If I should inform any one that I had called at a friend's house, but had found nobody at home, the family having all gone to the play; and if he on the strength of this information should take occasion to asperse my friend's wife for unmotherly conduct in taking an infant six months old to a crowded theatre; would you allow him to press on the words" nobody" and "all the family," in justification of the slander? Would you not tell him, that the words were to be interpreted by the nature of the subject, the purpose of the speaker, and their ordinary acceptation; and that he must or might have known, that infants of that age would not be admitted into the theatre? Exactly so, with regard to the words,

he and all his household. Had Baptism of infants at that early period of the Gospel been a known practice, or had this been previously demonstrated,then indeed the argument, that in all probability there were infants or young children in so large a family, would be no otherwise objectionable than as being superfluous, and a sort of anticlimax in logic. But if the words are cited as the proof, it would be a clear petitio principii, though there had been nothing else against it. But when we turn back to the Scriptures preceding the narrative, and find repentance and belief demanded as the terms and indispensable conditions of Baptism-then the case above imagined applies in its full force. Equally vain is the pretended analogy from Circumcision, which was no Sacrament at all; but the means and mark of national distinction. In the first instance it was, doubtless, a privilege or mark of superior rank conferred on the descendants of Abraham. In the Patriarchal times this rite was confined (the first governments being theocracies) to the priesthood, who were set apart to that office from their birth. At a later period this token of the premier class was extended to kings. And thus, when it was re-ordained by Moses for the whole Jewish nation, it was at the time said-Ye are all priests and kings; ye are a consecrated people. In addition to this, or rather in aid of this, Circumcision was intended to distinguish the Jews by some indelible sign: and it was no less necessary that Jewish children should be recognizable as Jews than Jewish adults-not to mention the greater safety of the rite in infancy. Nor was it ever pretended that any grace was conferred with it, or that the rite was significant of any inward or spiritual operation. In short, an unprejudiced and competent reader need only peruse the first thirty-three paragraphs of the eighteenth section of Taylor's Liberty of Prophesying; and then compare with these the re