Part 7 — Chapter II. The Ordinances Of The Church. (continued 2)

In the respect of not being repeated, Baptism is unlike the Lord's Supper, which symbolizes the continuous sustaining power of Christ's death, while baptism symbolizes its power to begin a new life within the soul. In Acts 19:1-5, Paul instructs the new disciples that the real baptism of John, to which they erroneously supposed they had submitted, was not only a baptism of repentance, but a baptism of faith in the coming Savior. “And when they heard this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus”—as they had not been before. Here there was no rebaptism, for the mere outward submersion in water to which they had previously submitted, with no thought of professing faith in Christ, was no baptism at all—whether Johannine or Christian. See Brooks, in Baptist Quarterly, April, 1867, art.: Rebaptism.

Whenever it is clear, as in many cases of Campbellite immersion, that the candidate has gone down into the water, not with intent to profess a previously existing faith, but in order to be regenerated, baptism is still to be administered if the person subsequently believes on Christ. But wherever it appears that there was intent to profess an already existing faith and regeneration, there should be no repetition of the immersion, even though the ordinance has been administered by the Campbellites.

To rebaptize whenever a Christian's faith and joy are rekindled so that he begins to doubt the reality of his early experiences, would, in the case of many fickle believers, require many repetitions of the ordinance. The presumption is that, when the profession of faith was made by baptism, there was an actual faith which needed to be professed, and therefore that the baptism, though followed by much unbelief and many wanderings, was a valid one. Rebaptism, in the case of unstable Christians, tends to bring reproach upon the ordinance itself.

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(f) So long as the mode and the subjects are such as Christ has enjoined, mere accessories are matters of individual judgment.

The use of natural rather than of artificial baptisteries is not to be elevated into an essential. The formula of baptism prescribed by Christ is “into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”

Mat. 28:19—“baptizing them into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit”; cf. Acts 8:16—“they had been baptized into the name of the Lord Jesus”; Rom. 6:3—“Or are ye ignorant that all we who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?” Gal. 3:27—“For as many of you as were baptized into Christ did put on Christ.” Baptism is immersion into God, into the presence, communion, life of the Trinity; see Com. of Clark, and of Lange, on Mat. 28:19; also C. E. Smith, in Bap. Rev., 1881:305-311. President Wayland and the Revised Version read, “into the name.” Per contra, see Meyer (transl., 1:281, note) on Rom. 6:3; cf. Mat. 10:41; 18:20; in all which passages, as well as in Mat. 28:19, he claims that εἰς τὸ ὄνομα signifies “with reference to the name.” In Acts 2:38, and 10:48, we have “in the name.” For the latter translation of Mat. 28:19, see Conant, Notes on Mat., 171. On the whole subject of this section, see Dagg, Church Order, 13-73; Ingham, Subjects of Baptism.

C. Infant Baptism.

This we reject and reprehend, for the following reasons:

(a) Infant baptism is without warrant, either express or implied, in the Scripture.

First,—there is no express command that infants should be baptized. Secondly,—there is no clear example of the baptism of infants. Thirdly,—the passages held to imply infant baptism contain, when fairly interpreted, no reference to such a practice. In Mat. 19:14, none would have “forbidden,” if Jesus and his disciples had been in the habit of baptizing infants. From Acts 16:15, cf. 40, and Acts 16:33, cf. 34, Neander says that we cannot infer infant baptism. For 1 Cor. 16:15 shows that the whole family of Stephanas, baptized by Paul, were adults (1 Cor. 1:16). It is impossible to suppose a whole heathen household baptized upon the faith of its head. As to 1 Cor. 7:14, Jacobi calls this text “a sure testimony against infant baptism, since Paul would certainly have referred to the baptism of children as a proof of their holiness, if infant baptism had been practised.” Moreover, this passage would in that case equally teach the baptism of the unconverted husband of a believing wife. It plainly proves that the children of Christian parents were no more baptized and had no closer connection with the Christian church, than the unbelieving partners of Christians.

Mat. 19:14—“Suffer the little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for to such belongeth the kingdom of heaven”; Acts 16:15—“And when she [Lydia] was baptized, and her household”; cf. 40—“And they went out of the prison, and entered into the house of Lydia: and when they had seen the brethren, they comforted them, and departed.” Acts 16:33—The jailor “was baptized, he and all his, immediately”; cf. 34—“And he brought them up into his house, and set food before them, and rejoiced greatly, with all his house, having believed in God”; 1 Cor. 16:15—“ye know the house of Stephanas, that it is the firstfruits of Achaia, and that they have set themselves to minister unto the saints”; 1:16—“And I baptized also the household of Stephanas”; 7:14—“For the unbelieving husband is sanctified in the wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified in the brother: else were your children unclean; but now are they holy”—here the sanctity or holiness attributed to unbelieving members of the household is evidently that of external connection and privilege, like that of the O. T. Israel.

Broadus, Am. Com., on Mat. 19:14—“No Greek Commentator mentions infant baptism in connection with this passage, though they all practised that rite.” Schleiermacher, Glaubenslehre, 2:383—“All the traces of infant baptism which it has been desired to find in the New Testament must first be put into it.” Pfleiderer, Grundriss, 184-187—“Infant [pg 952]baptism cannot be proved from the N. T., and according to 1 Cor. 7:14 it is antecedently improbable; yet it was the logical consequence of the command, Mat. 28:19 sq., in which the church consciousness of the 2d century prophetically expressed Christ's appointment that it should be the universal church of the nations.... Infant baptism represents one side of the Biblical sacrament, the side of the divine grace; but it needs to have the other side, appropriation of that grace by personal freedom, added in confirmation.”

Dr. A. S. Crapsey, formerly an Episcopal rector in Rochester, made the following statement in the introduction to a sermon in defence of infant baptism: “Now in support of this custom of the church, we can bring no express command of the word of God, no certain warrant of holy Scripture, nor can we be at all sure that this usage prevailed during the apostolic age. From a few obscure hints we may conjecture that it did, but it is only conjecture after all. It is true St. Paul baptized the household of Stephanas, of Lydia, and of the jailor at Philippi, and in these households there may have been little children; but we do not know that there were, and these inferences form but a poor foundation upon which to base any doctrine. Better say at once, and boldly, that infant baptism is not expressly taught in holy Scripture. Not only is the word of God silent on this subject, but those who have studied the subject tell us that Christian writers of the very first age say nothing about it. It is by no means sure that this custom obtained in the church earlier than in the middle of the second or the beginning of the third century.” Dr. C. M. Mead, in a private letter, dated May 27, 1895—“Though a Congregationalist, I cannot find any Scriptural authorization of pedobaptism, and I admit also that immersion seems to have been the prevalent, if not the universal, form of baptism at the first.”

A review of the passages held by pedobaptists to support their views leads us to the conclusion expressed in the North British Review, Aug. 1852:211, that infant baptism is utterly unknown to Scripture. Jacob, Eccl. Polity of N. T., 270-275—“Infant baptism is not mentioned in the N. T. No instance of it is recorded there; no allusion is made to its effects; no directions are given for its administration.... It is not an apostolic ordinance.” See also Neander's view, in Kitto, Bib. Cyclop., art.: Baptism; Kendrick, in Christian Rev., April, 1863; Curtis, Progress of Baptist Principles, 96; Wayland, Principles and Practices of Baptists, 125; Cunningham, lect. on Baptism, in Croall Lectures for 1886.

(b) Infant baptism is expressly contradicted.

First,—by the Scriptural prerequisites of faith and repentance, as signs of regeneration. In the great commission, Matthew speaks of baptizing disciples, and Mark of baptizing believers; but infants are neither of these. Secondly,—by the Scriptural symbolism of the ordinance. As we should not bury a person before his death, so we should not symbolically bury a person by baptism until he has in spirit died to sin. Thirdly,—by the Scriptural constitution of the church. The church is a company of persons whose union with one another presupposes and expresses a previous conscious and voluntary union of each with Jesus Christ. But of this conscious and voluntary union with Christ infants are not capable. Fourthly,—by the Scriptural prerequisites for participation in the Lord's Supper. Participation in the Lord's Supper is the right only of those who can discern the Lord's body (1 Cor. 11:29). No reason can be assigned for restricting to intelligent communicants the ordinance of the Supper, which would not equally restrict to intelligent believers the ordinance of Baptism.

Infant baptism has accordingly led in the Greek church to infant communion. This course seems logically consistent. If baptism is administered to unconscious babes, they should participate in the Lord's Supper also. But if confirmation or any intelligent profession of faith is thought necessary before communion, why should not such confirmation or profession be thought necessary before baptism? On Jonathan Edwards and the Halfway Covenant, see New Englander, Sept. 1884:601-614; G. L. Walker, Aspects of Religious Life of New England, 61-82; Dexter, Congregationalism, 487, note—“It has been often intimated that President Edwards opposed and destroyed [pg 953]the Halfway Covenant. He did oppose Stoddardism, or the doctrine that the Lord's Supper is a converting ordinance, and that unconverted men, because they are such, should be encouraged to partake of it.” The tendency of his system was adverse to it; but, for all that appears in his published writings, he could have approved and administered that form of the Halfway Covenant then current among the churches. John Fiske says of Jonathan Edwards's preaching: “The prominence he gave to spiritual conversion, or what was called ‘change of heart,’ brought about the overthrow of the doctrine of the Halfway Covenant. It also weakened the logical basis of infant baptism, and led to the winning of hosts of converts by the Baptists.”

Other pedobaptist bodies than the Greek Church save part of the truth, at the expense of consistency, by denying participation in the Lord's Supper to those baptized in infancy until they have reached years of understanding and have made a public profession of faith. Dr. Charles E. Jefferson, at the International Congregational Council of Boston, September, 1899, urged that the children of believers are already church members, and that as such they are entitled, not only to baptism, but also to the Lord's Supper—“an assertion that started much thought”! Baptists may well commend Congregationalists to the teaching of their own Increase Mather, The Order of the Gospel (1700), 11—“The Congregational Church discipline is not suited for a worldly interest or for a formal generation of professors. It will stand or fall as godliness in the power of it does prevail, or otherwise.... If the begun Apostacy should proceed as fast the next thirty years as it has done these last, surely it will come that in New England (except the gospel itself depart with the order of it) that the most conscientious people therein will think themselves concerned to gather churches out of churches.”

How much of Judaistic externalism may linger among nominal Christians is shown by the fact that in the Armenian Church animal sacrifices survived, or were permitted to converted heathen priests, in order they might not lose their livelihood. These sacrifices continued in other regions of Christendom, particularly in the Greek church, and Pope Gregory the Great permitted them; see Conybeare, in Am. Jour. Theology, Jan. 1893:62-90. In The Key of Truth, a manual of the Paulician Church of Armenia, whose date in its present form is between the seventh and the ninth centuries, we have the Adoptianist view of Christ's person, and of the subjects and the mode of baptism: “Thus also the Lord, having learned from the Father, proceeded to teach us to perform baptism and all other commandments at the age of full growth and at no other time.... For some have broken and destroyed the holy and precious canons which by the Father Almighty were delivered to our Lord Jesus Christ, and have trodden them underfoot with their devilish teaching, ... baptizing those who are irrational, and communicating the unbelieving.”

Minority is legally divided into three septennates: 1. From the first to the seventh year, the age of complete irresponsibility, in which the child cannot commit a crime; 2. from the seventh to the fourteenth year, the age of partial responsibility, in which intelligent consciousness of the consequences of actions is not assumed to exist, but may be proved in individual instances; 3. from the fourteenth to the twenty-first year, the age of discretion, in which the person is responsible for criminal action, may choose a guardian, make a will, marry with consent of parents, make business contracts not wholly void, but is not yet permitted fully to assume the free man's position in the State. The church however is not bound by these hard and fast rules. Wherever it has evidence of conversion and of Christian character, it may admit to baptism and church membership, even at a very tender age.

(c) The rise of infant baptism in the history of the church.

The rise of infant baptism in the history of the church is due to sacramental conceptions of Christianity, so that all arguments in its favor from the writings of the first three centuries are equally arguments for baptismal regeneration.

Neander's view may be found in Kitto, Cyclopædia, 1:287—“Infant baptism was established neither by Christ nor by his apostles. Even in later times Tertullian opposed it, the North African church holding to the old practice.” The newly discovered Teaching of the Apostles, which Bryennios puts at 140-160 A.D., and Lightfoot at 80-110 A. D., seems to know nothing of infant baptism.

Professor A. H. Newman, in Bap. Rev., Jan. 1884—“Infant baptism has always gone hand in hand with State churches. It is difficult to conceive how an ecclesiastical establishment could be maintained without infant baptism or its equivalent. We should think, if the facts did not show us so plainly the contrary, that the doctrine of [pg 954]justification by faith alone would displace infant baptism. But no. The establishmentmust be maintained. The rejection of infant baptism implies insistence upon a baptism of believers. Only the baptized are properly members of the church. Even adults would not all receive baptism on professed faith, unless they were actually compelled to do so. Infant baptism must therefore be retained as the necessary concomitant of a State church.

“But what becomes of the justification by faith? Baptism, if it symbolizes anything, symbolizes regeneration. It would be ridiculous to make the symbol to forerun the fact by a series of years. Luther saw the difficulty; but he was sufficient for the emergency. ‘Yes,’ said he, ‘justification is by faith alone. No outward rite, apart from faith, has any efficacy.’ Why, it was against opera operata that he was laying out all his strength. Yet baptism is the symbol of regeneration, and baptism must be administered to infants, or the State church falls. With an audacity truly sublime, the great reformer declares that infants are regenerated in connection with baptism, and that they are simultaneously justified by personal faith. An infant eight days old believe? ‘Prove the contrary if you can!’ triumphantly ejaculates Luther, and his point is gained. If this kind of personal faith is said to justify infants, is it wonderful that those of maturer years learned to take a somewhat superficial view of the faith that justifies?”

Yet Luther had written: “Whatever is without the word of God is by that very fact against God”; see his Briefe, ed. DeWette, II:292; J. G. Walch, De Fide in Utero. There was great discordance between Luther as reformer, and Luther as conservative churchman. His Catholicism, only half overcome, broke into all his views of faith. In his early years, he stood for reason and Scripture; in his later years he fought reason and Scripture in the supposed interest of the church.

Mat. 18:10—“See that ye despise not one of these little ones”—which refers not to little children but to childlike believers, Luther adduces as a proof of infant baptism, holding that the child is said to believe—“little ones that believe on me” (verse 6)—because it has been circumcised and received into the number of the elect. “And so, through baptism, children become believers. How else could the children of Turks and Jews be distinguished from those of Christians?” Does this involve the notion that infants dying unbaptized are lost? To find the very apostle of justification by faith saying that a little child becomes a believer by being baptized, is humiliating and disheartening (so Broadus. Com. on Matthew, page 384, note).

Pfleiderer, Philos. Religion, 2:342-345, quotes from Lang as follows: “By mistaking and casting down the Protestant spirit which put forth its demands on the time in Carlstadt, Zwingle, and others, Luther made Protestantism lose its salt; he inflicted wounds upon it from which it has not yet recovered to-day; and the ecclesiastical struggle of the present is just a struggle of spiritual freedom against Lutherism.”E. G. Robinson: “Infant baptism is a rag of Romanism. Since regeneration is always through the truth, baptismal regeneration is an absurdity.” See Christian Review, Jan. 1851; Neander, Church History, 1:311, 313; Coleman, Christian Antiquities, 258-260; Arnold, in Bap. Quarterly, 1869:32; Hovey, in Bap. Quarterly, 1871:75.

(d) The reasoning by which it is supported is unscriptural, unsound, and dangerous in its tendency.

First,—in assuming the power of the church to modify or abrogate a command of Christ. This has been sufficiently answered above. Secondly,—in maintaining that infant baptism takes the place of circumcision under the Abrahamic covenant. To this we reply that the view contradicts the New Testament idea of the church, by making it a hereditary body, in which fleshly birth, and not the new birth, qualifies for membership. “As the national Israel typified the spiritual Israel, so the circumcision which immediately followed, not preceded, natural birth, bids us baptize children, not before, but after spiritual birth.” Thirdly,—in declaring that baptism belongs to the infant because of an organic connection of the child with the parent, which permits the latter to stand for the former and to make profession of faith for it,—faith already existing germinally in the child by virtue of this organic union, and certain for the same reason to be developed [pg 955] as the child grows to maturity. “A law of organic connection as regards character subsisting between the parent and the child,—such a connection as induces the conviction that the character of the one is actually included in the character of the other, as the seed is formed in the capsule.” We object to this view that it unwarrantably confounds the personality of the child with that of the parent; practically ignores the necessity of the Holy Spirit's regenerating influences in the case of children of Christian parents; and presumes in such children a gracious state which facts conclusively show not to exist.

What takes the place of circumcision is not baptism but regeneration. Paul defeated the attempt to fasten circumcision on the church, when he refused to have that rite performed on Titus. But later Judaizers succeeded in perpetuating circumcision under the form of infant baptism, and afterward of infant sprinkling (McGarvey, Com. on Acts). E. G. Robinson: “Circumcision is not a type of baptism: 1. It is purely a gratuitous assumption that it is so. There is not a word in Scripture to authorize it; 2. Circumcision was a national, a theocratic, and not a personal, religious rite; 3. If circumcision be a type, why did Paul circumcise Timothy? Why did he not explain, on an occasion so naturally calling for it, that circumcision was replaced by baptism?”

On the theory that baptism takes the place of circumcision, see Pepper, Baptist Quarterly, April, 1857; Palmer, in Baptist Quarterly, 1871:314. The Christian Church is either a natural, hereditary body, or it was merely typified by the Jewish people. In the former case, baptism belongs to all children of Christian parents, and the church is indistinguishable from the world. In the latter case, it belongs only to spiritual descendants, and therefore only to true believers. “That Jewish Christians, who of course had been circumcised, were also baptized, and that a large number of them insisted that Gentiles who had been baptized should also be circumcised, shows conclusively that baptism did not take the place of circumcision.... The notion that the family is the unit of society is a relic of barbarism. This appears in the Roman law, which was good for property but not for persons. It left none but a servile station to wife or son, thus degrading society at the fountain of family life. To gain freedom, the Roman wife had to accept a form of marriage which opened the way for unlimited liberty of divorce.”

Hereditary church-membership is of the same piece with hereditary priesthood, and both are relics of Judaism. J. J. Murphy, Nat. Selection and Spir. Freedom, 81—“The institution of hereditary priesthood, which was so deeply rooted in the religions of antiquity and was adopted into Judaism, has found no place in Christianity; there is not, I believe, any church whatever calling itself by the name of Christ, in which the ministry is hereditary.” Yet there is a growing disposition to find in infant baptism the guarantee of hereditary church membership. Washington Gladden, What is Left? 252-254—“Solidarity of the generations finds expression in infant baptism. Families ought to be Christian and not individuals only. In the Society of Friends every one born of parents belonging to the Society is a birthright member. Children of Christian parents are heirs of the kingdom. The State recognizes that our children are organically connected with it. When parents are members of the State, children are not aliens. They are not called to perform duties of citizenship until a certain age, but the rights and privileges of citizenship are theirs from the moment of their birth. The State is the mother of her children; shall the church be less motherly than the State?... Baptism does not make the child God's child; it simply recognizes and declares the fact.”

Another illustration of what we regard as a radically false view is found in the sermon of Bishop Grafton of Fond du Lac, at the consecration of Bishop Nicholson in Philadelphia: “Baptism is not like a function in the natural order, like the coronation of a king, an acknowledgment of what the child already is. The child, truly God's loved offspring by way of creation, is in baptism translated into the new creation and incorporated into the Incarnate One, and made his child.” Yet, as the great majority of the inmates of our prisons and the denizens of the slums have received this “baptism,”it appears that this “loved offspring” very early lost its “new creation” and got “translated” in the wrong direction. We regard infant baptism as only an ancient example of the effort to bring in the kingdom of God by externals, the protest against [pg 956]which brought Jesus to the cross. Our modern methods of salvation by sociology and education and legislation are under the same indictment, as crucifying the Son of God afresh and putting him to open shame.

Prof. Moses Stuart urged that the form of baptism was immaterial, but that the temper of heart was the thing of moment. Francis Wayland, then a student of his, asked: “If such is the case, with what propriety can baptism be administered to those who cannot be supposed to exercise any temper of heart at all, and with whom the form must be everything?”—The third theory of organic connection of the child with its parents is elaborated by Bushnell, in his Christian Nurture, 90-223. Per contra, see Bunsen, Hippolytus and his Times, 179, 211; Curtis, Progress of Baptist Principles, 262. Hezekiah's son Manasseh was not godly; and it would be rash to say that all the drunkard's children are presumptively drunkards.

(e) The lack of agreement among pedobaptists.

The lack of agreement among pedobaptists as to the warrant for infant baptism and as to the relation of baptized infants to the church, together with the manifest decline of the practice itself, are arguments against it.

The propriety of infant baptism is variously argued, says Dr. Bushnell, upon the ground of “natural innocence, inherited depravity, and federal holiness; because of the infant's own character, the parent's piety, and the church's faith; for the reason that the child is an heir of salvation already, and in order to make it such.... No settled opinion on infant baptism and on Christian nurture has ever been attained to.”

Quot homines, tot sententiæ. The belated traveler in a thunderstorm prayed for a little more light and less noise. Bushnell, Christian Nurture, 9-89, denies original sin, denies that hereditary connection can make a child guilty. But he seems to teach transmitted righteousness, or that hereditary connection can make a child holy. He disparages “sensible experiences” and calls them “explosive conversions.” But because we do not know the time of conversion, shall we say that there never was a time when the child experienced God's grace? See Bib. Sac., 1872:665. Bushnell said: “I don't know what right we have to say that a child can't be born again before he is born the first time.” Did not John the Baptist preach Christ before he was born? (Luke 1:15, 41, 44). The answer to Bushnell is simply this, that regeneration is through the truth, and an unborn child cannot know the truth. To disjoin regeneration from the truth, is to make it a matter of external manipulation in which the soul is merely passive and the whole process irrational. There is a secret work of God in the soul, but it is always accompanied by an awakening of the soul to perceive the truth and to accept Christ.

Are baptized infants members of the Presbyterian Church? We answer by citing the following standards: 1. The Confession of Faith, 25:2—“The visible church ... consists of all those throughout the world, that profess the true religion, together with their children.” 2. The Larger Catechism, 62—“The visible church is a society made up of all such as in all ages and places of the world do profess the true religion, and of their children.” 166—“Baptism is not to be administered to any that are not of the visible church ... till they profess their faith in Christ and obedience to him: but infants descending from parents either both or but one of them professing faith in Christ and obedience to him are in that respect within the covenant and are to be baptized.”3. The Shorter Catechism, 96—“Baptism is not to be administered to any that are out of the visible church, till they profess their faith in Christ and obedience to him: but the infants of such as are members of the visible church are to be baptized.”4. Form of Government, 3—“A particular church consists of a number of professing Christians, with their offspring.” 5. Directory for Worship, 1—“Children born within the pale of the visible church and dedicated to God in baptism are under the inspection and government of the church.... When they come to years of discretion, if they be free from scandal, appear sober and steady, and to have sufficient knowledge to discern the Lord's body, they ought to be informed it is their duty and their privilege to come to the Lord's Supper.”

The Maplewood Congregational Church of Malden, Mass., enrolls as members all children baptized by the church. The relation continues until they indicate a desire either to continue it or to dissolve it. The list of such members is kept distinct from that of the adults, but they are considered as members under the care of the church. [pg 957]Dr. W. G. T. Shedd: “The infant of a believer is born into the church as the infant of a citizen is born into the State. A baptized child in adult years may renounce his baptism, become an infidel, and join the synagogue of Satan, but until he does this, he must be regarded as a member of the church of Christ.”

On the Decline of Infant Baptism, see Vedder, in Baptist Review, April, 1882:173-189, who shows that in fifty years past the proportion of infant baptisms to communicants in general has decreased from one in seven to one in eleven; among the Reformed, from one in twelve to one in twenty; among the Presbyterians, from one in fifteen to one in thirty-three; among the Methodists, from one in twenty-two to one in twenty-nine; among the Congregationalists, from one in fifty to one in seventy-seven.

(f) The evil effects of infant baptism.

First,—in forestalling the voluntary act of the child baptized, and thus practically preventing his personal obedience to Christ's commands.

The person baptized in infancy has never performed any act with intent to obey Christ's command to be baptized, never has put forth a single volition looking toward obedience to that command; see Wilkinson, The Baptist Principle, 40-46. Every man has the right to choose his own wife. So every man has the right to choose his own Savior.

Secondly,—in inducing superstitious confidence in an outward rite as possessed of regenerating efficacy.

French parents still regard infants before baptism as only animals (Stanley). The haste with which the minister is summoned to baptize the dying child shows that superstition still lingers in many an otherwise evangelical family in our own country. The English Prayerbook declares that in baptism the infant is “made a child of God and an inheritor of the kingdom of heaven.” Even the Westminster Assembly's Catechism, 28:6, holds that grace is actually conferred in baptism, though the efficacy of it is delayed till riper years. Mercersburg Review: “The objective medium or instrumental cause of regeneration is baptism. Men are not regenerated outside the church and then brought into it for preservation, but they are regenerated by being incorporated with or engrafted into the church through the sacrament of baptism.” Catholic Review: “Unbaptized, these little ones go into darkness; but baptized, they rejoice in the presence of God forever.”

Dr. Beebe of Hamilton went after a minister to baptize his sick child, but before he returned the child died. Reflection made him a Baptist, and the Editor of The Examiner. Baptists unhesitatingly permit converts to die unbaptized, showing plainly that they do not regard baptism as essential to salvation. Baptism no more makes one a Christian, than putting a crown on one's head makes him a king. Zwingle held to a symbolic interpretation of the Lord's Supper, but he clung to the sacramental conception of Baptism. E. H. Johnson, Uses and Abuses of Ordinances, 33, claims that, while baptism is not a justifying or regenerating ordinance, it is a sanctifying ordinance,—sanctifying, in the sense of setting apart. Yes, we reply, but only as church going and prayer are sanctifying; the efficacy is not in the outward act but in the spirit which accompanies it. To make it signify more is to admit the sacramental principle.

In the Roman Catholic Church the baptism of bells and of rosaries shows how infant baptism has induced the belief that grace can be communicated to irrational and even material things. In Mexico people bring caged birds, cats, rabbits, donkeys, and pigs, for baptism. The priest kneels before the altar in prayer, reads a few words in Latin, then sprinkles the creature with holy water. The sprinkling is supposed to drive out any evil spirit that may have vexed the bird or beast. In Key West, Florida, a town of 22,000 inhabitants, infant baptism has a stronger hold than anywhere else at the South. Baptist parents had sometimes gone to the Methodist preachers to have their children baptized. To prevent this, the Baptist pastors established the custom of laying their hands upon the heads of infants in the congregation, and “blessing” them, i. e., asking God's blessing to rest upon them. But this custom came to be confounded with christening, and was called such. Now the Baptist pastors are having a hard struggle to explain and limit the custom which they themselves have introduced. Perverse human nature will take advantage of even the slightest additions to N. T. prescriptions, and will bring out of the germs of false doctrine a fearful harvest of evil. Obsta principiis—“Resist beginnings.”

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Thirdly,—in obscuring and corrupting Christian truth with regard to the sufficiency of Scripture, the connection of the ordinances, and the inconsistency of an impenitent life with church-membership.

Infant baptism in England is followed by confirmation, as a matter of course, whether there has been any conscious abandonment of sin or not. In Germany, a man is always understood to be a Christian unless he expressly states to the contrary—in fact, he feels insulted if his Christianity is questioned. At the funerals even of infidels and debauchees the pall used may be inscribed with the words: “Blessed are the dead that die in the Lord.” Confidence in one's Christianity and hopes of heaven based only on the fact of baptism in infancy, are a great obstacle to evangelical preaching and to the progress of true religion.

Wordsworth, The Excursion, 596, 602 (book 5)—“At the baptismal font. And when the pure And consecrating element hath cleansed The original stain, the child is thus received Into the second ark, Christ's church, with trust That he, from wrath redeemed therein shall float Over the billows of this troublesome world To the fair land of everlasting life.... The holy rite That lovingly consigns the babe to the arms Of Jesus and his everlasting care.” Infant baptism arose in the superstitious belief that there lay in the water itself a magical efficacy for the washing away of sin, and that apart from baptism there could be no salvation. This was and still remains the Roman Catholic position. Father Doyle, in Anno Domini, 2:182—“Baptism regenerates. By means of it the child is born again into the newness of the supernatural life.” Theodore Parker was baptized, but not till he was four years old, when his “Oh, don't!”—in which his biographers have found prophetic intimation of his mature dislike for all conventional forms—was clearly the small boy's dislike of water on his face; see Chadwick, Theodore Parker, 6, 7. “How do you know, my dear, that you have been christened?” “Please, mum, 'cos I've got the marks on my arm now, mum!”

Fourthly,—in destroying the church as a spiritual body, by merging it in the nation and the world.

Ladd, Principles of Church Polity: “Unitarianism entered the Congregational churches of New England through the breach in one of their own avowed and most important tenets, namely, that of a regenerate church-membership. Formalism, indifferentism, neglect of moral reforms, and, as both cause and results of these, an abundance of unrenewed men and women, were the causes of their seeming disasters in that sad epoch.” But we would add, that the serious and alarming decline of religion which culminated in the Unitarian movement in New England had its origin in infant baptism. This introduced into the Church a multitude of unregenerate persons and permitted them to determine its doctrinal position.

W. B. Matteson: “No one practice of the church has done so much to lower the tone of its life and to debase its standards. The first New England churches were established by godly and regenerated men. They received into their churches, through infant baptism, children presumptively, but alas not actually, regenerated. The result is well known—swift, startling, seemingly irresistible decline. ‘The body of the rising generation,’ writes Increase Mother, ‘is a poor perishing, inconverted, and, except the Lord pour out his Spirit, an undone generation.’ The ‘Halfway Covenant’ was at once a token of preceding, and a cause of further, decline. If God had not indeed poured out his Spirit in the great awakening under Edwards, New England might well, as some feared, ‘be lost even to New England and buried in its own ruins.’ It was the new emphasis on personal religion—an emphasis which the Baptists of that day largely contributed—that gave to the New England churches a larger life and a larger usefulness. Infant baptism has never since held quite the same place in the polity of those churches. It has very generally declined. But it is still far from extinct, even among evangelical Protestants. The work of Baptists is not yet done. Baptists have always stood, but they need still to stand, for a believing and regenerated church-membership.”

Fifthly,—in putting into the place of Christ's command a commandment of men, and so admitting the essential principle of all heresy, schism, and false religion.

[pg 959]

There is therefore no logical halting-place between the Baptist and the Romanist positions. The Roman Catholic Archbishop Hughes of New York, said well to a Presbyterian minister: “We have no controversy with you. Our controversy is with the Baptists.” Lange of Jena: “Would the Protestant church fulfil and attain to its final destiny, the baptism of infants must of necessity be abolished.” The English Judge asked the witness what his religious belief was. Reply: “I haven't any.” “Where do you attend church?” “Nowhere.” “Put him down as belonging to the Church of England.” The small child was asked where her mother was. Reply: “She has gone to a Christian and devil meeting.” The child meant a Christian Endeavor meeting. Some systems of doctrine and ritual, however, answer her description, for they are a mixture of paganism and Christianity. The greatest work favoring the doctrine which we here condemn is Wall's History of Infant Baptism. For the Baptist side of the controversy see Arnold, in Madison Avenue Lectures, 160-182; Curtis, Progress of Baptist Principles, 274, 275; Dagg, Church Order, 144-202.

II. The Lord's Supper.

The Lord's Supper is that outward rite in which the assembled church eats bread broken and drinks wine poured forth by its appointed representative, in token of its constant dependence on the once crucified, now risen Savior, as source of its spiritual life; or, in other words, in token of that abiding communion of Christ's death and resurrection through which the life begun in regeneration is sustained and perfected.

Norman Fox, Christ in the Daily Meal, 31, 33, says that the Scripture nowhere speaks of the wine as “poured forth”; and in 1 Cor. 11:24—“my body which is broken for you,” the Revised Version omits the word “broken”; while on the other hand the Gospel according to John (19:36) calls especial attention to the fact that Christ's body was not broken. We reply that Jesus, in giving his disciples the cup, did speak of his blood as “poured out” (Mark 14:24); and it was not the body, but “a bone of him,” which was not to be broken. Many ancient manuscripts add the word “broken” in 1 Cor. 11:24. On the Lord's Supper in general, see Weston, in Madison Avenue Lectures, 183-195; Dagg, Church Order, 203-214.

1. The Lord's Supper an ordinance instituted by Christ.

(a) Christ appointed an outward rite to be observed by his disciples in remembrance of his death. It was to be observed after his death; only after his death could it completely fulfil its purpose as a feast of commemoration.

Luke 22:19—“And be took bread, and when he had given thanks, he brake it, and gave to them, saying, This is my body which is given for you: this do in remembrance of me. And the cup in like manner after supper, saying, This cup is the new covenant in my blood, even that which is poured out for you”; 1 Cor. 11:23-25—“For I received of the Lord that which also I delivered unto you, that the Lord Jesus in the night in which he was betrayed took bread; and when he had given thanks, he brake it, and said, This is my body, which is for you: this do in remembrance of me. In like manner also the cup, after supper, saying, This cup is the new covenant in my blood: this do, as often as ye drink it, in remembrance of me.” Observe that this communion was Christian communion before Christ's death, just as John's baptism was Christian baptism before Christ's death.

(b) From the apostolic injunction with regard to its celebration in the church until Christ's second coming, we infer that it was the original intention of our Lord to institute a rite of perpetual and universal obligation.

1 Cor. 11:26—“For as often as ye eat this bread, and drink the cup, ye proclaim the Lord's death till he come”; cf. Mat. 26:29—“But I say unto you, I shall not drink henceforth of this fruit of the vine, until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father's kingdom”; Mark 14:25—“Verily I say unto you, I will no more drink of the fruit of the vine, until that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God.” As the paschal supper continued until Christ came the first time in the flesh, so the Lord's Supper is to continue until he comes the second time with all the power and glory of God.

(c) The uniform practice of the N. T. churches, and the celebration of such a rite in subsequent ages by almost all churches professing to be [pg 960] Christian, is best explained upon the supposition that the Lord's Supper is an ordinance established by Christ himself.

Acts 2:42—“And they continued stedfastly in the apostles' teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread and the prayers”; 46—“And day by day, continuing stedfastly with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread at home, they took their food with gladness and singleness of heart”—on the words here translated “at home” (κατ᾽ οἶκον), but meaning, as Jacob maintains, “from one worship-room to another,” see page 961. Acts 20:7—“And upon the first day of the week, when we were gathered together to break bread, Paul discoursed with them”; 1 Cor. 10:16—“The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not a communion of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not a communion of the body of Christ? seeing that we, who art many, are one bread, one body: for we all partake of the one bread.”

2. The Mode of administering the Lord's Supper.

(a) The elements are bread and wine.

Although the bread which Jesus broke at the institution of the ordinance was doubtless the unleavened bread of the Passover, there is nothing in the symbolism of the Lord's Supper which necessitates the Romanist use of the wafer. Although the wine which Jesus poured out was doubtless the ordinary fermented juice of the grape, there is nothing in the symbolism of the ordinance which forbids the use of unfermented juice of the grape,—obedience to the command “This do in remembrance of me” (Luke 22:19) requires only that we should use the “fruit of the vine” (Mat. 26:29).

Huguenots and Roman Catholics, among Parkman's Pioneers of France in the New World, disputed whether the sacramental bread could be made of the meal of Indian corn. But it is only as food, that the bread is symbolic. Dried fish is used in Greenland. The bread only symbolizes Christ's life and the wine only symbolizes his death. Any food or drink may do the same. It therefore seems a very conscientious but unnecessary literalism, when Adoniram Judson (Life by his Son, 352) writes from Burma: “No wine to be procured in this place, on which account we are unable to meet with the other churches this day in partaking of the Lord's Supper.” For proof that Bible wines, like all other wines, are fermented, see Presb. Rev., 1881:80-114; 1882:78-108, 394-399, 586; Hovey, in Bap. Quar. Rev., April, 1887:152-180. Per contra, see Samson, Bible Wines. On the Scripture Law of Temperance, see Presb. Rev., 1882:287-324.

(b) The communion is of both kinds,—that is, communicants are to partake both of the bread and of the wine.

The Roman Catholic Church withholds the wine from the laity, although it considers the whole Christ to be present under each of the forms. Christ, however, says: “Drink ye all of it” (Mat. 26:27). To withhold the wine from any believer is disobedience to Christ, and is too easily understood as teaching that the laity have only a portion of the benefits of Christ's death. Calvin: “As to the bread, he simply said ‘Take, eat.’ Why does he expressly bid them all drink? And why does Mark explicitly say that ‘they all drank of it’(Mark 14:23)?” Bengel: Does not this suggest that, if communion in “one kind alone were sufficient, it is the cup which should be used? The Scripture thus speaks, foreseeing what Rome would do.” See Expositor's Greek Testament on 1 Cor. 11:27. In the Greek Church the bread and wine are mingled and are administered to communicants, not to infants only but also to adults, with a spoon.

(c) The partaking of these elements is of a festal nature.

The Passover was festal in its nature. Gloom and sadness are foreign to the spirit of the Lord's Supper. The wine is the symbol of the death of Christ, but of that death by which we live. It reminds us that he drank the cup of suffering in order that we might drink the wine of joy. As the bread is broken to sustain our physical life, so Christ's body was broken by thorns and nails and spear to nourish our spiritual life.

1 Cor. 11:29—“For he that eateth and drinketh, eateth and drinketh judgment onto himself, if he discern not the body.” Here the Authorized Version wrongly had “damnation” instead of “judgment.” Not eternal condemnation, but penal judgment in general, is meant. He who partakes “in an unworthy manner” (verse 27), i. e., in hypocrisy, or merely to satisfy bodily appetites, and not discerning the body of Christ of which the bread is the symbol (verse 29), draws down upon him God's judicial sentence. Of this judgment, the frequent sickness and death in the church at Corinth was a token. See verses 30-34, and Meyer's Com.; also [pg 961]Gould, in Am. Com. on 1 Cor. 11:27—“unworthily”—“This is not to be understood as referring to the unworthiness of the person himself to partake, but to the unworthy manner of partaking.... The failure to recognize practically the symbolism of the elements, and hence the treatment of the Supper as a common meal, is just what the apostle has pointed out as the fault of the Corinthians, and it is what he characterizes as an unworthy eating and drinking.” The Christian therefore should not be deterred from participation in the Lord's Supper by any feeling of his personal unworthiness, so long as he trusts Christ and aims to obey him, for “All the fitness he requireth Is to feel our need of him.”

(d) The communion is a festival of commemoration,—not simply bringing Christ to our remembrance, but making proclamation of his death to the world.

1 Cor. 11:24, 26—“this do in remembrance of me.... For as often as ye eat this bread and drink this cup, ye proclaim the Lord's death till he come.” As the Passover commemorated the deliverance of Israel from Egypt, and as the Fourth of July commemorates our birth as a nation, so the Lord's Supper commemorates the birth of the church in Christ's death and resurrection. As a mother might bid her children meet over her grave and commemorate her, so Christ bids his people meet and remember him. But subjective remembrance is not its only aim. It is public proclamation also. Whether it brings perceptible blessing to us or not, it is to be observed as a means of confessing Christ, testifying our faith, and publishing the fact of his death to others.

(e) It is to be celebrated by the assembled church. It is not a solitary observance on the part of individuals. No “showing forth” is possible except in company.

Acts 20:7—“gathered together to break bread”; 1 Cor. 11:18, 20, 22, 33, 34—“when ye come together in the church ... assemble yourselves together ... have ye not houses to eat and to drink in? or despise ye the church of God, and put them to shame that have not? ... when ye come together to eat.... If any man is hungry, let him eat at home; that your coming together be not unto judgment.”

Jacob, Eccl. Polity of N. T., 191-194, claims that in Acts 2:46—“breaking bread at home”—where we have οἶκος, not οἶκία, οἶκος is not a private house, but a “worship-room,” and that the phrase should be translated “breaking bread from one worship-room to another,” or “in various worship-rooms.” This meaning seems very apt in Acts 5:42—“And every day, in the temple and at home [rather, ‘in various worship-rooms’], they ceased not to teach and to preach Jesus as the Christ”; 8:3—“But Saul laid waste the church, entering into every house [rather, ‘every worship-room’] and dragging men and women committed them to prison”; Rom. 16:5—“salute the church that is in their house [rather, ‘in their worship-room’]”; Titus 1:11—“men who overthrow whole houses [rather, ‘whole worship-rooms’], teaching things which they ought not, for filthy lucre's sake.” Per contra, however, see 1 Cor. 11:34—“let him eat at home,” where οἶκος is contrasted with the place of meeting; so also 1 Cor. 14:35 and Acts 20:20, where οἶκος seems to mean a private house.

The celebration of the Lord's Supper in each family by itself is not recognized in the New Testament. Stanley, in Nineteenth Century, May, 1878, tells us that as infant communion is forbidden in the Western Church, and evening communion is forbidden by the Roman Church, so solitary communion is forbidden by the English Church, and death-bed communion by the Scottish Church. E. G. Robinson: “No single individual in the New Testament ever celebrates the Lord's Supper by himself.” Mrs. Browning recognized the essentially social nature of the ordinance, when she said that truth was like the bread at the Sacrament—to be passed on. In this the Supper gives us a type of the proper treatment of all the goods of life, both temporal and spiritual.

Dr. Norman Fox, Christ in the Daily Meal, claims that the Lord's Supper is no more an exclusively church ordinance than is singing or prayer; that the command to observe it was addressed, not to an organized church, but only to individuals; that every meal in the home was to be a Lord's Supper, because Christ was remembered in it. But we reply that Paul's letter with regard to the abuses of the Lord's Supper was addressed, not to individuals, but to “the church of God which is at Corinth.” (1 Cor. 1:2). Paul reproves the Corinthians because in the Lord's Supper each ate without thought of others: “What, have ye not houses to eat and to drink in? or despise ye the church of God, and put them to shame that have not?” (11:22). Each member having appeased his hunger at home, the members of the church “come together to eat” (11:30), as the spiritual body of Christ. All this shows that the celebration of the Lord's Supper was not an appendage to every ordinary meal.

[pg 962]

In Acts 20:7—“upon the first day of the week, when we were gathered together to break bread, Paul discoursed with them”—the natural inference is that the Lord's Supper was a sacred rite, observed apart from any ordinary meal, and accompanied by religious instruction. Dr. Fox would go back of these later observances to the original command of our Lord. He would eliminate all that we do not find in Mark, the earliest gospel. But this would deprive us of the Sermon on the Mount, the parable of the Prodigal Son, and the discourses of the fourth gospel. McGiffert gives A. D. 52, as the date of Paul's first letter to the Corinthians, and this ante-dates Mark's gospel by at least thirteen years. Paul's account of the Lord's Supper at Corinth is therefore an earlier authority than Mark.

(f) The responsibility of seeing that the ordinance is properly administered rests with the church as a body; and the pastor is, in this matter, the proper representative and organ of the church. In cases of extreme exigency, however, as where the church has no pastor and no ordained minister can be secured, it is competent for the church to appoint one from its own number to administer the ordinance.

1 Cor. 11:2, 23—“Now I praise you that ye remember me in all things, and hold fast the traditions, even as I delivered them to you.... For I received of the Lord that which also I delivered unto you, that the Lord Jesus in the night in which he was betrayed took bread.” Here the responsibility of administering the Lord's Supper is laid upon the body of believers.

(g) The frequency with which the Lord's Supper is to be administered is not indicated either by the N. T. precept or by uniform N. T. example. We have instances both of its daily and of its weekly observance. With respect to this, as well as with respect to the accessories of the ordinance, the church is to exercise a sound discretion.

Acts 2:46—“And day by day, continuing stedfastly with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread at home[or perhaps, ‘in various worship-rooms’]”; 20:7—“And upon the first day of the week, when we were gathered together to break bread.” In 1878, thirty-nine churches of the Establishment in London held daily communion; in two churches it was held twice each day. A few churches of the Baptist faith in England and America celebrate the Lord's Supper on each Lord's day. Carlstadt would celebrate the Lord's Supper only in companies of twelve, and held also that every bishop must marry. Reclining on couches, and meeting in the evening, are not commanded; and both, by their inconvenience, might in modern times counteract the design of the ordinance.

3. The Symbolism of the Lord's Supper.

The Lord's Supper sets forth, in general, the death of Christ as the sustaining power of the believer's life.

A. Expansion of this statement.

(a) It symbolizes the death of Christ for our sins.

1 Cor. 11:26—“For as often as ye eat this bread, and drink the cup, ye proclaim the Lord's death till he come”; cf. Mark 14:24—“This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many”—the blood upon which the covenant between God and Christ, and so between God and us who are one with Christ, from eternity past was based. The Lord's Supper reminds us of the covenant which ensures our salvation, and of the atonement upon which the covenant was based; cf. Heb. 13:20—“blood of an eternal covenant.”

Alex. McLaren: “The suggestion of a violent death, implied in the doubling of the symbols, by which the body is separated from that of the blood, and still further implied in the breaking of the bread, is made prominent in the words in reference to the cup. It symbolizes the blood of Jesus which is ‘shed.’ That shed blood is covenant blood. By it the New Covenant, of which Jeremiah had prophesied, one article of which was, ‘Their sins and iniquities I will remember no more,’ is sealed and ratified, not for Israel only but for an indefinite ‘many,’ which is really equivalent to all. Could words more plainly declare that Christ's death was a sacrifice? Can we understand it, according to his own interpretation of it, unless we see in his words here a reference to his previous words (Mat. 20:28) and recognize that in shedding his blood [pg 963] ‘for many,’ he ‘gave his life a ransom for many’? The Lord's Supper is the standing witness, voiced by Jesus himself, that he regarded his death as the very centre of his work, and that he regarded it not merely as a martyrdom, but as a sacrifice by which he put away sins forever. Those who reject that view of that death are sorely puzzled what to make of the Lord's Supper.”

(b) It symbolizes our personal appropriation of the benefits of that death.

1 Cor. 11:24—“This is my body, which is for you”; cf. 1 Cor. 5:7—“Christ our passover is sacrificed for us”; or R. V.—“our passover also hath been sacrificed, even Christ”; here it is evident not only that the showing forth of the Lord's death is the primary meaning of the ordinance, but that our partaking of the benefits of that death is as clearly taught as the Israelites' deliverance was symbolized in the paschal supper.

(c) It symbolizes the method of this appropriation, through union with Christ himself.

1 Cor. 10:16—“The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not a communion of [marg.: ‘participation in’] the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not a communion of [marg.: ‘participation in’] the body of Christ?” Here “is it not a participation” = “does it not symbolize the participation?” So Mat. 26:26—“this is my body” = “this symbolizes my body.”

(d) It symbolizes the continuous dependence of the believer for all spiritual life upon the once crucified, now living, Savior, to whom he is thus united.

Cf. John 6:53—“Verily, verily, I say unto you, except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, ye have not life in yourselves”—here is a statement, not with regard to the Lord's Supper, but with regard to spiritual union with Christ, which the Lord's Supper only symbolizes; see page 965, (a). Like Baptism, the Lord's Supper presupposes and implies evangelical faith, especially faith in the Deity of Christ; not that all who partake of it realize its full meaning, but that this participation logically implies the five great truths of Christ's preëxistence, his supernatural birth, his vicarious atonement, his literal resurrection, and his living presence with his followers. Because Ralph Waldo Emerson perceived that the Lord's Supper implied Christ's omnipresence and deity, he would no longer celebrate it, and so broke with his church and with the ministry.

(e) It symbolizes the sanctification of the Christian through a spiritual reproduction in him of the death and resurrection of the Lord.

Rom. 8:10—“And if Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin; but the spirit is life because of righteousness”; Phil. 3:10—“that I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, becoming conformed unto his death; if by any means I may attain unto the resurrection from the dead.” The bread of life nourishes; but it transforms me, not I it.

(f) It symbolizes the consequent union of Christians in Christ, their head.

1 Cor. 10:17—“seeing that we, who are many, are one bread, one body: for we all partake of the one bread.” The Roman Catholic says that bread is the unity of many kernels, the wine the unity of many berries, and all are changed into the body of Christ. We can adopt the former part of the statement, without taking the latter. By being united to Christ, we become united to one another; and the Lord's Supper, as it symbolizes our common partaking of Christ, symbolizes also the consequent oneness of all in whom Christ dwells. Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, IX—“As this broken bread was scattered upon the mountains, and being gathered together became one, so may thy church be gathered together from the ends of the earth into thy kingdom.”

(g) It symbolizes the coming joy and perfection of the kingdom of God.

Luke 22:18—“for I say unto you, I shall not drink from henceforth of the fruit of the vine, until the kingdom of God shall come”; Mark 14:25—“Verily I say unto you, I will no more drink of the fruit of the vine, until that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God”; Mat. 26:29—“But I say unto you, I shall not drink henceforth of this fruit of the vine, until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father's kingdom.”

Like Baptism, which points forward to the resurrection, the Lord's Supper is anticipatory [pg 964]also. It brings before us, not simply death, but life; not simply past sacrifice, but future glory. It points forward to the great festival, “the marriage supper of the Lamb”(Rev. 19:9). Dorner: “Then Christ will keep the Supper anew with us, and the hours of highest solemnity in this life are but a weak foretaste of the powers of the world to come.” See Madison Avenue Lectures, 176-216; The Lord's Supper, a Clerical Symposium, by Pressensé, Luthardt, and English Divines.

B. Inferences from this statement.

(a) The connection between the Lord's Supper and Baptism consists in this, that they both and equally are symbols of the death of Christ. In Baptism, we show forth the death of Christ as the procuring cause of our new birth into the kingdom of God. In the Lord's Supper, we show forth the death of Christ as the sustaining power of our spiritual life after it has once begun. In the one, we honor the sanctifying power of the death of Christ, as in the other we honor its regenerating power. Thus both are parts of one whole,—setting before us Christ's death for men in its two great purposes and results.

If baptism symbolized purification only, there would be no point of connection between the two ordinances. Their common reference to the death of Christ binds the two together.

(b) The Lord's Supper is to be often repeated,—as symbolizing Christ's constant nourishment of the soul, whose new birth was signified in Baptism.

Yet too frequent repetition may induce superstitious confidence in the value of communion as a mere outward form.

(c) The Lord's Supper, like Baptism, is the symbol of a previous state of grace. It has in itself no regenerating and no sanctifying power, but is the symbol by which the relation of the believer to Christ, his sanctifier, is vividly expressed and strongly confirmed.

We derive more help from the Lord's Supper than from private prayer, simply because it is an external rite, impressing the sense as well as the intellect, celebrated in company with other believers whose faith and devotion help our own, and bringing before us the profoundest truths of Christianity—the death of Christ, and our union with Christ in that death.

(d) The blessing received from participation is therefore dependent upon, and proportioned to, the faith of the communicant.

In observing the Lord's Supper, we need to discern the body of the Lord (1 Cor. 11:29)—that is, to recognize the spiritual meaning of the ordinance, and the presence of Christ, who through his deputed representatives gives to us the emblems, and who nourishes and quickens our souls as these material things nourish and quicken the body. The faith which thus discerns Christ is the gift of the Holy Spirit.

(e) The Lord's Supper expresses primarily the fellowship of the believer, not with his brethren, but with Christ, his Lord.

The Lord's Supper, like Baptism, symbolizes fellowship with the brethren only as consequent upon, and incidental to, fellowship with Christ. Just as we are all baptized “into one body” (1 Cor. 12:13) only by being “baptized into Christ” (Rom. 6:3), so we commune with other believers in the Lord's Supper, only as we commune with Christ. Christ's words: “this do in remembrance of me” (1 Cor. 11:24), bid us think, not of our brethren, but of the Lord. Baptism is not a test of personal worthiness. Nor is the Lord's Supper a test of personal worthiness, either our own or that of others. It is not primarily an expression of Christian fellowship. Nowhere in the New Testament is it called a communion of Christians with one another. But it is called a communion of the body and blood of Christ (1 Cor. 10:16)—or, in other words, a participation in him. Hence there is not a single cup, but many: “divide it among yourselves” (Luke 22:17). Here is warrant for the individual [pg 965]communion-cup. Most churches use more than one cup: if more than one, why not many?

1 Cor. 11:26—“as often as ye eat ... ye proclaim the Lord's death”—the Lord's Supper is a teaching ordinance, and is to be observed, not simply for the good that comes to the communicant and to his brethren, but for the sake of the witness which it gives to the world that the Christ who died for its sins now lives for its salvation. A. H. Ballard, in The Standard, Aug. 18, 1900, on 1 Cor. 11:29—“eateth and drinketh judgment unto himself, if he discern not the body”—“He who eats and drinks, and does not discern that he is redeemed by the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all, eats and drinks a double condemnation, because he does not discern the redemption which is symbolized by the things which he eats and drinks. To turn his thought away from that sacrificial body to the company of disciples assembled is a grievous error—the error of all those who exalt the idea of fellowship or communion in the celebration of the ordinance.”

The offence of a Christian brother, therefore, even if committed against myself, should not prevent me from remembering Christ and communing with the Savior. I could not commune at all, if I had to vouch for the Christian character of all who sat with me. This does not excuse the church from effort to purge its membership from unworthy participants; it simply declares that the church's failure to do this does not absolve any single member of it from his obligation to observe the Lord's Supper. See Jacob, Eccl. Polity of N. T., 285.

4. Erroneous views of the Lord's Supper.

A. The Romanist view.

The Romanist view,—that the bread and wine are changed by priestly consecration into the very body and blood of Christ; that this consecration is a new offering of Christ's sacrifice; and that, by a physical partaking of the elements, the communicant receives saving grace from God. To this doctrine of “transubstantiation” we reply:

(a) It rests upon a false interpretation of Scripture. In Mat. 26:26, “this is my body” means: “this is a symbol of my body.” Since Christ was with the disciples in visible form at the institution of the Supper, he could not have intended them to recognize the bread as being his literal body. “The body of Christ is present in the bread, just as it had been in the passover lamb, of which the bread took the place” (John 6:53 contains no reference to the Lord's Supper, although it describes that spiritual union with Christ which the Supper symbolizes; cf. 63. In 1 Cor. 10:16, 17, κοινωίαν τοῦ σώματος τοῦ Χριστοῦ is a figurative expression for the spiritual partaking of Christ. In Mark 8:33, we are not to infer that Peter was actually “Satan,” nor does 1 Cor. 12:12 prove that we are all Christs. Cf. Gen. 41:26; 1 Cor. 10:4).

Mat. 26:28—“This is my blood ... which is poured out,” cannot be meant to be taken literally, since Christ's blood was not yet shed. Hence the Douay version (Roman Catholic), without warrant, changes the tense and reads, “which shall be shed.” At the institution of the Supper, it is not conceivable that Christ should hold his body in his own hands, and then break it to the disciples. There were not two bodies there. Zwingle: “The words of institution are not the mandatory ‘become’: they are only an explanation of the sign.” When I point to a picture and say: “This is George Washington,”I do not mean that the veritable body and blood of George Washington are before me. So when a teacher points to a map and says: “This is New York,” or when Jesus refers to John the Baptist, and says: “this is Elijah, that is to come” (Mat. 11:14). Jacob, The Lord's Supper, Historically Considered—“It originally marked, not a real presence, but a real absence, of Christ as the Son of God made man”—that is, a real absence of his body. Therefore the Supper, reminding us of his body, is to be observed in the church “till he come” (1 Cor. 11:26).

John 6:53—“Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, ye have not life in yourselves” must be interpreted by verse 63—“It is the spirit that giveth life; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I have spoken unto you are spirit, and are life.” 1 Cor. 10:16—“The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not a communion of [marg.: ‘participation in’] the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not a communion of [marg. [pg 966] ‘participation in’] the body of Christ?”—see Expositor's Greek Testament, in loco; Mark 8:33—“But he turning about, and seeing his disciples, rebuked Peter, and saith, Get thee behind me, Satan”; 1 Cor. 12:12—“For the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of the body, being many, are one body; so also is Christ.” cf. Gen. 41:26—“The seven good kine are seven years; and the seven good ears are seven years: the dream is one;” 1 Cor. 10:4—“they drank of a spiritual rock that followed them: and the rock was Christ.”

Queen Elizabeth: “Christ was the Word that spake it: He took the bread and brake it; And what that Word did make it, That I believe and take it.” Yes, we say; but what does the Lord make it? Not his body, but only a symbol of his body. Sir Thomas More went back to the doctrine of transubstantiation which the wisdom of his age was almost unanimous in rejecting. In his Utopia, written to earlier years, he had made deism the ideal religion. Extreme Romanism was his reaction from this former extreme. Bread and wine are mere remembrancers, as were the lamb and bitter herbs at the Passover. The partaker is spiritually affected by the bread and wine, only as was the pious Israelite in receiving the paschal symbols; see Norman Fox, Christ in the Daily Meal, 25, 42.

E. G. Robinson: “The greatest power in Romanism is its power of visible representation. Ritualism is only elaborate symbolism. It is interesting to remember that this prostration of the priest before the consecrated wafer is no part of even original Roman Catholicism.” Stanley, Life and Letters, 2:213—“The pope, when he celebrates the communion, always stands in exactly the opposite direction [to that of modern ritualists], not with his back but with his face to the people, no doubt following the primitive usage.” So in Raphael's picture of the Miracle of Bolsina, the priest is at the north end of the table, in the very attitude of a Protestant clergyman. Pfleiderer, Philos. Religion, 2:211—“The unity of the bread, of which each enjoys a part, represents the unity of the body of Christ, which consists in the community of believers. If we are to speak of a presence of the body of Christ in the Lord's Supper, that can only be thought of, in the sense of Paul, as pertaining to the mystical body, i. e., the Christian Community. Augustine and Zwingle, who have expressed most clearly this meaning of the Supper, have therefore caught quite correctly the sense of the Apostle.”

Norman Fox, Christ in the Daily Meal, 40-53—“The phrase ‘consecration of the elements’is unwarranted. The leaven and the mustard seed were in no way consecrated when Jesus pronounced them symbols of divine things. The bread and wine are not arbitrarily appointed remembrancers, they are remembrancers in their very nature. There is no change in them. So every other loaf is a symbol, as well as that used in the Supper. When St. Patrick held up the shamrock as the symbol of the Trinity, he meant that every such sprig was the same. Only the bread of the daily meal is Christ's body. Only the washing of dirty feet is the fulfilment of Christ's command. The loaf not eaten to satisfy hunger is not Christ's symbolic body at all.” Here we must part company with Dr. Fox. We grant the natural fitness of the elements for which he contends. But we hold also to a divine appointment of the bread and wine for a special and sacred use, even as the “bow in the cloud” (Gen. 9:13), because it was a natural emblem, was consecrated to a special religious use.

(b) It contradicts the evidence of the senses, as well as of all scientific tests that can be applied. If we cannot trust our senses as to the unchanged material qualities of bread and wine, we cannot trust them when they report to us the words of Christ.

Gibbon was rejoiced at the discovery that, while the real presence is attested by only a single sense—our sight [as employed in reading the words of Christ]—the real presence is disproved by three of our senses, sight, touch, and taste. It is not well to purchase faith in this dogma at the price of absolute scepticism. Stanley, on Baptism, in his Christian Institutions, tells us that, in the third and fourth centuries, the belief that the water of baptism was changed into the blood of Christ was nearly as firmly and widely fixed as the belief that the bread and wine of the communion were changed into his flesh and blood. Döllinger: “When I am told that I must swear to the truth of these doctrines [of papal infallibility and apostolic succession], my feeling is just as if I were asked to swear that two and two make five, and not four.” Teacher: “Why did Henry VIII quarrel with the pope?” Scholar: “Because the pope had commanded him to put away his wife on pain of transubstantiation.” The transubstantiation of Henry VIII is quite as rational as the transubstantiation of the bread and wine in the Eucharist.

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(c) It involves the denial of the completeness of Christ's past sacrifice, and the assumption that a human priest can repeat or add to the atonement made by Christ once for all (Heb. 9:28—ἅπαξ προσενεχθείς). The Lord's Supper is never called a sacrifice, nor are altars, priests, or consecrations ever spoken of, in the New Testament. The priests of the old dispensation are expressly contrasted with the ministers of the new. The former “ministered about sacred things,” i. e., performed sacred rites and waited at the altar; but the latter “preach the gospel” (1 Cor. 9:13, 14).

Heb. 9:28—“so Christ also, having been once offered”—here ἅπαξ means “once for all,” as in Jude 3—“the faith which was once for all delivered unto the saints”; 1 Cor. 9:13, 14—“Know ye not that they that minister about sacred things eat of the things of the temple, and they that wait upon the altar have their portion with the altar? Even so did the Lord ordain that they that proclaim the gospel should live of the gospel.” Romanism introduces a mediator between the soul and Christ, namely, bread and wine,—and the priest besides.

Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:680-687 (Syst. Doct., 4: 146-163)—“Christ is thought of as at a distance, and as represented only by the priest who offers anew his sacrifice. But Protestant doctrine holds to a perfect Christ, applying the benefits of the work which he long ago and once for all completed upon the cross.” Chillingworth: “Romanists hold that the validity of every sacrament but baptism depends upon its administration by a priest; and without priestly absolution there is no assurance of forgiveness. But the intention of the priest is essential in pronouncing absolution, and the intention of the bishop is essential in consecrating the priest. How can any human being know that these conditions are fulfilled?” In the New Testament, on the other hand, Christ appears as the only priest, and each human soul has direct access to him.

Norman Fox, Christ in the Daily Meal, 22—“The adherence of the first Christians to the Mosaic law makes it plain that they did not hold the doctrine of the modern Church of Rome that the bread of the Supper is a sacrifice, the table an altar, and the minister a priest. For the old altar, the old sacrifice, and the old priesthood still remained, and were still in their view appointed media of atonement with God. Of course they could not have believed in two altars, two priesthoods and two contemporaneous sets of sacrifices.” Christ is the only priest. A. A. Hodge, Popular Lectures, 257—“The three central dangerous errors of Romanism and Ritualism are: 1. the perpetuity of the apostolate; 2. the priestly character and offices of Christian ministers; 3. the sacramental principle, or the depending upon sacraments, as the essential, initial, and ordinary channels of grace.” “Hierarchy,” says another, “is an infraction of the divine order; it imposes the weight of an outworn symbolism on the true vitalities of the gospel; it is a remnant rent from the shroud of the dead past, to enwrap the limbs of the living present.”

(d) It destroys Christianity by externalizing it. Romanists make all other service a mere appendage to the communion. Physical and magical salvation is not Christianity, but is essential paganism.

Council of Trent, Session VII, On Sacraments in General, Canon IV: “If any one saith that the sacraments of the New Testament are not necessary to salvation, but are superfluous, and that without them, and without the desire thereof, men attain of God, through faith alone, the grace of justification; though all [the sacraments] are not indeed necessary for every individual: let him be anathema.” On Baptism, Canon IV: “If any one saith that the baptism which is even given by heretics in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, with the intention of doing what the church doth, is not true baptism, let him be anathema.” Baptism, in the Romanist system, is necessary to salvation: and baptism, even though administered by heretics, is an admission to the church. All baptized persons who, through no fault of their own, but from lack of knowledge or opportunity, are not connected outwardly with the true church, though they are apparently attached to some sect, yet in reality belong to the soul of the true church. Many belong merely to the body of the Catholic church, and are counted as its members, but do not belong to its soul. So says Archbishop Lynch, of Toronto; and Pius IX extended the doctrine of invincible ignorance, so as to cover the case of every dissentient from the church whose life shows faith working by love.

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Adoration of the Host (Latin hostia, victim) is a regular part of the service of the Mass. If the Romanist view were correct that the bread and wine were actually changed into the body and blood of Christ, we could not call this worship idolatry. Christ's body in the sepulchre could not have been a proper object of worship, but it was so after his resurrection, when it became animated with a new and divine life. The Romanist error is that of holding that the priest has power to transform the elements; the worship of them follows as a natural consequence, and is none the less idolatrous for being based upon the false assumption that the bread and wine are really Christ's body and blood.

The Roman Catholic system involves many absurdities, but the central absurdity is that of making religion a matter of machinery and outward manipulation. Dr. R. S. MacArthur calls sacramentalism “the pipe-line conception of grace.” There is no patent Romanist plumbing. Dean Stanley said that John Henry Newman “made immortality the consequence of frequent participation of the Holy Communion.” Even Faber made game of the notion, and declared that it “degraded celebrations to be so many breadfruit trees.” It is this transformation of the Lord's Supper into the Mass that turns the church into “the Church of the Intonement.” “Cardinal Gibbons,” it was once said, “makes his own God—the wafer.” His error is at the root of the super-sanctity and celibacy of the Romanist clergy, and President Garrett forgot this when he made out the pass on his railway for “Cardinal Gibbons and wife.” Dr. C. H. Parkhurst: “There is no more place for an altar in a Christian church than there is for a golden calf.” On the word “priest” in the N. T., see Gardiner, in O. T. Student, Nov. 1889:285-291; also Bowen, in Theol. Monthly, Nov. 1889:316-329. For the Romanist view, see Council of Trent, session XIII, canon III: per contra, see Calvin, Institutes, 2:585-602; C. Hebert, The Lord's Supper: History of Uninspired Teaching.

B. The Lutheran and High Church view.

The Lutheran and High Church view,—that the communicant, in partaking of the consecrated elements, eats the veritable body and drinks the veritable blood of Christ in and with the bread and wine, although the elements themselves do not cease to be material. To this doctrine of “consubstantiation” we object:

(a) That the view is not required by Scripture.—All the passages cited in its support may be better interpreted as referring to a partaking of the elements as symbols. If Christ's body be ubiquitous, as this theory holds, we partake of it at every meal, as really as at the Lord's Supper.

(b) That the view is inseparable from the general sacramental system of which it forms a part.—In imposing physical and material conditions of receiving Christ, it contradicts the doctrine of justification only by faith; changes the ordinance from a sign, into a means, of salvation; involves the necessity of a sacerdotal order for the sake of properly consecrating the elements; and logically tends to the Romanist conclusions of ritualism and idolatry.

(c) That it holds each communicant to be a partaker of Christ's veritable body and blood, whether he be a believer or not,—the result, in the absence of faith, being condemnation instead of salvation. Thus the whole character of the ordinance is changed from a festival occasion to one of mystery and fear, and the whole gospel method of salvation is obscured.

Encyc. Britannica, art.: Luther, 15:81—“Before the peasants' war, Luther regarded the sacrament as a secondary matter, compared with the right view of faith. In alarm at this war and at Carlstadt's mysticism, he determined to abide by the tradition of the church, and to alter as little as possible. He could not accept transubstantiation, and he sought a via media. Occam gave it to him. According to Occam, matter can be present in two ways, first, when it occupies a distinct place by itself, excluding every other body, as two stones mutually exclude each other; and, secondly, when it occupies the same space as another body at the same time. Everything which is omnipresent must occupy the same space as other things, else it could not be ubiquitous. Hence [pg 969]consubstantiation involved no miracle. Christ's body was in the bread and wine naturally, and was not brought into the elements by the priest. It brought a blessing, not because of Christ's presence, but because of God's promise that this particular presence of the body of Christ should bring blessings to the faithful partaker.”Broadus, Am. Com. on Mat., 529—“Luther does not say how Christ is in the bread and wine, but his followers have compared his presence to that of heat or magnetism in iron. But how then could this presence be in the bread and wine separately?”

For the view here combated, see Gerhard, x: 352—“The bread, apart from the sacrament instituted by Christ, is not the body of Christ, and therefore it is ἀρτολατρία (bread-worship) to adore the bread in these solemn processions” (of the Roman Catholic church). 397—“Faith does not belong to the substance of the Eucharist; hence it is not the faith of him who partakes that makes the bread a communication of the body of Christ; nor on account of unbelief in him who partakes does the bread cease to be a communication of the body of Christ.” See also Sadler, Church Doctrine, 124-199; Pusey, Tract No. 90, of the Tractarian Series; Wilberforce, New Birth; Nevins, Mystical Presence.

Per contra, see Calvin, Institutes, 2:525-584; G. P. Fisher, in Independent, May 1, 1884—“Calvin differed from Luther, in holding that Christ is received only by the believer. He differed from Zwingle, in holding that Christ is truly, though spiritually, received.”See also E. G. Robinson, in Baptist Quarterly, 1869:85-109; Rogers, Priests and Sacraments. Consubstantiation accounts for the doctrine of apostolic succession and for the universal ritualism of the Lutheran Church. Bowing at the name of Jesus, however, is not, as has been sometimes maintained, a relic of the papal worship of the Real Presence, but is rather a reminiscence of the fourth century, when controversies about the person of Christ rendered orthodox Christians peculiarly anxious to recognize Christ's deity.

“There is no ‘corner’ in divine grace” (C. H. Parkhurst). “All notions of a needed ‘priesthood,’ to bring us into connection with Christ, must yield to the truth that Christ is ever with us” (E. G. Robinson). “The priest was the conservative, the prophet the progressive. Hence the conflict between them. Episcopalians like the idea of a priesthood, but do not know what to do with that of prophet.” Dr. A. J. Gordon: “Ritualism, like eczema in the human body, is generally a symptom of a low state of the blood. As a rule, when the church becomes secularized, it becomes ritualized, while great revivals, pouring through the church, have almost always burst the liturgical bands and have restored it to the freedom of the Spirit.”

Puseyism, as defined by Pusey himself, means: “1. high thoughts of the two sacraments; 2. high estimate of Episcopacy as God's ordinance; 3. high estimate of the visible church as the body wherein we are made and continue to be members of Christ; 4. regard for ordinances as directing our devotions and disciplining us, such as daily public prayers, fasts and feasts; 5. regard for the visible part of devotion, such as the decoration of the house of God, which acts insensibly on the mind; 6. reverence for and deference to the ancient church, instead of the reformers, as the ultimate expounder of the meaning of our church.” Pusey declared that he and Maurice worshiped different Gods.

5. Prerequisites to Participation in the Lord's Supper.

A. There are prerequisites.

This we argue from the fact:

(a) That Christ enjoined the celebration of the Supper, not upon the world at large, but only upon his disciples; (b) that the apostolic injunctions to Christians, to separate themselves from certain of their number, imply a limitation of the Lord's Supper to a narrower body, even among professed believers; (c) that the analogy of Baptism, as belonging only to a specified class of persons, leads us to believe that the same is true of the Lord's Supper.

The analogy of Baptism to the Lord's Supper suggests a general survey of the connections between the two ordinances: 1. Both ordinances symbolize primarily the death of Christ; then secondarily our spiritual death to sin because we are one with him; it being absurd, where there is no such union, to make our Baptism the symbol of his death. 2. We are merged in Christ first in Baptism; then in the Supper Christ is more and more taken into us; Baptism = we in Christ, the Supper = Christ in us. [pg 970]3. As regeneration is instantaneous and sanctification continues in time, so Baptism should be for once, the Lord's Supper often; the first single, the second frequent. 4. If one ordinance, the Supper, requires discernment of the Lord's body, so does the other, the ordinance of Baptism; the subject of Baptism should know the meaning of his act. 5. The order of the ordinances teaches Christian doctrine, as the ordinances do; to partake of the Lord's Supper before being baptized is to say in symbol that one can be sanctified without being regenerated. 6. Both ordinances should be public, as both “show forth” the Lord's death and are teaching ordinances; no celebration of either one is to be permitted in private. 7. In both the administrator does not act at his own option, but is the organ of the church; Philip acts as organ of the church at Jerusalem when he baptizes the eunuch. 8. The ordinances stand by themselves, and are not to be made appendages of other meetings or celebrations; they belong, not to associations or conventions, but to the local church. 9. The Lord's Supper needs scrutiny of the communicant's qualifications as much as Baptism; and only the local church is the proper judge of these qualifications. 10. We may deny the Lord's Supper to one whom we know to be a Christian, when he walks disorderly or disseminates false doctrine, just as we may deny Baptism to such a person. 11. Fencing the tables, or warning the unqualified not to partake of the Supper, may, like instruction with regard to Baptism, best take place before the actual administration of the ordinance; and the pastor is not a special policeman or detective to ferret out offences. See Expositor's Greek Testament on 1 Cor. 10:1-6.

B. The prerequisites are those only which are expressly or implicitly laid down by Christ and his apostles.

(a) The church, as possessing executive but not legislative power, is charged with the duty, not of framing rules for the administering and guarding of the ordinance, but of discovering and applying the rules given it in the New Testament. No church has a right to establish any terms of communion; it is responsible only for making known the terms established by Christ and his apostles. (b) These terms, however, are to be ascertained not only from the injunctions, but also from the precedents, of the New Testament. Since the apostles were inspired, New Testament precedent is the “common law” of the church.

English law consists mainly of precedent, that is, past decisions of the courts. Immemorial customs may be as binding as are the formal enactments of a legislature. It is New Testament precedent that makes obligatory the observance of the first day, instead of the seventh day, of the week. The common law of the church consists, however, not of any and all customs, but only of the customs of the apostolic church interpreted in the light of its principles, or the customs universally binding because sanctioned by inspired apostles. Has New Testament precedent the authority of a divine command? Only so far, we reply, as it is an adequate, complete and final expression of the divine life in Christ. This we claim for the ordinances of Baptism and of the Lord's Supper, and for the order of these ordinances. See Proceedings of the Baptist Congress, 1896:23.

The Mennonites, thinking to reproduce even the incidental phases of N. T. action, have adopted: 1. the washing of feet; 2. the marriage only of members of the same faith; 3. non-resistance to violence; 4. the use of the ban, and the shunning of expelled persons; 5. refusal to take oaths; 6. the kiss of peace; 7. formal examination of the spiritual condition of each communicant before his participation in the Lord's Supper; 8. the choice of officials by lot. And they naturally break up into twelve sects, dividing upon such points as holding all things in common; plainness of dress, one sect repudiating buttons and using only hooks upon their clothing, whence their nickname of Hookers; the holding of services in private houses only; the asserted possession of the gift of prophecy (A. S. Carman).

C. On examining the New Testament, we find that the prerequisites to participation in the Lord's Supper are four.

[pg 971]

First,—Regeneration.

The Lord's Supper is the outward expression of a life in the believer, nourished and sustained by the life of Christ. It cannot therefore be partaken of by one who is “dead through ... trespasses and sins.” We give no food to a corpse. The Lord's Supper was never offered by the apostles to unbelievers. On the contrary, the injunction that each communicant “examine himself” implies that faith which will enable the communicant to “discern the Lord's body” is a prerequisite to participation.

1 Cor. 11:27-29—“Wherefore whosoever shall eat the bread or drink the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner, shall be guilty of the body and the blood of the Lord. But let a man prove himself, and so let him eat of the bread, and drink of the cup. For he that eateth and drinketh, eateth and drinketh judgment unto himself, if he discern not the Lord's body.” Schaff, in his Church History, 2:517, tells us that in the Greek Church, in the seventh and eighth centuries, the bread was dipped in the wine, and both elements were delivered in a spoon. See Edwards, on Qualifications for Full Communion, in Works, 1:81.

Secondly,—Baptism.

In proof that baptism is a prerequisite to the Lord's Supper, we urge the following considerations:

(a) The ordinance of baptism was instituted and administered long before the Supper.

Mat. 21:25—“The baptism of John, whence was it? from heaven or from men?”—Christ here intimates that John's baptism had been instituted by God before his own.

(b) The apostles who first celebrated it had, in all probability, been baptized.

Acts 1:21, 22—“Of the men therefore that have companied with us all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and went out among us, beginning from the baptism of John ... of these must one become a witness with us of his resurrection”; 19:4—“John baptized with the baptism of repentance, saying unto the people that they should believe on him that should come after him, that is, on Jesus.”

Several of the apostles were certainly disciples of John. If Christ was baptized, much more his disciples. Jesus recognized John's baptism as obligatory, and it is not probable that he would take his apostles from among those who had not submitted to it. John the Baptist himself, the first administrator of baptism, must have been himself unbaptized. But the twelve could fitly administer it, because they had themselves received it at John's hands. See Arnold, Terms of Communion, 17.

(c) The command of Christ fixes the place of baptism as first in order after discipleship.

Mat. 28:19, 20—“Go ye therefore, and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit: teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I commanded you”—here the first duty is to make disciples, the second to baptize, the third to instruct in right Christian living. Is it said that there is no formal command to admit only baptized persons to the Lord's Supper? We reply that there is no formal command to admit only regenerate persons to baptism. In both cases, the practice of the apostles and the general connections of Christian doctrine are sufficient to determine our duty.