extent of obedience as is evidently within his power of performance.

To illustrate this matter farther, C has two sons, M and N, to whom, when dying, he leaves injunctions which become inapplicable to their future circumstances. M, seeing he cannot carry out his father's intentions to their entire extent, does not concern himself at all about obeying them. N carefully fulfils the intentions of his parent to the fullest extent that his circumstances will admit. Which of the two did the will of the father?

It will not be difficult to perceive the application of these principles to the subject before us, and they show how a rigorous interpretation of the divine will often defeats its own intention, and produces even a more deficient and dubious obedience than would have resulted from a more lenient and merciful view of the matter.

While I would, without hesitation, affirm the position taken by the ancient church in this particular, I would not, however, be considered as doing it merely upon authority, but because there appears to exist on that side a decided preponderance of scriptural fact, principle, and evidence. Yet, if this was a question that could be settled in this manner, I should consider that authority as superior in value to any human source of sanction now existing. Yet I would not hesitate to affirm, even with respect

to

the earliest manifestations of Christian practice subsequent to the Apostolic age, "If they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them."

I would found another argument in favour of the position here assumed on the merciful, considerate, and benevolent nature of Christianity. Nothing can be more opposed to its nature and teaching than a rigorous severity of proceeding, exerted in utter disregard of nature and appli

is this severity to be commended when exercised towards human nature in its last stage of sorrow, and weakness, and pain. The moral influence of such a course must be against our principle, I would here illustrate by a fact communicated to me by a Baptist minister some time ago.

A female, who had attended, for some time, the ministry of a highly respected pastor of that denomination, was taken ill, and during her illness was regularly visited by the minister, who professed the most perfect conviction of the reality of her repentance and faith in Christ Her weakness was such as to render her immersion impracticable; consequently she was not baptized-was not received into the church-received not the symbols of the Lord's body and blood. She died an alien, cut off from the society of the faithful. Such an event would not have taken place, under the circumstances, during the first three centuries, in any Christian church under heaven. Never did David, the king, evince a more profound discretion than when he said, "Let me fall into the hand of the Lord, (for his mercies are great) but not into the hand of man.”

In conclusion, I would briefly notice an objection likely to be taken against the views here advocated, viz. that it is necessary to guard in the strictest manner the divine institutions from innovations, and to transmit them to succeeding ages, in the same degree of purity that we have received them. On this we remark—

1. That the greatest danger of the church has not been the tendency to depreciate external rites. Immersion continued the practice of the whole Christian world for 1300 years; in England, and in some other places to the end of the sixteenth century, and in the East to the present day.

2. It may be doubted whether the

not require impossibilities, will be freely admitted by all who love and fear him; but that he will approve of our substituting something in the place of that which he has appointed for a particular purpose, we do not believe. "God is not mocked." As

to the practice in the primitive church, as far back as the days of the Apostles, if it be not found in the New Testament it cannot be received; for systems of iniquity were even then in existence, there being many false prophets both in the church and in the world. The Saviour, when on earth, was Lord of the Jewish Sabbath. He did not come to restore a dispensation, the rites of which had all been sinned away-so much so, that when he appeared among his own people, "there was none righteous, no, not one." John the Baptist had the honor of preparing a people for the Lord.

In the quotation referred to, Luke xiii. 10-17, xiv. 1-11, Jesus is not alluding to the law regulating the Sabbath, but to the hypocrisy of those who kept not the law, (John vii. 19) but who sought to kill Jesus because he had mercifully delivered poor suffering humanity from affliction and disease on the Sabbath day. "Beware,” said he, “ of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy." It is lawful to do good works, although not lawful to labour for the promotion of self-interest on the Sabbath day.

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We Te are, in the next place, referred to the conduct of David and those that were with him, 1 Saml. xxi. 3-6, Matt. xii. 1-8, Mark ii. 26. Our readers should ever remember, that neither angels nor men, nor the Son of God himself, could either act or speak so as to please a Pharisee, unless, indeed, it were to praise his deceit and hypocrisy, concealed beneath the garb of superior sanctity and benevolence. We are informed that David-who was a man after God's own heart, especially in reference to positive institutions-when he was

an hungered, went into the house of God, and eat the shewbread, which was not lawful except for the priest only, &c. For the information of some of our younger brethren, we may observe, that the shew-bread consisted of twelve distinct loaves—a loaf for each tribe in Israel, to stand upon the table before the mercy-seat continually : these were to be reremoved every Sabbath, each loaf separately, and the vacant place immediately supplied, that there might be twelve loaves constantly before the Lord. Five loaves of this bread, on being thus removed, were presented by the priests to David, who, although a prophet, was then in destitute circumstances: these loaves he took and eat, as did the men who were with him. It was an act of humanity on the part of the priests; and David, by the Saviour, is pronounced blameless. Now in this transaction, there is no substitution of that which is human in place of that which is divine. Whether the priest Abimelech were entirely innocent on this occasion, we shall not determine. He and his associates appear to have been unworthy of their office, or the Lord would not have permitted eighty-five priests, with their wives, children, sucklings, and oxen, asses, and sheep, all to have been slain with the edge of the sword. The end of this tragedy was appalling. Had David and his men taken the shew-bread and the sword of Goliath without the consent of the priests, no doubt he would then have been guilty and the priests innocent. God is a jealous God, nor will he give his glory to another. Should parties, under the gospel dispensation, reject the Lord's one immersion in water, in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, until by reason of affliction they are unable to attend to it, we should be sorry to hear of any of the brethren sprinkling or pouring water upon them in the name of the Lord, and designating it by the application of the Lord's one baptism.

let us hear from him again at his earliest convenience. J. W.

INFANT

can relax the obligation of positive institutions, when clearly apprehended by the mind of man-much less justify the substitution of human institutions in place of them.

The next illustration presented to us is that of a father, when dying, making a will, or giving instructions, which his two sons could not carry out. One of the sons disregards altogether the injunctions of his father, while the other fiulfils them to the best of his ability. Now in this case the blame does not rest with the sons, but with the ignorance, or want of explicitness on the part of the father. This illustration, then, cannot be applied to any of the injunctions of our Father who is in heaven, who is infinitely wise and perfect in all his commands to the children of men.

As to death-bed repentances, of which so much is said and written in the present day—and the prevalent belief of which is a great source of disobedience and infidelity-there is not to be found in the New Testament a single reference to them from the day of Pentecost to the death of John the beloved Apostle. There is the most profound silence regarding deathbed repentance. The Apostles were commanded to preach the obedience of faith among all nations: not to proclaim faith, but facts-a perception of which called faith into being, and the obedience of which brought peace and pardon to the guilty.

Our friend J. H. will, we doubt not, excuse these observations, and

Now, permit me to ask, most courteously, what work is there to perform in the Church of Christ that makes infants" necessary?" Will some pedo-baptist answer this question? But the Apostle does not drop the subject here. He goes so far as to show positively that such a thing as infant church-membership, under the new covenant, had not been thought of. He adds, "that there should be no schism in the body, but that the members should have the same care one for another. And whether one member suffer, all the members suffer with it; or one member be honoured, all the members rejoice with it (v. 26.)

If

Could infants of a few weeks old weep with those that weep, and rejoice with those that rejoice? they could, they certainly must have been a more intelligent race of infants than we are in the habit of raising in this country!

Let us now turn to the Acts of the Apostles, where churches were formed and established, and see if infants were included as members. At the death of Ananias and Sapphira, we are informed that "great fear came upon ALL the church," (Acts v. 11.) What! Infants alarmed on account of this retribution? They must have been, were they members of the church. But the more reasonable view of the subject, doubtless, is, that they had not yet been introduced, as it was so near the commencement of

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this new order of things. Let us, therefore, follow the Apostles on till they get fairly into operation. (Read Acts xv. 22.) "Then pleased it the Apostles and Elders, with the WHOLE CHURCH, to send chosen men of their own company to Antioch, with Paul and Barnabas."

From this we learn that there are no infants in the church yet, notwithstanding the Apostles had been actively engaged introducing members for about nineteen years!

Let us now return, and examine still farther the doctrine of baptism as a substitute for circumcision. And first we would beg permission to ask, is it not a most remarkable circumstance, if the Apostles believed and taught that baptism came in the room of circumcision, that in all their controversies about the propriety of continuing the rite of circumcision, they never once thought of adducing this most overwhelming argument an argument, by the bye, which must, in the very nature of the case, have settled that much-disputed question for ever! When that committee was sent up to Jerusalem to deliberate upon the important question whether it was necessary for the Gentile converts to be circumcised, as some persons had been teaching; and when all the Apostles had met in solemn council to investigate and decide that very question, why did they not settle the controversy by informing the committee that baptism filled the place of circumcision, and answered precisely the same purpose, if they believed such to be the fact, without so much argumentation as we are informed they had on that occasion? The fact that they did not thus decide (which could have been done at a single sentence), is the most incontrovertible proof that the Apostles knew nothing about this doctrine of baptism coming in the room of circumcision, and hence that it must be a discovery of later date! This one difficulty, as we consider,

can never be successfully disposed of. Peter decides that circumcision was a yoke grievous to be borne; and if baptism came in the room of circumcision, to fill the same office, and effect the same object, as pedo-baptists contend, then it is precisely the same "yoke of bondage which neither we nor our fathers were able to bear," (Acts xv. 10.) Paul warns us against being "entangled in the yoke of bondage" (Gal. v. 1); and yet pedobaptists, heedless of the admonition, are running themselves into serious difficulties. From the foregoing arguments, they must see that they are becoming seriously "entangled."

If circumcision and baptism are both seals of the same covenant, then why were the Jews, who had been legally circumcised, called upon to be baptized before they could be admitted into the same covenant to which they were justly entitled by circumcision?

If they were both seals of the same covenant, both answering the same purpose, and both appointed for the same design, then where would be the illegality of baptizing twice, since it was legal to baptize those who had received precisely the same thing in circumcision? Those, then, who have the least scruple relative to their infant baptism, and would, as numbers have said, be baptized again were it not for that, need not hesitate a moment, as the doctrine of baptism, being an exact substitute for circumcision, justifies them, and clearly proves it to be legal for a person to be baptized in infancy, and re-baptized again as soon as he gets old enough to believe and choose for himself.

But why is it that pedo-baptists go to the law of Moses and to circumcision to learn who are suitable members of the Christian church? Suppose a question should arise, whether an Indian had a right to vote at our presidential election, and I affirm that he has. Well, to prove my