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of spiritual perception, by which God reveals visions unto them, are sometimes said to be "in the Spirit." Thus John was "carried away in the Spirit" into the wilderness, and to a high mountain. Rev. xvii, 3; ii, 10. He saw a door opened in heaven," and "immediately I was in the Spirit," or in a state of spiritual perception. But this is no sanctifying operation of the Spirit, and no prototype of water baptism. No more are "walking in the Spirit," "dwelling in God," baptismal images. They refer, not to the process of God's dispensing his Spirit, but to our walking and living in accordance with the dictates of that Spirit. And how do these expressions obviate the argument drawn from the visible baptismal dove and tongues of fire?

We have gone through the great subject of real baptism; but before taking up the subject of the symbolical, we may show the all-controlling force of the argument drawn from the former over the latter baptism.

cons.

1. We settle the Biblical, ritual use of the word. If the high grounds asserted by immersionists in regard to the sense of ẞаTTI, in the classics and lexicons, were sustainable, yet one instance of plain impossibility of its meaning immerse, will prove it to belong to that numerous class of words, in which the transfer to Christian instituThe tions has changed the meaning from its classic use. pulpit is hardly the place for verbal criticism; and, happily, upon this subject God has not left the unlearned brother at the mercy of heathen poets and learned lexiThe Bible is its own dictionary; the Spirit is his own interpreter. He has made the thing visible-so visible, that he that hath eyes to see may see. Logicians tell us that the best, nay, the only real definition of a word, is to point to the object and apply the name. Point to a lamp, and say, "I call that a lamp," and the word is incontrovertibly defined. Point to a man moving along your streets, and say, "I call that walking," and the definition is complete. Now God has thus defined the word in question. He poured out upon his Son, visibly and really -it was pouring, and it was not immersion-and he called it baptism. He poured out the tongue of fire upon the disciples, visibly and really-it was pouring, and it was not immersion—and he called it baptism. Now it makes

no difference in the mode, what the element is.

Whether

water or fire, oil or vapor, matter or spirit, if in one case baptism does not necessarily mean immersion, it need not in another. But we do more than settle the extension of the term; for,

2. We fix the form of the symbol. A formal symbol must, by its very form, express its reality. Otherwise it is no symbol at all. The very purpose of a visible formal symbol is, to represent to the human mind an idea of some inseen reality. If it does not do this, it is no symbol, but an arbitrary mummery. Now God has twice made that reality visible. But the picture must conform to the original, or it is no picture; the copy, to be a copy, must correspond to the pattern. "See that thou make all things according to the pattern shown to thee in the mount." And what was the pattern "shown thee" at the Pentecost, and at the river, where God himself baptized? With God's word in my hand, and against an opposing world, I were forced to reiterate, "It was pouring, and it was not immersion." This is the way Christ baptizeth; and the Christian may well answer, when told that pouring is not baptism, "This is the way my God baptized me, and this is the way my minister shall."

And this argument remains the same, should we even concede that the application of the term baptism to the spiritual affusion is figurative. The things must conform, whatever you do with the name. The symbolical thing must be the picture of the real thing.

3. We secure one great law of interpretation. As the spiritual process is called baptism, and that baptism is by affusion, and in both name and form is the type of water baptism, so, in all cases of water baptism, the meaning of the term, and the conception of the process, must, in accordance with the type, be affusion. We have a perfect right to say that, ritually, baptism means, and would correctly, in every case, be translated, affusion. To ask, in any passage of Scripture, whether the baptism is by affusion or immersion, is to ask whether the affusion is by affusion or immersion.

SERMON XXIX.

The Double Baptism-Symbolical Baptism.

BY REV. DANIEL D. WHEDON, D. D.,

PROFESSOR OF LOGIC IN THE MICHIGAN UNIVERSITY.

"I indeed baptize you with water, but he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost."-Mark i, 8.

II. SYMBOLICAL BAPTISM.

WE divide this part of our subject into two parts, namely, baptisms in the Old Testament and baptisms in the New. I. BAPTISMS IN THE OLD TESTAMENT.

We have here to prove, first, that there were various personal baptisms imposed by Moses; and, second, that none of these were by immersion.

1. There were various baptisms imposed by Moses, and those so called were personal.

St. Paul tells us, that the Mosaic ritual" stood in meats, and drinks, and divers baptisms, (Greek, diapopois Banтioμоis,) and carnal ordinances, imposed on them until the time of reformation," under Christ. There were divers or various baptisms then under the old dispensation. These baptisms were personal, as may be shown,

(1.) From a correct translation of the passage. Professor Stuart's is as follows: "Meats, and drinks, and divers washings-ordinances pertaining to the flesh." This means that the meats, drinks, and baptisms, were all included, as ordinances pertaining to the flesh or body. The baptisms were, therefore, personal. (2.) From the apostle's argument. He contrasts the efficacy of the blood of Christ, conceptually applied to the person, with the inefficacy of these various baptisms visibly applied to the person, in purifying the conscience. (3.) Immersions there were of cups, &c.; but these were not for the purpose of cleansing the conscience, but to render those things fit for the use of the clean person. These, therefore, could not have been contrasted with the blood of Christ, nor included in the various baptisms. Those baptisms were, therefore, purely personal.

2. These "various baptisms," then, were "IMPOSED;" and they were personal: we must now walk through the Old Testament, and show that none of the personal baptisms were immersion.

We prepare the way, by one sweeping affirmation, that the Hebrew word for immerse is not once used in the commands which impose the modes of these "various baptisms." The English words are, sprinkle, wash, bathe, neither of which imposed the specific mode, immersion. If, in performing the command, the will-worship of the Jew selected that mode, it was the Jew who chose, not God who "imposed," the mode. Washing, when its purpose is, not physical, but symbolical cleanness, requires not totality. The word rendered bathe simply signifies to wash. Even with the bad rendering, "bathe," a false idea will not be received by those who are aware, that in the East bathing is performed, not by immersion, but by affusion.* We specify some of these "various baptisms," "imposed " by Moses.

There was the baptism of the PRIESTS, (Ex. xxix, 4,) expressive of peculiar sanctity. At the door of the tabernacle of the congregation, Moses was to wash with water, and sprinkle, with blood and oil, Aaron and his sons.

There was the baptism of the LEVITES. He was to "sprinkle water of purifying upon them-and let them wash their clothes, and so make themselves clean."

There was the baptism of the LEPERS. The priest was to make a brush of cedar and hyssop, tied with a scarlet thread, and, dipping the brush into the blood of a slain bird, sprinkle it upon the leper seven times.

There was the water of separation, or PURIFICATION, after the preparing of which "the priest shall wash his clothes and shall bathe himself in water." "The purifying of the Jews" was performed (John ii, 6) with waterpots containing six or eight gallons.

Whoever

There was the cleansing from a dead man. touched a corpse was unclean, and if he did not purify himself, was to be cut off, "because the water of purification was not SPRINKLED upon him." To this the word baptizo is expressly applied in the Greek of the Apocrypha.

*See Bush's Scripture Illustrations, p. 473.

There was the baptism of ALL the people. When Moses had spoken every precept to all the people, according to the law, he took the blood of calves and of goats, with water, and scarlet wool, and hyssop, and sprinkled both the book and all the people. (Was not similar John's baptism of "ALL JUDEA?")

Such were the "various baptisms imposed" by the Mosaic law. None of them were immersion. If the Jews made immersion of them, it would be an insult to inspiration to suppose, that St. Paul should inaccurately represent the practices of men as "imposed" by God. But it is difficult to believe that in the arid desert, in which, for forty years, the Israelites wandered, where, at the present day, the Mohammedan Arab rubs sand for water upon his body, as his sacred ablution, they could have expended water in voluntary religious immersions. We have thus upon this question swept the Old Testament clear; there were various baptisms, but no immersion.

Let not the importance of Old Testament baptism, nor its identity with that of the New, be undervalued. The one great purpose of all religion, pervading the whole system of revelation, the cleansing and renewing man's depraved nature, by the dispensation of God's Spirit from on high, is the one great idea which the entire system of water lustrations in both Testaments represents. The complexity of a former dispensation required that they should be various; the simplicity of the new condensed them down to one, and that one to occupy the initiatory place of abolished circumcision.

In the four hundred years between the Old Testament and the New, the Jewish rabbis invented the baptism of converts to the faith; and that baptism was expressed by the Hebrew word for immersion, and doubtless by the unchanged classic BаTTIw. Forty years before Christ, at least, proselyte immersion was a topic of debate in the Hebrew schools. We have then, in this interval, placed, side by side, the divine institution of affusion and sprinkling, and the human invention of convert immersion. If immersion is true, Jesus Christ, the great denouncer of human traditions, added to the divine, did reject the divine, and adopt into his own system one of those very traditions, namely, convert immersion. Omitting those modes