Bertha and Her Baptism Part 2

She lifted her white ap.r.o.n to her eyes, while Mrs. Ford said for her:

"I tell Janette that I gave her up to G.o.d in baptism; and when her father lay sick, he said, 'That child was given to G.o.d in his house; I leave her dest.i.tute, and with nothing but her hands, but I leave her to a covenant-keeping G.o.d.'"

"Now," said I, "here is a dear daughter going to a strange place to learn a trade. She knows not a soul in the place but the foreman who has hired her. A boy is going to college, another to sea, another to a distant city. Here is a daughter, who receives particular attentions from certain young friends, and the probability is that she will be asked in marriage; and here is a son, who with his parents are in doubt with regard to his future occupation and course of life. G.o.d only knows the feelings of parents at such times. What prayers are made in secret,--what vows! One wrong step may embitter life. A right step may lead to prosperity and great happiness. I sometimes wish that we could gather our children together, in some of these emergencies and critical periods of their lives, and offer up prayers and vows, as parents and friends, in their behalf. There would not be many meetings more interesting than these, Mr. Benson. How the parents of such children would love everybody that came at such times to pray for their children; and what prayers would go up to G.o.d!"

"Can we not have some such meetings?" said Mr. Benson. "Every parent would like it, I am sure."

_Pastor._ Well, we do have some such meetings occasionally, I remember.

"Our minister loves to use parables," said Mrs. Benson, looking at your mother, "so as to make us understand the meaning better, and remember it."

"I must ask you to explain," said Mr. Benson.

_Pastor._ As often as we bring a child to the house of G.o.d for baptism, Mr. Benson, we have such a meeting, if Christians will but understand it so. We come with the parents, and say, "Lord G.o.d, here is this dear child, with a momentous history pending upon thy favor and blessing. In all future time, in the critical moments and eventful steps of its life, or in its early death, or in its orphanage, be thou a G.o.d to this child." If G.o.d should to-night, Mrs. Ford, say to you, "I will be Janette's G.o.d," would you not send her away with a light heart?

"He should have her for life, dear child!" said she; "and I do feel that he is a G.o.d to her."

"He is," said I, "if you have really made a covenant with him about your daughter."

"I have, sir," said Mrs. Ford.

_Pastor._ Did the covenant have any seal? Some good people, you know, think it enough to covenant with G.o.d about their children, without using any special act to mark and seal it. Now it is only in consecrating children to G.o.d that they omit the seal from the covenant. We practise adult baptism, joining the church, confirmation, and we partake of the Lord's Supper, feeling the propriety and the use of acts and testimonies in the form of an ordinance. What seal had your covenanting with G.o.d about your child?

_Mrs. Ford._ I see it now clearer than ever. As we stood with this child in our arms, we both said, afterwards, we made a public profession of religion anew; and, when the minister said those sacred names over her, I felt more than before that I was having transactions with G.o.d about the child. But people used to say to me, "Why not wait and let Janette be baptized when she is old enough to understand it?" How little they knew about it! Just as though, I told them, if I had money to put into the savings-bank for Janette, I would wait and let her put it in herself (it is so pleasant to put it in when you know all about it!), instead of laying it up for her in the funds, and let it count up while she is growing.

_Pastor._ Those friends who advised you so, think, perhaps, too much of the ceremony itself, and not so much of what it signifies. Now the pleasure of being baptized is nothing compared with having G.o.d enter into a covenant in your behalf when you knew nothing about it.

_Mrs. Ford._ They said to me, also, "What right have you to do it, instead of letting her have the choice and privilege of doing it herself hereafter?" I told them that, if we acted on that principle, in the treatment of our children, there would be a long list of useful things, which we do for them, to be postponed.

_Pastor._ We can benefit another without his consent. The question is, whether it is a benefit to a child for G.o.d and its natural guardians to make a covenant together in its behalf.

_Mr. Benson._ It surely is so, if G.o.d truly is a party to such a covenant. But where is the proof that he is? That is my trouble. They tell me that this covenanting with G.o.d for a child, and sealing it with an ordinance, ceased with Abraham, who was a Jew; that it was a Jewish custom, which died out.

_Pastor._ Abraham a mere Jew! G.o.d's covenant with a believer and his children a Jewish covenant! Never was there a greater mistake. Paul tells us expressly it was not so. Get me a Bible, Helen, and bring me a lamp. I read these words: "And the promise that he should be heir of the world was not to Abraham and his seed through the law, but through the righteousness of faith." His relation to the world was independent of dispensations; it grew out of that faith which he had in common with all believers to the end of time. "And he received the sign of circ.u.mcision, a seal of the righteousness of the faith which he had yet being uncirc.u.mcised, that he might be the father of all them that believe, though they be not circ.u.mcised." Christ also says: "Moses, therefore, gave unto you circ.u.mcision; (not because it is of Moses, but of the fathers.)" Abraham was not a Jew when G.o.d covenanted with him, any more than you, madam, were Mrs. Ford, when, at the age of sixteen, as you have told me, you entered into covenant with G.o.d. That covenant had chief respect to your immortal soul, and yet it reached in its influences to all the conditions of that soul while here in the flesh.

So G.o.d covenanted with Abraham as a believer, not as a mere national ancestor; yet temporal and spiritual blessings came in rich measures upon his immediate descendants. But we read, "So then as many as be of faith are blessed with faithful," that is, believing, "Abraham." "And if ye be Christ's, then are ye Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise." Can anything be plainer than this?

_Mrs. Ford._ My father was a minister, you know, sir, and he used to preach a great deal on this subject.

_Pastor._ Let us hear your understanding of these pa.s.sages, Mrs. Ford.

"I am afraid," said she, "I cannot tell you just what he used to say.

But my idea of it is this: Though Abraham was the founder of the Hebrew people, he was no more a Jew than a Gentile in his covenant with G.o.d, for it was as believer the great believer, that G.o.d made a covenant with him. So that he was not circ.u.mcised as a Jew, but, as the Bible says, to have a seal of the righteousness which he had by faith. G.o.d made a covenant with him as a believer, to be his G.o.d and the G.o.d of his children, as the children of a believer, not a Jew; so that all believers are blessed with believing Abraham, by having the same covenant extended to them. Then, I take it, G.o.d gave him a sign and seal as a pledge, and to remind him of it, and to keep his children in remembrance." She paused, and I said:

"Please to go on." You remember, Bertha, how you used to make this Mrs.

Ford discuss doctrinal matters when she was sewing for you.

_Mrs. Ford._ I remember that father said that G.o.d took the rainbow as a sign and seal of his promise, to Noah and all future generations, that there should never be another universal deluge. So he appointed a children's ordinance to mark his covenant with believers to the end of time. Only there was this difference; the way of signing and sealing the covenant not being coupled with the laws of nature, but conforming to the kind of symbols successively in use, it was changed, at the time that the Sabbath was changed, and the whole of the old dispensation; but father used to say, Is the commonwealth and citizens.h.i.+p broken up because the legislature adopts a new state seal? Does that destroy all the old public doc.u.ments?

_Pastor._ Good! So the United States' mint is from time to time changing its dies; lately it has abolished copper, and subst.i.tuted equivalent coins of different composition. But money does not perish. A cent is a cent still, red or white. So, whether the seal be blood or water, the great ordinance which it seals remains the same.

"And now I will tell you," said I, "how it seems to me G.o.d's covenanting with parents for their children came to pa.s.s. He wished to give Abraham a token and seal of his love to him. So he took his child, the thing which he loved best, and would see oftenest, and thought of most, and made the child, as it were, the tablet on which to write his covenant with the father. That was one reason. 'Because he loved the fathers, therefore he chose their seed.' But this is the least of the reasons in the case.

"Here is one of vastly greater importance. G.o.d wished to perpetuate religion in the earth. He knew that the family const.i.tution would be the princ.i.p.al means of doing this, parents teaching and commanding their children, and so transmitting religion. Because he knew that Abraham would do this, he gave it as a reason for his love and confidence in him, in not concealing from him his purpose to destroy Sodom. 'Shall I hide from Abraham that thing which I do? For I know him that he will command his children and his household after him, and they shall keep the ways of the Lord.' So, in order to remind Abraham of what was expected by the Most High in making his children the presumptive heirs of grace, and to remind the children of it when they came to years of understanding, G.o.d gave him and them this mark and seal."

"Well, then," said Mr. Benson, "it seems to me Abraham was better off than we, if he had G.o.d in covenant with him for his children, and we have not. I sometimes wish that I could have G.o.d covenant with me about my boy, as Abraham had about Isaac."

"I should like," said Mrs. B., "to hear him say, 'I will be a G.o.d to him,' and then tell us to do something of his own appointment that should be like our signing and sealing a covenant together, as the Lord's Supper enables us to do with Christ."

"If we have no such blessed privilege," said I, "then, as Abraham desired to see our day, I should, in this respect, rejoice to see Abraham's day. I cannot forego the privilege of having G.o.d in covenant with me for my children as he was with Abraham for his; and I crave some divine seal affixed to it.

"You said, Mrs. Benson, that you would like to have G.o.d promise to be the G.o.d of your child, and then command you to do something which would be like G.o.d and you signing and sealing it together. But do you think, Mrs. B., that this is necessary? Why is it not enough for G.o.d to make a promise, and you make one, and let it be without any sign or seal?"

"People don't do things in that way," said Mr. Benson, with a decided motion, two or three times, with his head. "They call a wedding a ceremony, it is true, and some say, 'So long as people are engaged to be man and wife, the ceremony makes little difference.' But it does make all the difference in the world,--this mere ceremony, as they call it.

They never like to dispense with it themselves, at least; because, you see, it makes all the difference between unlawful, sinful union, and marriage. It makes married life; which could not exist, without the ceremony, among decent people. It gives a t.i.tle and ground to a thing which could not be without it. So, I begin to see and feel, it is with regard to what some call the ceremony of baptism. But excuse me, wife, I took the answer out of your mouth."

"Well," said Mrs. Benson to me, "I must wait upon you, sir, to answer the question further."

"Mr. Benson has the right view of the subject," I replied. "We make too little of signs and seals, from a morbid fear and jealousy of those which are invented by man and added to religion. But G.o.d's own seals are safe and good. We cannot make too much of them.

"G.o.d never did anything with men, from the beginning, without signs and seals. The tree of life was one, and so was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Adam and Eve knew better, at first, than to say, 'So long as we love and obey G.o.d, of what use are these symbols?' By not regarding symbols afterward, they brought death into our world and all our woe. Even before that, G.o.d had appointed a symbol of his authority, and a seal of a covenant between him and man forever, in the appointment of the Sabbath. The mark on Cain's forehead, the rainbow, the lamp pa.s.sing between the severed parts of Abraham's sacrifice, Jacob's ladder, the burning bush, the pa.s.sover, and things too numerous to mention, show how G.o.d loves signs and seals.

"There are many good people, at the present day, who say to me, I am willing to consecrate my child to G.o.d in prayer, and bring him up for G.o.d; but I do not see the necessity of an ordinance. Why bring the child to baptism? I can do all which is required and signified, without the sign."

"What do you say to them?" said Mrs. Ford.

_Pastor._ I tell them they are on dangerous ground. Will they be wiser than G.o.d? He knows our natures, and what to prescribe to us in our intercourse with him. I would as soon meddle with a law of nature, as with G.o.d's ordinances. I might as well neglect a law of nature, and think to be safe and well, as to neglect one of G.o.d's ordinances, and expect his blessing.

People, moreover, may as well object to family prayer, and say that they try to live in a spirit of prayer all day. Why do they have special seasons for retirement, if they walk with G.o.d? Why do they hardly feel that they have prayed if company, or a bedfellow, on a journey, keeps them from using oral prayer? It is a bitter grief, also, when no funeral solemnities lead the way to the grave with a beloved object; yet, where in the word of G.o.d are they commanded? As Mr. Benson said, "Who is willing to dispense with the wedding ceremony, except in cases where sadness and trouble seek concealment?"

People cannot give full evidence that they are Christians unless they make a public profession of religion. They cannot properly remember Jesus without partaking of his body and blood. Depend upon it, my dear friends, G.o.d sets great value on ordinances, and our observance of them.

G.o.d has given us two sacraments, and he who dispenses with them because he undervalues them, or undertakes to say that they are not necessary to him, or to any in this age of the world, is in peril. The only danger from forms and ordinances is when they are of human origin. We must take care and not let our revulsion from Romanism carry us to the extreme of neglecting or setting aside the ordinances of G.o.d's appointment. "There are three that bear record on earth, the Spirit, and the water, and the blood; and these three agree in one." A man may, with equal propriety, dispense with the blood, and its symbol the wine, or with the Spirit, as with the water, if G.o.d has appointed it with the other two as a witness between him and us. You notice that the Spirit is named with the two inanimate things, the blood and the water. Take care, I say to my friends, lest, in setting aside the water, you shut out that divine Spirit, who, knowing how to deal with our nature, chooses the blood and the water to be used by us in connection with our most spiritual religious exercises of the mind and heart. We have no more right to interfere with G.o.d's ordinances than with the number of the persons in the Trinity.

"All this affects me so," said Mr. Benson, "that I shall not fail to offer my child to be baptized, if I am allowed to do so. Now, there is my difficulty. Why do you think, and how do you show, that baptism must now be used as G.o.d's sign and seal of his covenant with believers for their children? When circ.u.mcision was dropped, some insist that the covenant was dropped with it, and, therefore, that there is no warrant in Scripture for baptizing children."

"Why," said Mrs. Ford, "if the coming in of Moses' dispensation did not abolish the arrangement with Abraham, why should its going out? I am inclined to think that Abraham and his seed are, to Moses and his dispensation, something like that vine to the trellis, running over it to the top of the piazza, bending itself in, you see, to accommodate itself, but having a root and a top, the one below, the other above, the short frame, which only guides it up to the roof. In the eleventh of Romans does not Paul say that Jews and Gentiles have one and the same 'root'? I always supposed that root to be Abraham and his covenant."

I did not quote Latin to my friends, but I thought of the old law-maxim, _Manente ratione, manet ipsa lex_--which, if your scholars.h.i.+p is not at hand to translate it, Percival will tell you, means, "The reason for a law remaining, the law itself also remains." It is used in such cases as the following: When one would insist that a law was intended to be repealed by the operation of another law, not directly or expressly aimed to repeal it, it is a good reply. If the original reason for enacting the old law can be shown still to exist, it is strong presumptive evidence that there was no intention to repeal that law. I explained this, in as simple language as I could, to my excellent friends, and told them, "If G.o.d's covenant, which circ.u.mcision sealed, were Mosaic, and therefore national, Jewish, we should presume that it ceased with the Jewish nation; or, if it continued, that it was restricted to their posterity. But why should G.o.d bestow his inestimable blessing on the father of the faithful, and take it away from the faithful themselves? We love our children, as Abraham did his. It is as important to us that G.o.d should be the G.o.d of our seed, as it was to Abraham. My heart yearns after that covenanting G.o.d in behalf of my children."

"I will give up thinking of Abraham as a Jew," said Mrs. Benson.

"What was he, then?" said I, "or what will he be to you, from this time?"

"He was the head of believers," said she, "just as Adam was the head of men. As Mrs. Ford said, he was the great believer; and I am persuaded that all who are of faith have his privileges, and more too; but certainly all that he had."

"But, my dear," said your mother, "you have forgotten the question.

Supposing that the covenant still remains, why do you take baptism for the seal of it? The old way of sealing it is given up. What authority do you show for using baptism in its place?"

"I take the initiating ordinance of religion for the time being," said I, "whatever it may be. Is not baptism the initiating ordinance, as circ.u.mcision was? When they built our long bridge, and the ferry-boats ceased running, did the town put up a great sign over the gate, saying, 'It is enacted that this river shall continue to be crossed'? Did they add, 'This bridge is hereby appointed as the way of getting over the river'? Or, did not people take it for granted, when the bridge was opened and the ferry-boats were withdrawn, that the bridge was designed to be the way by which they were to pa.s.s over the river?