LITMIR.BIZ

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      With the system of infant baptism vanish almost all the ideas which the prevalent theology has put into the rite; and it becomes as intelligible and expressive to one who believes in the good capacities of human nature, as to those who esteem it originally depraved. "How unmeaning," say our Orthodox opponents, "is this ceremony in Unitarian hands, denying, as they do, the doctrines which it represents! Of what regeneration can they possibly suppose it the symbol, if not of the washing away of that hereditary sin which they refuse to acknowledge? for when the infant is brought to the font, he can as yet have no other guilt than this." I reply, the objection has no force except against the use of infant baptism in our churches—which I am not anxious to defend; but of course those Unitarians who employ it conceive it to be the token, not of any sentiments which they reject, but of truths and feelings which they hold dear. For myself, I believe, with our opponents, that the doctrine of original sin and the practice of infant baptism do belong to each other, and must stand or fall together; and therefore deem it a fact very significant of the Apostles' theology, that no infant can be shown ever to have been "brought to the font" by these first true missionaries of Christianity. And as to the new birth which baptism (i.e. recent and genuine discipleship to Jesus) may give to the maturely convinced Christian, he must have a great deal to learn, not only of the Hebrew conceptions and language in relation to the Messiah, but of the spirituality of the Gospel, and of the fresh creations of character which it calls up, who can be much puzzled about its meaning.

      In Christian baptism, then, we have no sacrament with mystic power; but an initiatory form, possibly of consuetudinary obligation only; but if enjoined, applicable exclusively to proselytes, and misemployed in the case of infants; a sign of conversion, not a means of salvation; confided to no sacerdotal order, but open to every man fitted to give it an appropriate use.

      I turn to the Lord's Supper; with design to show what it is not, and what it is. It is not a mystery, or a sacrament, any more than it is an expiatory sacrifice. To persuade us that it has a ritual character, we are first assured that it is clearly the successor in the Gospel to the Passover under the Law. Well, even if it were so, it would still be simply commemorative, and without any other efficacy than a festival, filled with great remembrances, and inspired with religious joy. Such was the Paschal Feast in Jerusalem; the annual gathering of families and kindred, a sacred carnival under the spring sky and in sight of unreaped fields, when the memory was recalled of national deliverance, and the tale was told of traditional glories, and the thoughts brought back of bondage reversed, of the desert pilgrimage ended, of the promised land possessed. The Jewish festival was no more than this; unless, with Archbishop Magee and others, we erroneously conceive it to be a proper sacrifice. So that those who would interpret the Lord's Supper by the Passover have their choice between two views: that it is a simple commemoration; or that it is an expiatory sacrifice: in the former case they quit the Church of England; in the latter, they fall into the Church of Rome.