sent the sufferings of Christ, and his dying love to sinners! So lively were his descriptions of the Great Redeemer's excruciating sufferings that the solemn scenes of Gethsemane and Calvary would seem to open afresh to the view." He was just the man for an evangelist; for, while he was fervid and eloquent and impressive, he was conscientious in the extreme about the character of views he impressed upon his congregation, and very solicitous that people should be Christians first, and then Congregationalists. Mr. Griswold complained that four or five of the converts went over to the Baptists; but Parsons makes no allusions anywhere to personal disturbance because some of the converts became Baptists, though it must have occurred in his wide experience. Mr. Greenleaf in a memoir of Mr. Parsons says: "Mr. Whitfield and Gilbert Tennent were often in Lyme, and the house of Mr. Parsons was always their home." Tennent, we know, was in Lyme in 1741; but Whitfield must have been there after the letters in reference to the awakening had been written by Parsons, else he would have mentioned the fact as he does that of Tennent's visit. These letters to Mr. Prince were written in 1744; so that although Whitfield was in Saybrook earlier than this, he probably visited Lyme and the towns in New London county, in the latter part of 1744, or in 1745. And I surmise that the "Separatist" excitement and dissension caused his visit chiefly, in the hope of overcoming its evil effects. The church in Lyme to which Parsons ministered fourteen or fifteen years has always felt the influence of his teachings. ARTICLE IV.-THE INFLUENCE OF INFANT BAPTISM ON THE CHILDREN THEMSELVES. MEN of fair intelligence in other respects, men who have had a good deal of observation in the world in other directions, sometimes object to infant baptism on the ground that the service can have no effect on the children one way or the other. The child, they say, is entirely passive, cannot know what the rite is, and therefore the sacrament is a useless one and has no claim on them as parents. If there were any weight at all to this objection, it would still have no force as against infant baptism. The duty of offering the child in covenant with God does not rest on the intelligence of the child as to the act. The child may be passive, and still an active duty may devolve on the parent. The child may be ignorant as to receiving baptism, may not know what is going on in the solemn and beautiful service, may for years not be cognizant of the great fact that he has been baptized, and may not attach any meaning to the rite; and yet infant baptism may be a great and imperative duty. In the first place, if God Almighty attaches importance to the covenant with believing parents and their children, if He sees significance enough in it to enjoin the offering of infant children to Himself through some outward observance, we may be assured that the duty is one of foremost importance even if we may not see that it has any effect, one way or the other, on the children themselves. If God, who knows all issues, sees reason for it, that is enough for us. If He, who infallibly traces ends from all means, who sees all secret or patent reasons, who measures all influences in their narrow or their broadest sweep, has set up among religious institutions a covenant which includes parents and their children, it does not look well for us to interfere with it or to set up our pervers e objection to it, it does not look well for us to cut off the children from participation in it, it is not a mark of sagacity in us to try to improve on an ordinance which He has established. The right way and the wise way for us is to fall in with God's way. Human ignorance is a poor set-off to divine wisdom. No matter whether we can see that it has any effect on the child or not, our place is in the reverential observance of the service and in dutiful obedience to the requirement. There are many things that we cannot account for, nor see the reason of. But every man has intelligence enough to understand that the highest reason lies in the divine direction. In his great argument for the perpetualness of the covenant, the Apostle Paul says: "Though it be but a man's covenant, yet when it hath been confirmed, no one maketh it void, or addeth thereto." If now it be God's covenant, who shall assume to sit in judgment on it, or to omit from its provisions any of the appointed subjects of it? Here then we have the established covenant: we have also its declared permanence. We open the Old Testament. "I will establish my covenant between me and thee, and thy seed after thee, in their generations, for an everlasting covenant: to be a God unto thee, and to thy seed after thee." We turn to the New Testament.‡ "Christ hath been made a minister of the circumcision for the truth of God, that He might confirm the promises given unto the fathers, and that the Gentiles might glorify God for His mercy." "A covenant confirmed beforehand by God, the law, which came four hundred and thirty years after, doth not disannul, so as to make the promise of none effect." "If ye are Christ's, then are ye Abraham's seed, heirs according to the promise." For thousands of years the children of the ancient church had been offered in circumcision, by the direct command of God. Then the same objection might have been made by an unwilling Hebrew, that the service could have no effect on the child one way or the other. But what is man's objection as against God's command? Our duty is to present our children in baptism whether they know anything about it and appreciate it or not. God's will, in this thing, is supreme wisdom. The duty which He requires is ours submissively to perform. Furthermore, if it were true that the sacrament had no in * Galatians iii. 15. + Genesis xvii. 7. Romans xv. 8. fluence on the child one way or the other, there might be influence enough of the most weighty character on the parent so offering the child, to make the service one of the grandest and most impressive in the whole round of Christian observance. The objection is that the child is not affected by it. But the parent is affected by it, and the influence on the family life is powerful and blessed. Unnumbered parents are ready to testify that they owe everything, in the training of their children for Christ, to the fact that they acknowledged the covenant which God has made with them and their children, and that they had dedicated their children to God in baptism. It has made them better parents. It has led them to greater watchfulness and faithfulness. It has urged them to fidelity in family duty. Family prayer has been more thoroughly attended to where there was the family covenant. Careful training of the child in the things of the kingdom has been the result of his early baptism. Compare Scotland, England, and New England with portions of the world where the covenant has not been so generally recognized and where infant baptism has not been so commonly practiced, and it will be apparent that an influence has come upon parents from the consecration of their children which has changed the character of these communities from that of others. An aged minister of a church that rejects infant baptism once said in a public address: "I am acquainted with the state of our churches in all this region, and there are but few members who maintain family worship." Undoubtedly, the covenant, with its obligations and its seal, holds up the family altar and family instruction and prompts to parental diligence and care. It has a powerful and lasting effect upon parental character. No father or mother can bring son or daughter to the altar to recognize openly the covenant with God and to introduce children to its obligations and its blessings without feeling a peculiar responsibility. They take on themselves pledges of supreme moment, and the children who were loved before are loved thereafter as given to God and to be trained for God. He knows little of the philosophy of the human mind who overlooks or denies the efficacy or the utility of the pledge given by such parents. It is of the nature of those pledges which men require of one another when great trusts are committed to frail human keeping. Monarchs are crowned under solemn oath. Magistrates are inducted into office by personal pledge. Judges are sworn before they can swear others. On momentous historic occasions, like the Declaration of Independence, like the founding of the Commonwealth, formal and united covenant is entered into. The world's great institutions are founded and kept in place by the sacred, inviolate pledge of men before men and before Almighty God. And He who knows our nature, who knows how great principles are to be kept enthroned, has guarded the family and household religion and the perpetuation of His Church, by bonds that have their foundations sunken in parental character. It is claimed that the child is not affected one way or the other by baptism, but the parent cannot honestly and faithfully fulfill his part in it without being powerfully affected by it, both in his personal character and in his training for immortality of his beloved children. Possibly he may not dare to enter on the duty from personal fear of that very obligation which it would impose on him! But we are prepared to claim, not only that infant baptism is of binding force, because, in the first place, God Himself attaches importance to the covenant with believing parents and their children; and, because, in the second place, a most powerful influence is exerted thereby upon the character and life of parents; but, also, to claim and maintain, in direct opposition to the objection that the child cannot be affected one way or the other by it, that there is a mysterious and potent effect upon the baptized child from the proper observance of the ordinance. That is, we take issue directly with the claim that this sacrament is a useless one so far as the child is concerned; and we hold that it is a sacrament of utmost importance to the children themselves. We have already shown that infant baptism, if it had no effect upon the child, would be binding, inasmuch as God requires it, and inasmuch as it is a tremendous factor in directing parental responsibility, and that therefore the objection that it has no influence on the child falls to the ground by its own weight. But now we go further and attack the claim itself, that the infant who is baptized is not affected one way or the other by his baptism. |