the blessings which many suppose that Scripture connecta only with the Baptism of adults can belong to the Baptism of infants.

SECTION LII.

EXAMINATION OF THE BAPTISMAL SERVICES.

I now proceed to examine the Baptismal and other scrvices of the Book of Common Prayer, as to how far they embody or reflect the teaching of Scripture on this matter.

From the express statements and general language of Scripture which I have adduced, it is clear that if these services are to be accounted Scriptural, they must first of all connect the peculiar blessing of the new covenant or dispensation, i.e., the New Birth, with Baptism.

They must connect this "New Birth" with forgiveness, with adoption into God's family, with grafting into Christ's Body, or Church, and with the gift of some internal grace or strength to live to the terms of the Christian Covenant.

Unless our services did this, they would be unscriptural, because they would fall short of express Scripture statements upon this matter.

In the second place, if our services are Scriptural, they must pronounce the baptized to be regenerate, or grafted into Christ's Church, and made members of Christ. They must so pronounce because the Scripture so pronounces, and because the education of the baptized person, if it is to be Scriptural, must proceed upon the assumption that he has been brought into Christ's Church and into God's family,

In the third place, if our services are Scriptural, they must represent the grace received in Baptism as grace from which men can fall; they must represent the inheritance therein assigned to the baptized as one which may be forfeited, and the "state of salvation" into which the baptized are received as one which does not imply final perseverance on the part of those who are received into it.

Lastly, if the services are Scriptural, they will give no countenance to the notion that the baptized fall away because God has withheld grace from them, nor to the idea that the Church into which the baptized is admitted is not the one Church or Body of Christ; for God in the Scriptures makes mention of only one Church, and makes no mention whatsoever of any invisible body within the visible, to which invisible Church He may have restricted saving grace.

First, then, the services, if they are Scriptural, will connect the New Birth with Baptism, and assume that this New Birth implies a grafting into Christ's mystical body, and, with this, remission of sins, and some gift of God's Holy Spirit.

The Baptismal Services of the Church ground the necessity for receiving Baptism, and its connexion with Regeneration, on our Lord's words to Nicodemus.

Both services begin with a short address, in which is set forth, in Christ's words, that a man must be " regenerate and born anew of water and of the Holy Ghost," and the congregation are called upon to pray that the person may be "baptized with water and the Holy Ghost, and received into Christ's Holy Church."

Here, then, being "regenerate" is identified with being "born anew of water and of the Holy Ghost." It is also

identified with, or connected with, "reception into Christ's Holy Church," which is St. Paul's way of describing the state of Regeneration.

In the next prayer another aspect of Holy Baptism, as set forth in Scripture, is recognised: for God is appealed to as having "figured His Holy Baptism" by the salvation of Noah in the ark, and the salvation of the children of Israel at the Red Sea. (1 Cor. x. 1-10; 1 Pet. iii. 21.)

In this prayer we recognise the honour put by God upon Baptism by the submission of His Son Jesus Christ to receive it. It is assumed that the Eternal Son of God Most High could not be baptized in the element of water without consecrating it to be the channel of some heavenly and supernatural benefit.

Seeing, then, that God has made such remarkable deli verances of His people the types of Baptism, and has so consecrated the use of the element of water by the submission of His Incarnate Son to receive Baptism, we appeal to Him to do for the persons baptized according to the tenor of such gracious intimations of His good will-that is, to wash and sanctify the persons before Him, that, being delivered from His wrath, they may be received into the ark of Christ's Church, &c.

In the next prayer request is made that the persons (or infants) coming to His Holy Baptism may "receive remission of their sins by spiritual regeneration."

I desire to draw particular attention to this phrase, for the use of it betrays either the deepest spiritual ignorance on the part of the compilers of our Services, or else it claims for them a far profounder insight into the relations of the several doctrines of our redemption with one another, than is possessed by those who now criticise their work.

Judged by the spirit and letter of the modern Evangelical system, no phrase can betray greater ignorance; for if "spiritual regeneration" be a "new heart," or any internal work of the Holy Spirit in enlightening the understanding, then assuredly it is not the instrument by which we receive "remission of sins." Such a prayer is equivalent to asking that we may receive remission of our sins by internal Sanctification, which is so contrary to the very first axiom of (so called) Evangelical truth, that the man who asserts such a thing is accounted "unenlightened." He has to learn the first rudiments. He has to take the first step. There is not a local preacher among the Ranters who cannot look down with pity upon the men who shed their blood that we might retain our open English Bible, and point at our Reformers as unenlightened men, for not at once perceiving the incongruity of such a phrase with the first principles of Evangelic truth.

But if our Services are to be " 'Scriptural," i.e., in accordance with express Scripture statement, they must contain this phrase, or some equivalent one, for the same "water" of which the Saviour tells us we must, in conjunction with the Spirit, be "born again" (John iii. 5), and the same water which is called by St. Paul "the bath of New Birth" (Titus iii. 5), is that in which St. Peter called on the first converts to be baptized for the remission of sins (Acts ii. 38), and by which Christ is said by an inspired Apostle to "sanctify and cleanse His Church." (Ephes. v. 26.)

Let us put these things together.

When we come to Holy Baptism, we pray that we may receive "remission of our sins by Spiritual Regeneration." Why? Because by Regeneration in Baptism God trans fers us from the first Adam who in our condemnation,

into Christ the Second Adam, Who is our salvation from the guilt of sin. We are there and then "buried with Christ," and it is absurd to suppose that we can be "buried with Christ" to any spiritual or evangelical purpose without receiving remission of sins.

The root idea of Regeneration is "Union with Christ, the second Adam," and as by generation we are, in some inscrutable way, made partakers of the sin of the first Adam, so by Regeneration, which is its correlative and opposite, we must be made partakers of the atoning merit of the Second Adam; and so some such phrase as "Remission of sins by Spiritual Regeneration" is required, if our Services are to be considered "Scriptural."

The Gospel in the Service for the "Baptism of such as are of Riper Years," is that part of our Lord's discourse with Nicodemus which relates to the New Birth, and in the exhortation following we have our Lord's commission to the Apostles to preach and baptize. (St. Mark xvi. 16.) In the same exhortation are embodied St. Peter's words respecting Baptism for the remission of sins in his sermon in Acts ii., and also his reference to its saving power in his first general Epistle. (1 Pet. iii. 21.)

We have also St. Paul's peculiar teaching respecting Baptism being a "burial with Christ" (Rom. vi.; Col. ii.) cited in the post-baptismal thanksgiving (that he being dead to sin, and living unto righteousness, and being buried with Christ in his death). We have also St. Paul's expression that by Baptism we "put on Christ," cited in the commencement of the address to the newly baptized in the Service for Adults.

So that we have embodied in our Services the greater part of the passages in which the Holy Ghost has seen fit to teach us any truth respecting this Sacrament.

For the fact that these passages are all in one direction