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fectly innocent influences the soul would never develop into holiness. This doctrine is fundamental in all baptism. All other meaning is built on this. This points to the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Ghost as an absolute necessity. (2) A consecration' avowed. This is based on the necessity of the new birth. The pledge of the parent is to do all that he can instrumentally for the cure of the bad bent of the soul, and to make sure, under God, the indispensable new birth. (3) A covenant sealed. This is founded on consecration, as consecration is founded on depravity. The parent's pledge is certified by the representative ordinance administered at his request, God's pledge, beforehand, to help, if the doctrine is recognized and the consecration made in the appointed way, needs no new certificate.

To the view of infant church-membership maintained in these volumes, similar objections hold with those already maintained. The author's theory goes to this extent, in short: the child of Christian parents is of course baptized, and of course a churchmember. How so, if the primary, radical implication in baptism is that he is unfit, by pravity, to be of the people of God? The conclusion would seem to be, of course not a church-member, unless the "organic connection" or the ordinance has surely regenerated him. Children are in one place indeed termed "candidate or catechumen members," holding "a qualified church membership," but "a potentially real" one, “standing for the present in the faith of the parents, and the promise which is to them and their children, and on this ground" the author adds, "they may well enough be accounted believers, just as they are accounted potentially men and women." But this qualified, potential membership is in other passages spoken of simply as a real one, according to the theory on which it is based. Thus, "children given to God in baptism are accounted members of the church with them, as being included in their faith, and having the seal of it upon them." Of course this language involves the confusion of ideas noted above respecting the specific objects of the two sacraments. If it were used of the Supper, if that sacrament were administered to infants, as

1 We say consecration rather than dedication, for a dedication may be secular.

the seal of their parents' faith in a crucified Redeemer, there would be something in it significant and legitimate. A household communion would imply household church-membership. But how does household baptism imply it, having it for its most essential and formative import that all in the house, the youngest as well as the oldest, are in themselves unfit for the church in heaven or on earth, and by nature children of wrath? Dr. Bushnell argues his view from our Saviour's teaching the salvation of infants, from the analogy of circumcision, and from Paul's declarations about the power of one believing member of a marriage relation over the children. The arguments are so 'slight in texture we will not stop to test them. He makes light of the difficulty that church discipline can not be exercised over them as over members, giving up here a very important duty of the church to them even if they are not members, viz., restraint and reproof in respect to wrong. He notices not at all a very natural objection, viz., that church members, in any proper sense of the name, if the one ordinance makes them such, ought to participate in the other. They are included in the fajth and excluded from the very sacrament that appeals to faith! Thus he makes baptism, instead of the Supper, the mark of membership. He relies upon a defective analogy, viz., that children are citizens, though they can not vote, bear arms, legislate, hold office, or be tried for crime, alleging that still they can sue and be sued, be protected by guardianship, police, and even the military power of the state. Citizen, like organic, is a word of somewhat indefiinite and unsettled meaning even as applied to adults. In some states it includes suffrage, in others it does not. Women are citizens in some, and in others not, with little difference of powers, privileges, and franchises. In one age and land a woman may be citizen and vote without the right to hold office, in another be a citizen and hold office without a right to vote, as in Great Britain at the present day; and in another hold office without the right to vote or citizenship, as when an alien receives a military appointment in the United States. Nativity makes a citizen, though a property qualification may make a voter. But what constitutes a church member is well defined and understood. And one who becomes a church member, unlike the

foreigner, or female, or infant citizen, enjoys all the rights that attach to that character. The things Dr. Bushnell specifies as attaching to infant citizenship are incidental to property; while the things that do not are incidental to a personal relation, and citizenship itself grows out of personal relations. The analogy does not answer Dr. Bushnell's purpose; we are born into citizenship; and we become fellow citizens with the saints and of the household of faith by being born again, personally, not by baptism, or parental faith. It has never been held otherwise among us, save in the days of the Half-way Covenant.'

We must close this review, already protracted beyond our intention. The true foundation for infant baptism should be set forth analytically and exhaustively, in constant comparison with the other sacrament and the other kinds of baptism, and not, as we have done it, incidentially and controversially. It might be so done as to silence the chief objections. We have left no space to speak of the many exquisite pieces of philosophy and characterization and moral painting which abound in these discourses under review; nor of the points well and effectively taken, e. g., the answers to the notion that children should grow up without any religious tenets, and to the position that believers only are to be baptized. It is wisely urged that baptized children ought to be enrolled in the church books, that they should be taken by and with their parents, as soon as they are well out of their infancy, to the meetings for fellowship and prayer, that those who are orphans ought to find a godly fatherhood and motherhood in the church itself, that parents should live with baptized children as heirs with them in a very solemn and precious sense of the same promise. There used to be more responsibility felt among God's people, on such

There are those in other denominations who assert infant church-membership, while rejecting Dr. Bushnell's theory of it and of nurture, and denying that it subjects to discipline. For example, Dr. J. P. Wilson in a sermon before the N. S. Pres. Synod of New York and New Jersey: "If the baptism of an adult makes him a member of the church, then the baptism of an infant makes it to the very same extent also a member." He maintains also that at maturity a baptized child has a right to communion "as a member of the church by baptism," and that the Presbyterian standards so teach. "Infants become members by being baptized; not, as some have supposed, that they are members already, as being children of church members, and as such, and on that ground, receive baptism." Dr. Wilson cites the Episcopal church, in its usage of confirmation, and the Roman Catholic church, as wiser in this thing than the reformed Protestant bodies.

points, than there is now. Such children are too much regarded by the churches only as others are, and much of the association and power of the ordinance outside of parental relations is lost, whence much is lost to and by parents also. We wish it had been urged in these volumes, that whenever such children are publicly received into communion, on profession, their early baptism and its significance should be publicly and personally recognized and accepted, as having set forth beforehand the truths and facts divinely connected with it, just as if it had been originally administered at the candidate's own request. But this Dr. Bushnell's theory of its primary meaning, viz., a suppositious organic connection of character, forbade. The candidate should make his parent's, or parents' act his own. If in his infancy they meant to avow, by the application of pure water to their innocent babe, receiving from them a proclivity to evil, his absolute need of regeneration, in his manhood he can accept the rite in this most fundamental meaning; but certainly not in the sense of an organic connection of character, nor could he imagine that his own adult baptism could have this sense, as a common element with infant baptism, in any wise or degree whatever. And never could Dr. Bushnell's theory teach him how to recognize his foregone baptism, (i. e., accept as his own an organic connection of character, or a presumption of it!) or his duty to do so. Nor could it cure the neglect of duty to baptized children by the members of the church. Nor will the errors on this whole subject disappear, we are persuaded, till the primary meaning of the rite is restored to its place, nor the sin of close communion be abandoned generally, as it is more and more in part, till Christians understand accurately and radically its doctrinal relations.

ARTICLE IX.

SHORT SERMONS.

THE CITIZEN OF THE NEW JERUSALEM.

"Lord, who shall abide in thy tabernacle?
holy hill?"-Ps. xv. 1.

Who shall dwell in thy

SOME have doubted whether heaven is a locality; whether the vivid descriptive epithets which are employed in the Bible with reference to it, may not be figurative, referring only to a moral state or character. Heaven is a locality; but there is also a certain character prerequisite to entrance there.

Every civil community insists upon the prerogative of determining in what citizenship shall consist, and who shall be citizens. Aristotle defines a citizen to be one who participates in the judicial and legislative power in the state. This is the American idea. In Greece and Rome, citizenship was usually acquired by birth: but was also conferred as a reward for distinguished services to the

state.

Citizenship in the New Jerusalem is acquired, not by the first birth, but by the second. No descendant of Adam has any right there. It is a distinct empire, like Great Britain, Frauce and China. In its Founder and Ruler vests the right of determining who shall be citizens. It would be a strange assumption for a man born in Ireland or Germany to say he would be a citizen of the United States, and yet would not comply with the conditions of citizenship. And yet this is just the attitude of many men with reference to the New Jerusalem.

The Psalm contains an epitome of the qualities belonging to a citizen of the New Jerusalem. A man is not required to pronounce upon himself, subjectively, to catch the image of himself upon his own consciousness. Here are simple tests of conduct which he may apply.

I. The citizen of the New Jerusalem will be sincere in his relations to God and to man. "He that walketh uprightly, and worketh righteousness, and speaketh the truth in his heart." Heaven is a place of the utmost sincerity. We see as we are seen; and know as we are known. There is no dissimulation, no pretence. The judgment of him who seeth not as man seeth, prevails there. All disguises are stripped off. God is the truth. The devil is a liar. Sincerity is on the side of God. Insincerity on the side of the

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