Bertha and Her Baptism | Page 3

on condition, To
men, and to their heirs; be not affraid, My soule, to rest upon The
covenant of grace by mercy made. GEORGE HERBERT,--"The Font."
--No finite mind can fully comprehend the mysteries into which his
baptism is the initiation.--COLERIDGE,--"Aids," &c.
Christian faith is the perfection of human reason.--IBID.

MY DEAR DAUGHTER BERTHA:--I am glad that you think of
taking your little namesake to the house of God for baptism. You wish
to know my views about it in full. My new colleague having relieved
me of many cares and labors, I shall hope to write more frequently; but
not often so long a letter as I fear this will be; for I wish to tell you of
some conversations which I have had on the subject in question. This
will show you the common difficulties, in which, perhaps, you share,
and my way of removing them; and also set before you the privileges
and blessings connected with the baptism of your child.
A man and his wife--sensible, plain people--came to our house one
evening last July, when the "vines with the tender grape gave a goodly
smell," through that trellis which you and Percival have such pleasant
reason to remember. We were all sitting there in the moonlight, when
this Mr. Benson and his wife came up the door-way, and were
welcomed into our little group. After a few words of mutual inquiry
and answer, he said:
"Wife and I, sir, thought that we would make bold to come and trouble
you a little to tell us about baptizing our boy. He is getting to be four
months old, and we are not willing to put it off much longer. Still, we
would like to know the grounds of it a little better. People, you know,
do not think much about it till it comes to be a case in hand.
"But I do not know," said he, looking round on your mother and the
children, "but that we do wrong to take this time for it. It will be rather
a dry subject for these young friends to hear."
Pastor. Not at all. They owe too much to what was done for them when
they were little children, to dislike it. Besides, there is nothing dry
about it, as I view the subject. It is one of the most beautiful things in
religion.
Mrs. Benson. It is next to the Lord's Supper, I always thought, if people
take the right view of it.
Pastor. It makes you love God the Father in some such way as the
Lord's Supper makes you love the Saviour. I think, sometimes, that the

baptism of children is our heavenly Father's Sacrament.
Mr. B. I like that; but there is so much to study and learn about the
"Abrahamic covenant," that I feel a little discouraged. I have had books
lent me on the Abrahamic covenant, and I began to read them; but they
looked hard; so I told my wife that perhaps you would make the thing
more clear, and bring it home to our feelings, and that we would come
and get your ideas about it.
Pastor. How glad I am that you came! But tell me what you take the
Abrahamic covenant to mean.
Mr. B. I suppose it means that God told Abraham to circumcise his
children, and infant baptism comes in the place of it, and we must do it
if we are Abraham's spiritual children. But I wish to see the use of it. I
am willing to do it, but I should like to feel it more; and I want to know
how baptism comes in the place of circumcision, and a great many
other things.
Pastor. I think that you may possibly have what may be called some
Jewish notions about the Abrahamic covenant, though I trust you are
right in the main. That phrase sounds foreign and mysterious, and I
never use it except in talking with people who I know have the thing
itself already in their hearts.
I called Helen to me, and told her to say the hymn which she had
repeated to me the last Sabbath evening.
She cleared her voice, leaned against me, and twisted her fingers in my
hair behind, and, with her eyes fixed there, she said this hymn:
"Begin, my tongue, some heavenly theme, And speak some boundless
thing; The mightier works or mightier name Of our eternal King.
"Tell of his wondrous faithfulness, And sound his power abroad; Sing
the sweet promise of his grace, And the performing God.
"Proclaim salvation from the Lord For wretched, dying men; His hand

has writ the sacred word With an immortal pen.
"Engraved as in eternal brass The mighty promise shines; Nor can the
powers of darkness rase Those everlasting