Bertha and Her Baptism | Page 9

to neglect one of God's ordinances, and
expect his blessing.
People, moreover, may as well object to family prayer, and say that
they try to live in a spirit of prayer all day. Why do they have special
seasons for retirement, if they walk with God? Why do they hardly feel
that they have prayed if company, or a bedfellow, on a journey, keeps
them from using oral prayer? It is a bitter grief, also, when no funeral
solemnities lead the way to the grave with a beloved object; yet, where
in the word of God are they commanded? As Mr. Benson said, "Who is
willing to dispense with the wedding ceremony, except in cases where
sadness and trouble seek concealment?"
People cannot give full evidence that they are Christians unless they
make a public profession of religion. They cannot properly remember
Jesus without partaking of his body and blood. Depend upon it, my
dear friends, God sets great value on ordinances, and our observance of
them. God has given us two sacraments, and he who dispenses with
them because he undervalues them, or undertakes to say that they are
not necessary to him, or to any in this age of the world, is in peril. The
only danger from forms and ordinances is when they are of human
origin. We must take care and not let our revulsion from Romanism
carry us to the extreme of neglecting or setting aside the ordinances of
God's appointment. "There are three that bear record on earth, the Spirit,
and the water, and the blood; and these three agree in one." A man may,
with equal propriety, dispense with the blood, and its symbol the wine,
or with the Spirit, as with the water, if God has appointed it with the
other two as a witness between him and us. You notice that the Spirit is
named with the two inanimate things, the blood and the water. Take
care, I say to my friends, lest, in setting aside the water, you shut out
that divine Spirit, who, knowing how to deal with our nature, chooses
the blood and the water to be used by us in connection with our most
spiritual religious exercises of the mind and heart. We have no more

right to interfere with God's ordinances than with the number of the
persons in the Trinity.
"All this affects me so," said Mr. Benson, "that I shall not fail to offer
my child to be baptized, if I am allowed to do so. Now, there is my
difficulty. Why do you think, and how do you show, that baptism must
now be used as God's sign and seal of his covenant with believers for
their children? When circumcision was dropped, some insist that the
covenant was dropped with it, and, therefore, that there is no warrant in
Scripture for baptizing children."
"Why," said Mrs. Ford, "if the coming in of Moses' dispensation did
not abolish the arrangement with Abraham, why should its going out? I
am inclined to think that Abraham and his seed are, to Moses and his
dispensation, something like that vine to the trellis, running over it to
the top of the piazza, bending itself in, you see, to accommodate itself,
but having a root and a top, the one below, the other above, the short
frame, which only guides it up to the roof. In the eleventh of Romans
does not Paul say that Jews and Gentiles have one and the same 'root'? I
always supposed that root to be Abraham and his covenant."
I did not quote Latin to my friends, but I thought of the old law-maxim,
Manente ratione, manet ipsa lex--which, if your scholarship is not at
hand to translate it, Percival will tell you, means, "The reason for a law
remaining, the law itself also remains." It is used in such cases as the
following: When one would insist that a law was intended to be
repealed by the operation of another law, not directly or expressly
aimed to repeal it, it is a good reply. If the original reason for enacting
the old law can be shown still to exist, it is strong presumptive evidence
that there was no intention to repeal that law. I explained this, in as
simple language as I could, to my excellent friends, and told them, "If
God's covenant, which circumcision sealed, were Mosaic, and therefore
national, Jewish, we should presume that it ceased with the Jewish
nation; or, if it continued, that it was restricted to their posterity. But
why should God bestow his inestimable blessing on the father of the
faithful, and take it away from the faithful themselves? We love our
children, as Abraham did his. It is as important to us that God should