promised their honor or consistency to secure this result. The candor and grasp of German scholarship and the independence of English High Churchmen has had much to do with this change. In the German and English controversies on baptism, especially in the Tractarian movement of the latter, the concession has been made without reluctance that the classical and ecclesiastical literature of the New Testament period and the early Christian centuries sustain the Baptist position. Then, in justification of the change which early took place in the ordinances, instead of forcing all sorts of unnatural interpretations upon the facts and teachings of the Bible, the open avowal is very commonly made, that the Church had the right to change Christ's ordinances as convenience required. A noted example in point is that of the late Dean of Westminster, who, when visiting America in 1878, replied to an address of welcome from the Baptist ministers of New York and Brooklyn on November 4th, thus:

'You have alluded to me in your address as an ecclesiastical historian, and have referred to the undoubted antiquity of your principal ceremony-that of immersion. I feel that here, also, we ought to be grateful to you for having, almost alone in the Western Church, preserved intact this singular and interesting relic of primitive and Apostolic times, which we, you will forgive me for saying so-which we, at least in our practice, have wisely discarded. For wise reasons the Primitive Baptism was set aside. The spirit which lives and moves in human society can override even the most sacred ordinances.'

Here, a manly honesty meets an issue of stubborn facts not with a flat and false denial of its existence, but with the real reason for setting aside a Divine institution. The frankness of this statement is characteristic of the man; he boldly tells ns that those who have ceased to immerse have 'discarded' the practice of 'Apostolic times,' and thinks that they have done so 'wisely,' without any authority from the Lord of the Apostles for rejecting one of his 'singular and interesting' institutions. The Dean had an affection for modern methods of religious substitution in things which he regarded as of secondary consequence, and he could not see how a man's conscience and convictions of duty should bind him to what the Dean could not understand as important. Hence, while he acknowledged that he ought to be grateful' to the Baptists, for having cleaved to the Apostolic practice almost alone' in Western Christendom, it was hard for him to see exactly why they should not 'discard' it as well as others did. Great as was his tolerance in thought, when he looked at any religious point even through his affections he betrayed a tinge of intolerance. His most courteous allowance in such cases was mingled with a touch of scorn for what he could not fully comprehend; therefore, brave as he held the Baptists to be for unswerving fidelity to the Bible form of baptism, he saw no need for this constancy, but candidly said, 'We have altered all that long ago,' without the slightest attempt at popular equivocation.

Possibly no Baptist writer of our times awakened less asperity in Pedobaptist minds than the late Dr. William R. Williams, yet on this very point no man

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THE TRUE BAPTIST DOCTRINE.

more completely covers the right interpretation of true Baptist conviction. He

says:

'We read in the ordinance as the Sovereign bequeathed it, in the yielding waters that bury and then restore the loyal disciple, the cenotaph of our great Leader, the persistent tomb perpetually erected by which he would have his death set forth to the end of the world, and his exulting triumph over death, and his jubilant entrance into Paradise as well. And if it would be thought temerity for a follower of Michael Angelo or of Christopher Wren to pull down the tomb of either of these great architects on the plea of substituting a better, is it less temerity to innovate on the design in the gate of his own Church, reared by the Great Architect! Bury us into the tomb he occupied. Plant us into the new emerging life that he there displayed, nor think it shame to stand loyally by the ways that he has opened, and that none in all the world may better.'

He deprecates all change from Christ's appointment either in the subject or act of baptism as:

A most dangerous assumption of power in the Church, and also a most rash ascription of intrinsic and magical efficacy to the outer emblem. The Churches early, but most unrighteously, learned to annex not only the remission of sins to the ordinance, but the regeneration itself to attach pardon from Christ and new life from the Holy Ghost as sequents to an external rite. Priestly hands and Church lavers were thus employed, by an assumption that not one page of Scripture warrants, to usurp the prerogatives of God the adopting Father, and Christ the mediating Brother, and the Paraclete, the renewing and illumining Teacher.' Lecs. Bap. Hist. pp. 82, 83.

In like manner, as men return to the simplicity of the Lord's Supper, in the spirit of the New Testament, for the purely memorial purpose of setting forth Christ's death, they come better to understand why Baptists reject the Romish interpretation that it is a test of love between Christian men, or a bond of spiritual fellowship in any Bible sense whatever. The more other Christians come to respect them for their protest against its abuse, and to recognize them as extending brotherly love, and with it acts of Christian brotherhood in the substantial deeds of benevo lence, in the mutual burden-bearing of every-day life, and in that unity of the Holy Spirit by which birth from above is attested, rather than in the act of breaking bread, where the pure disciple and the hypocrite, the precious and the vile, have in all ages eaten the Supper together, and still sit at the same table in all Christian Denominations; the more they challenge universal respect, as the interpreters of the one Gospel baptism.

E

CHAPTER XVII.

BIBLE TRANSLATION AND BIBLE SOCIETIES.

ARLY in the Nineteenth Century, local Bible Societies sprang up in various American towns and cities. So far as is known, the first of these was formed in Philadelphia, in December, 1808, primarily under the wisdom and zeal of Dr. Staughton, who was its first recording secretary and wrote its appeals for aid. In February, 1809, a similar society was organized in New York, called the 'Young Men's Bible Society,' and on this wise. William Colgate, a young Englishman, sacredly cherished a Bible which had been presented to him by his father, which was kept in his pew in the First Baptist meeting-house; but it was stolen, and thinking that Bibles must be very scarce or they would not be taken by theft, he conversed with others, and they resolved to form a society to meet the want. This society comprehended the purpose of translation as well as of circulation, and incorporated the following into its Constitution as its defining article:

'The object of this Society is to distribute the Bible only-and that without notes-amongst such persons as may not be able to purchase it; and also, as far as may be practicable, to translate or assist in causing it to be translated into other languages.'

Soon other societies were formed in different places, and the universal want of a General Society began to be felt. At length, May 11, 1816, thirty-five local societies in different parts of the country sent delegates to a Bible Convention which assembled in New York, and organized the American Bible Society for The dissemination of the Scriptures in the received versions where they exist, and in the most faithful where they may be required.' Most of the local societies either disbanded or were made auxiliary to the General Society. The Baptists became at once its earnest and liberal supporters. As early as 1830 it made an appropriation of $1,200 for Judson's 'Burman Bible,' through the Baptist Triennial Convention, with the full knowledge that he had translated the family of words relating to baptism by words which meant immerse and immersion, and down to 1835 the Society had appropriated $18,500 for the same purpose. The Triennial Convention had instructed its missionaries in April, 1833, thus:

Resolved, That the Board feel it to be their duty to adopt all prudent measures to give to the heathen the pure word of God in their own languages, and to furnish their missionaries with all the means in their power to make their translation as exact a representation of the mind of the Holy Spirit as may be possible.