But upon
the subject of baptism itself, we have seen that there is great laxity of
feeling and opinion.
The spirit of our fathers upon this point is becoming so diluted that we
can scarcely discern any longer a vestige of the good old landmarks of
their sacramental character. Instead of walking in them, Christians are now
falling a prey to a latitudinarian spirit of the most destructive kind.
They are, in leaving these old landmarks, falling into the clutches of
rationalism and radicalism, which will ere long leave their homes and their
church
"A wreck at random driven,
Without one glimpse of reason or of heaven!"
Even ministers themselves seem to grow indifferent to this wide-spread and
growing evil. They hardly ever utter a word of warning from the pulpit
against it. Their members may be known by them to neglect the baptism of
their children; and yet by their silence they wink at this dereliction; and
when they have occasion to speak of this ordinance, many advert to it as a
mere sign, as something only outward, not communicating an invisible grace,
not as a seal of the new covenant, ingrafting into Christ. No wonder when
this holy sacrament is thus disparagingly spoken of, that Christian parents
will neglect it practically, as a redundancy in the church,--as a tradition
coming in its last wailing cry from ages and forms departed,--as a church
rite marked obsolete, as an old ceremonial savoring of old Jewish shackles,
embodying no substantial grace, and unfit for this age of railroad
progression and gospel libertinism.
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