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shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.” The water that you have come hither to draw quenches thirst at the time; but the thirst returns ; the supply of to-day will not suffice for to-morrow. And, oh, what bitter voices cry from all houses and all lands, So it is with all that earth gives: we thirst again! For earth was never made to satisfy the human heart. I do not speak evil of the gifts bestowed by the Father of mercies; I do not call them “snares" and “vanities :" that were my sin; they are given for high uses, and are to be received with thankfulness and enjoyed with relish: but let us not expect from them what they were never meant to impart. God never intended them to satisfy us; and they do not: he has made us too great for that. Even after obtaining the object of desire the gratification is only brief and transitory. The disappointed heart exclaims, Is this all? and there is still a quenchless longing left for something unpossessed. The child shows it by wanting a new rattle ; and the man by coveting to add another field to his estate, or to rise another step above the level of his peers. When all outwardly is bright and full of promise.

o ponas the heart is ofttimes.joulesa and void of narancsn the heart is ofttimes joyless and void of peace, full of secret fears and all miserable, unsatisfied desires. “ All things are full of labour; man cannot utter it: the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing.” A thousand delusive voices cry, “ Come ye to the waters ;” and men, though already disappointed a thousand times, run at the call; and very often it is as if they filled their mouths with Dead Sea brine. So had this woman found it, who had come so oft to the broken cisterns of sinful pleasure. Ah, what a world it is, and what an immortal thirst consumes it! Sometimes one stands out from his fellows because in his eye there burns a more baleful fire, or because his voice rises in a more piercing and eloquent wail. Take in illustration the case of the man who looked round him, in the hour of his triumph, from the very pinnacle of his ambition, upon “the glory of his riches, and the multitude of his children, and all the things wherein the king had promoted him and advanced him above the princes and servants of the king ;” and then exclaimed in the bitterness of his heart, “ All this availeth me nothing, so long as I see Mordecai the Jew sitting at the king's gate." Take another illustration, a modern one, in the words of a celebrated poet, who had all that fortune, rank, genius, fame, could give-words extorted from him in the very strength and greenness of his age:

“ My days are in the yellow leaf;

The flowers and fruits of love are gone ;
The worm, the canker, and the

Are mine alone.” Oh, my brother, this world cannot fill that strange, deep heart of yours. If, indeed, you had only bodily and intellectual wants to supply; if you could inscribe on the portals of the tomb,Death is an everlasting sleep;" if you had no spirit within you that pants after the infinite and the immortal—then perhaps you might find enough for all your needs in this fair and wondrous earth. But you cannot. The aspirations of your heart rise above the stars. Earth and time will not suffice you. You may plant a little Eden; may surround yourself with all pleasant delights ; may gather to yourself all purest home-joys; may lay up gold as dust; may walk in the ways of your heart and in the sight of your eyes; may search into all knowledge; may climb the starry heights of science; may win and wear the world's most splendid honours ; may take, in short, all that the world can give : but your soul within you will still wail aloud, I thirst !and never will that thirst be quenched till you can say, “ O God, Thou art my portion in the land of the living.”

“For only God can satisfy whom only Go I created.” “But,” says Jesus, " whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him

shall never thirst; but it shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.” I have already indicated what this living water is : it is just what the New Testament calls sometimes “salvation,” sometimes “eternal life,” sometimes “having the Spirit of Christ;' not different things, but different aspects of the same thing. Now Jesus tells two things here about his salvation. First, it satisfies the soul. Having received it, we are free from the cravings of unsatisfied, inperious desires, and thirst no more. The spell of sinful delights is broken, the enticements that drew us hitherto are unloosed, and we find in God all that our largest wishes crave. And what calm, tranquil hearts there are, testifying to the truth of this statement; hearts that would not exchange what they have found in Christ for the whole world; hearts that have returned unto their rest, and into which the immortal satisfactions of God are already poured!“ The ransomed of the Lord return, and come to Zion with songs and everlasting joy upon their heads; they obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing flee away." I have seen the joy dawning in a desolate heart, as when a stream of warm sunshine pours into a cold and cheerless room, when once the shutters have been opened and the blinds drawn up, enlivening and gladdening it. If any one is still athirst, it is the fault, not of the water, but of the man. It is true, indeed, and may not be denied, that restlessness, discontent, sourness, covetousness, ambition, are to be found even among those who have tasted the water of life. But the explanation lies in that very word tasted :" they are are not drinking, but only tasting. Even the tasting has 'made them other than they were. What would it be if they did but drink to the full ? And some good men (I hardly like to call them saints) have even made it a matter of conscience to quench all gladness, as if a cheerful face were a sin; and, out of principle, have gone to heaven girded with sackcloth and wearing a look of gloom. “Man's chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him for ever;" but they have tried to glorify him without enjoying him. It was their sin. Their religion would have made them happy if they would have let it, did make them happier than they seemed to be. A second thing Jesus tells about his salvation: it is in the receiver, like a springing well. He is no more dependent on pleasant surroundings. It is as if a well of life were opened within him, springing up in grateful, holy, joyful, loving thoughts and aspirations, never dried up, flowing all the year round, flowing eternally. What beauty and fruitfulness are thus imparted to the soul! What trees of righteousness and flowers of amaranthine bloom grow beside these heavenly waters! I remember wandering one hot midsummer day among brown moorlands and bare hills that looked as if swept by fire, and suddenly coming within sight of a little spot of green, with a slenderest thread of verdure winding down the slope; and when the place was reached, there was a well, clear as crystal, in a cup fringed with the brightest green, full to the brim, the water leaping up in its heart through the dancing sand, and running off in a little stream, to deliver its “ tribute wave” to a neighbouring river. There were no tall trees nourished by its side ; but what vegetation the soil was fitted to produce (broom, and heather, and grass, and sweet moorland wild flowers, and all things that love " the scent of waters”) it had gathered in living beauty round its margin. So is it when this fountain of living water is opened in a human heart. “ The wilderness is glad, and the desert rejoices and blossoms as the rose."

There is joy, then, never-failing joy, joy such as the world never gave and cannot take away, unspeakable, overflowing, rising at times even to ecstasy, for the receiver of Christ's salvation. To be “as seeing Him who is invisible,” to be consciously reconciled to him, to have intercourse with him in prayer, to bathe the weary, dusty spirit as in living streams, to mount up in worship as on eagles' wings, even to the seventh heaven of praise, to translate his will into daily action, to live consciously under the beaming of his love, to perceive the touch of his pencil in every humblest way-side flower, to hear his name in the murmur of every brook and in the thunder's awful voice of praise, to stand in the presence of a Divine beauty which eye hath not seen nor ear heard, to receive every commonest blessing as a covenant mercy-all this is in salvation, and all this is joy. And as a house, illuminated some festal night in every room, lets out the inward brightness through the opening door and through every window, so the joy within this man shines outwardly, and brings radiance over his very face. There is an old legend (I quote from memory) which says, “ Beyond the sea there lived a noble lady on whose house always the sun shone by day, and by night the moon. At this many men marvelled. At last the fame of it came to a good bishop, and he went to see her, thinking to find her of great penance in clothing, or in food, or in other things. And when he came he saw her always merry and glad. And he asked her, · Lady, what eat ye?' And she mentioned divers meats and delicate. Then he asked if she used sackcloth, and she said, “Nay.' And he marvelled that God should show such marvel for such a woman; and when he had taken his leave, and was gone his way, he thought he would turn back and ask her of one thing more. So he went again to her, and said, ' Lady, love ye not Jesus Christ mei kle?' And she said, 'Yes, I love him, for he is ali my love ; for when I think of his sweetness I may not withhold myself from gladness and mirth that I ever feel in him.'” There it is, the very thing that Jesus says: “ Whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but it shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.”

I only add, that the Good Shepherd did not leave off his mercy to this wanderer till he had revealed himself to her soul as the Saviour, and brought her back from the desert-land of sin. He keeps her still. She is with him above, in stainless robes,

“The whiteness of his innocence o’er all her garments flowing," singing her new song unto Him that loved her and washed her from her sins in his own blood. And when he comes with ten thousand of his saints, she shall be with them, cleansed from every earthly stain, and walking in everlasting purity and light.

Stirling.

THE ORIGIN AND TENDENCIES OF INFANT BAPTISM.

BY THE REV. W. WALTERS. **

(Concluded.) "And he said unto them, Fall well ye reject the commandment of God, that ye may keep your own

tradition.”-Mark vii. 9. HAVING thus reviewed the several argu- | not a single passage which can be fairly ments by which the advocates of infant quoted as giving it support, either by prebaptism endeavour to derive their warrant cept, example, allusion, or inference. Into perform that ceremony from the Scrip deed, many of the most learned Pædotures, we feel that we are in a position to | Baptist writers have given up appealing to repeat the statement which has been this authority. They frankly admit that already made, that infant baptism is not to the practice came into existence subsequent be found in the word of God. There is I to Apostolic times. They argue that the Church has power to decree rites and cere- hending the word preached, and of being monies ; and they give up the motto of converted to Christ by an act of their own Chillingworth, which has for centuries will. A pretty sure testimony of its nonbeen the boast of Protestants, “ The Bible, existence in the Apostolic age may be inand the Bible only.” The testimony of ferred from 1 Cor. vii. 14, since Paul would two or three of these witnesses may be certainly have referred to the baptism of presented as a fair specimen of the whole children for their holiness.” It is necesclass. Neander, in his “History of the sary to state in connection with this extract Planting of the Christian Church by the from Professor Jacob, that it was allowed Apostles,” says, “Since baptism marked to appear only in the first edition of Dr. the entrance into communion with Christ, Kitto's Cyclopædia. Although the writer it resulted from the nature of the rite, that was a Pædo-Baptist, a Professor in the a confession of faith in Jesus as the Re University of Berlin, and a man whose deemer would be made by the person to be scholarship and honesty were attested by baptized ; and, in the latter part of the his personal friend the learned Neander, yet Apostolic age, we may find indications of in subsequent issues of the Cyclopædia, the existence of such a practice. As bap because his testimony was in favour of the tism was united with a conscious entrance views entertained and advocated by the on Christian communion, faith and baptism Baptists, it was suppressed, and a mass of were always connected with one another; useless and indecisive matter, prepared by and thus it is in the highest degree pro other hands, substituted in its place. We bable that baptism was performed only in might add a host of other testimonies to instances where both could meet together, those now adduced. We, however, conclude and that the practice of infant baptism was with one sentence from Schleiermacher, a unknown at this period.” Again, in his writer of universal reputation as a scholar, “ History of the Times Subsequent to the a philosopher, and a devout man : “ All Apostles," he says, "Baptism was at first traces of infant baptism which one will find administered only to adults, as men were in the New Testament must first be put accustomed to conceive of faith and baptism into it.” The evidence which has thus been as strictly connected. We have all reason adduced we leave with you, simply remindfor not deriving infant baptism from Apos ing you that the witnesses we have called tolical institution; and the recognition into court, and thus examined, are among which followed somewhat later (in the third the foremost advocates of infant baptism. century), as an Apostolical tradition, seems Concerning them and the system with to confirm this hypothesis.” Professor which they are identified, we may adopt Hahn says, “Baptism, according to its the words of Scripture, “For their rock is original design, can be given only to adults, not as our Rock, even our enemies themwho are capable of knowledge, repentance, selves being judges.” and faith. Neither in the Scriptures, nor Finding no mention of infant baptism in during the first hundred and fifty years, is Scripture, let us endeavour to ascertain a sure example of infant baptism to be from the pages of Church history the found ; and we must concede that the period when it first came into use. numerous opposers of it cannot be contra Irenæus, A.D. 180, is the first Christian dicted on Gospel grounds." Professor writer who alludes to infants in any way Lange, in his “Treatise on Infant Baptism,” from which it might be inferred that they makes a similar admission. “All attempts," were baptized in his time. Speaking of he observes, “to make out infant baptism Christ's work in the flesh, he says, " He from the New Testament fail. It is totally came to redeem all by himself, all who opposed to the spirit of the Apostolic age, through him are regenerated to God, in. and to the fundamental principles of the fants, little children, boys, young men, and New Testament." Professor Jacobi in his | old. Hence he passed through every age, article on “ Baptism” in Kitto's “Cyclo and for the infants he became an infant pædia of Biblical Literature," says, “Infant | sanctifying the infants-among the little baptism was established neither by Christ children he became a little child.” It is to nor the Apostles. In all places where we be noticed that in this passage nothing is find the necessity of baptism notified, said concerning baptism, unless we are to either in a dogmatic or historical point of suppose the writer refers to it in the phrase, view, it is evident that it was only meant | “regenerated to God.” From the structure for those who were capable of compre- 1 of the passa ge, however, and from the general usage of the terms regenerated” | days of my pilgrimage been.'" Fidus, an and “regeneration” by Irenæus, it is clear African bishop, wrote to Cyprian, of Carthat he intends no such reference. Ter. thage, to know at what period a child tullian, A.D. 200, is the earliest writer that might be baptized, and whether it was alludes to the baptism of children; and he lawful to baptize it before it was eight days does so in the way of protest. He is not old. The letter which embodied this referring to infants, and arguing against request has perished; but the substance of their baptism, as has sometimes been it can be gathered from the deliberations imagined; but to "little growing children, and decision of Cyprian and his council from six to ten years old,” as Dr. Bunsen concerning it. They concluded that inasexpresses it, who could " go down with the much as Jesus came not to destroy men, other catechumens into the baptismal bath, but to save them, we ought to do everybut were not yet in a state to make the thing in our power to save our fellow. proper responses.” With those who has creatures ; that God is not a respecter of tened the baptism of such Tertullian thus age, but that his grace is equally given to expostulates: "For it is desirable to posto all; that the spiritual serse of Elisha pone baptism according to the position and stretching himself on the child of the disposition of each individual, as well as in Shunamite woman, and putting his mouth reference to his age, but especially so in the upon the child's mouth, and his eyes upon case of children. Where is the necessity the child's eyes, and his hands upon the for placing the sponsors in jeopardy, who child's hands, is, that infants are equal to may be prevented by death from perform men, and that to refuse to baptize them is ing their promises, or may be deceived by | to deny that equality, and that inasmuch the breaking out of an evil disposition ? It as baptism was a washing away of the sin is true that our Lord said, “Hinder them of human nature, the sooner it was pernot from coming unto me;' but they may formed the better, lest any should die do so when they have arrived at the age of unbaptized, and so perish. “ As far as lies puberty, they may do so when they have in us," writes Cyprian, “no soul, if posbegun to learn, and have learned to whom sible, is to be lost. It is not for us to they are going. Why should they at that hinder any person from baptism and the innocent age hasten to have their sins for grace of God; which rule, as it holds to given them? Ought we to act with less all, so we think it more especially to be circumspection than in worldly matters, observed in infants, to whom our help and and allow those who are not intrusted with Divine mercy is rather to be granted ; earthly property to be intrusted with because by their weeping and wailing at heavenly? Whoever attaches to baptism their first entrance into the world they do the importance it deserves, will be afraid intimate nothing so much as that they rather of being too hasty than too procras implore compassion." With this sanction tinating. True faith is sure of salvation." infant baptism rapidly spread among the There is clearly no reference to infants African churches ; and subsequently it here. The passages in Origen, A.D. 230 prevailed in the East and throughout 250, which refer to the baptism of children, Europe. Wherever it was observed it was are to be regarded, as Dr. Bunsen shows in an expression of the heresy in which it “Hippolytus and bis Times," as referring, originated, that baptism was essential in in the same way, not to the baptism of some way to salvation. And to this day infants, but to the baptisin of young it is tainted more or less with its first catechumens from six to ten years of age. corruption. By most Christian sects it is

* Those who wish to have copies of this Siscourse for distribution, can have them on application to the author,-price twopence,

Thus we see, down to the middle of the placed in the room of the baptism enjoined third century, infant baptism was un by the Head of the Church ; and, therefore, known. Towards the close of that century we are justified in applying to them the it made its first appearance. It originated language of the text, “ Full well ye reject in Africa, in the most corrupt portion of the commandment of God, that ye may the Church, and in connection with other keep your own tradition." serious errors. “Christianity," says Robert II. Allow me now, in the second place, Robinson, “ coming out of Africa into the to point out some of the pernicious ten. West, resembles old Jacob the shepherddencies of infant baptism. And here I tottering into the presence of King Pha remark, first, that the practice of it tends raob, and may very properly adopt his to lessen men's reverence and regard for janguage, and say, 'Few and evil have the the supreme authority of Jesus Christ.

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