conduct, and to the faith of the Church universal. It is not good for a man to have the people of God of all ages against him.
4. The duty of baptism may be argued from its manifold ad- vantages. In the first place, it is a great honour and distinction. If among men it is a coveted distinction to wear the badge of the Legion of Honour, it is a far more desirable distinction to wear the. badge of disciples of Christ, to be enrolled among his pro- fessed followers, and to be marked as belonging to Him and not to the world. In the second place, those who are baptized, un- less they renounce their privilege, are members of the visible Church. The visible Church is an institution of God ; it is his treasure-house. The Church under the new dispensation has great advantage over the ancient theocracy, and yet the Apostle speaks in glowing terms of the privileges of the Jews. " Who are Israelites ; to whom pertaineth the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the service of God, and the promises.,, (Rom. ix. 4.) Notwithstanding, when in 2 Corinthians iii. 6-11, he compares the two dispensations, he says, " If the ministration of death, written and engraven in stones, was glorious, .... how shall not the ministration of the Spirit be rather glorious ? . . . . For even that which was made glorious had no glory in this respect, by reason of the glory that excelleth." This contrast between the Old and New Economies is presented in still stronger terms throughout the Epistle to the Galatians, and in that to the Hebrews. In Galatians he makes Hagar the slave the symbol of the one, and Sarah the free woman the symbol of the other. And in Hebrews the Mosaic economy, with its temples, sacrifices, priesthood, and ritual, is declared to be the unsubstantial shadow, of which the gospel dispensation is the substance. If, then, it was such a distinction to belong to the old theocracy, what, in the view of Paul, must be the honour and blessedness of membership in the Christian Church.
Membership in the visible Church is not only a great honour, it is a great advantage. To the Church are committed the ora- cles of God. It is the depository of that truth which is able to make men wise unto salvation. It is the divinely appointed in- strumentality for preserving and communicating that truth. Every one admits that it is a blessing to be born in a Christian, instead of in a heathen land. It is no less obviously true that it is a bless- ing to be within the pale of the Church and not cast out into the world. It is good to have the vows of God upon us. It is good to be under the watch and care of the people of God. It is good
588 PART III. Ch. XX. — THE MEANS OF GRACE.
to have a special claim upon their prayers and upon their efforts to bring us into, or keep us in the paths of salvation. And above all, it is good to be of the number of those to whom God has made a special promise of grace and salvation. For the promise is unto us and to our children. It is a great evil to be " aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise." They, therefore, sin against God and their own souls who neglect the command to be baptized in the name of the Lord ; and those parents sin grievously against the souls of their chil- dren who neglect to consecrate them to God in the ordinance of baptism. Do let the little ones have their names written in the Lamb's book of life, even if they afterwards choose to erase them. Being thus enrolled may be the means of their salvation.
Baptism as a Means of Grace. The Reformed Church teaches that baptism is a means of grace. 1. It is a sign. It signifies the great truths that the soul is cleansed from the guilt of sin by the sprinkling of the blood of Christ, and purified from its pollution by the renewing of the Holy Ghost. The Bible teaches that God sanctifies and saves men through the truth ; that the Spirit works with and by the truth in conveying to men the benefits of redemption. It matters not whether that truth be brought before the mind by hearing or reading it, or in the use of significant divinely appointed emblems. The fact and the method of the deliverance of the children of Is- rael from their bondage in Egypt, were as clearly taught in the sacrament of the Passover, as in the written words of Moses. So the fundamental truths just mentioned are as clearly and impres- sively taught in the sacrament of baptism, as in the discourses of our blessed Lord himself. It is, therefore, just as intelligible how the Spirit makes the truth signified in baptism the means of sanc- tification, as how he makes that same truth, as read or heard, an effectual means of salvation. The Spirit does not always cooper- ate with the truth as heard, to make it a means of grace ; neither does He always attend the administration of baptism, with his sanctifying and saving power.
2. Baptism is a seal or pledge. Wheu God promised to Noah that He would never again drown the world in a deluge, He set the rainbow in the heavens as a pledge of the promise which He had made. When he promised to Abraham to be a God to him and to his seed after him, He appointed circumcision as the seal and pledge of that promise. So when He promised to save men