Transcriber’s Note: This version of the text cannot represent certain typographical effects. Italics are delimited with the ‘_’ character as _italic_. The footnotes have been re-sequenced for uniqueness across the text, and positioned to follow the paragraph in which they are referenced. THE GREAT BAPTIZER. A BIBLE HISTORY OF BAPTISM. BY SAMUEL J. BAIRD, D. D. “He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire.”—MATT. III, 17. “This is that which was spoken by the prophet Joel: And it shall come to pass, in the last days, saith God, I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh.”—ACTS II, 16, 17. ------- PHILADELPHIA: JAMES H. BAIRD. 1882. Copyright SAMUEL J. BAIRD, 1882. PREFACE. Not only does the ordinance of baptism hold a position of pre-eminent honor, as being the door of entrance to all the privileges of the visible church, but it has been distinguished with a place of paramount importance and conspicuity in the transactions of the two grandest occasions in the history of that church,—in sealing the covenant at Sinai, by which Israel became the church of God, and the grace of Pentecost, by which the doors of that church were thrown open to the world. Proportionally interesting and significant is the ordinance, in itself, as symbolizing the most lofty, attractive and precious conceptions of the gospel, and unfolding a history of the plan of God in proportions of unspeakable interest, grandeur and glory. And yet, heretofore, the discussion of the subject has been little more than a disputation, alike uninteresting, inconclusive and unprofitable, concerning the word _baptizo_. The present treatise is an attempt to lift the subject out of the low rut in which it has thus traversed, and to render its investigation the means of enlightening the minds and filling the hearts of God’s people with those conceptions, at once exalted and profound, and those high hopes and bright anticipations of the future which the ordinance was designed and so happily fitted to induce and stimulate.