The doctrine of the real baptism is thus utterly incongruous to that of immersion. Equally irreconcilable with that form are all the phenomena and expressions used in connection with the administering of Christ’s baptism. The sound from heaven as of an outbreathed mighty breath poured down, and filling all the place, was the only phenomenon of Pentecost indicative of form or mode. And its mode was affusion, or outpouring, and descent from above. The language in which the transaction is everywhere described and referred to is equally specific and invariable. It was a shedding down—a pouring down—a falling upon—a filling of the disciples;—a style of expression used, not on the occasion, only, but in every subsequent allusion to the subject. So, the prophecy cited by Peter is an express definition of this as the mode. “I will pour out of my Spirit.” But, more than this, it identifies the outpouring of Pentecost with all those Old Testament prophecies, in which the gift of the Spirit is spoken of in terms of pouring and sprinkling. All these, again, as we have formerly seen, are intimately associated with the baptisms of the Levitical system. Those baptisms represented in ritual form the things which the prophets set forth in analogous figures. If Christian baptism departs from the Old Testament mode, it to the same degree departs from the form in which the grace of Pentecost is uniformly predicted, represented, described, and referred to. The attempt is made to evade the force of these facts by the assertion that the “sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind,” “filled all the place where they were sitting;” and that the disciples were immersed in it. But (1.) the immersion thus imagined is, an inversion of the Baptist theory. The result of an admitted affusion, it is an application of the element to the person, and by a sustained analogy, on Baptist principles, would require that the grave should have been brought and put about the body of Jesus, and that, in water baptism, the element should be poured over the subject, until he is covered, although drowning would be the inevitable result. (2.) There is, in fact, no analogy, except in the jingle of words, between an immersion in water, which is immediately and inevitably fatal to life, and an immersion in the vital air, which is the very breath of life, the withdrawal of which is fatal. (3.) If Christian baptism sustains any real relation at all to the baptism of the Holy Spirit, which Christ administers—as it assuredly does—it is that of type to antitype—of a similitude to the reality. Both the form and the meaning of the rite must be derived from the nature of the reality, of which it is the symbol. If then the immersion of the disciples in the wind or breath of Pentecost is the antitype symbolized in the outward form of baptism, the ordinance means, not the burial of Christ’s dead body, but the imparting of his Spirit of life to his people.