_Mr. M._ Judaism comes to me with it, and hands it over to me. There was something good in Judaism, we all think. Judaism was not a Mormonism, as certain ways of speaking of it not unfrequently would make us think it to have been; it was not an exploded folly, but the form which the church of God bore for two thousand years. But it began before Judaism; it is older than Moses. Judaism received it from Abraham. It is like a great river rising in a desert place, and seeming to lose itself in a lake, but flowing out again into another lake, and thence to the sea. So Judaism was only a great lake, which took and seemingly held this river of baptism for a time, but its current went on and flowed into another lake, the Christian dispensation. But you cannot say that a river which makes a chain of lakes, rises, for that reason, in the first lake. No, its head spring, in this case, was antecedent to the lake. _Mr. K._ Did Abraham or the Jews baptize children, Mr. M.? I answered, "Every male child of Abraham's descendants, who should not receive the sign of consecration to God, was to be cut off from among the people. Proselytes of the covenant and their children were baptized, very early." _Mr. K._ But where is the command to apply baptism to children? _Mr. M._ Where, my dear sir, is the command to discontinue that which was enjoined upon the founder of the race of believers for all time? I believe in the perpetuity of Abraham's relation to us as the father of the faithful, as I believe in Adam's relation to us as the representative of the race, and in the Saviour's relation to us as our representative. God seems to love these federal headships, as we call them. Abraham did not receive circumcision being a Jew, but, as the apostle says, "as a seal of the righteousness which is by faith, which he had while he was yet uncircumcised." We have Scripture for that, Mr. Kelly. And "the law, which was four hundred and thirty years after," did not disannul that covenant "that was confirmed before of God in Christ." How can you call circumcision a Jewish ordinance, when the Bible so explicitly denies it to be of Jewish origin? _Mr. K._ O, I do not understand this Abrahamic covenant. I take the New Testament for my guide. _Mr. M._ You think well of the book of Psalms, I presume, as a help to prayer and pious feelings? _Mr. K._ Yes; but in all matters of faith and practice, the New Testament, like the doings of the latest session of the legislature, is the rule for New Testament believers. You might as well have tried to govern the ancient Jews with the New Testament, as enforce the laws of the Old Testament on us. _Mr. M._ Is the privilege of having God stand in a special relation to my child an Old Testament ordinance, in the same sense with ceremonial observances? _Mr. K._ Not exactly that, but it is a superstition to baptize children, now that circumcision is done away, and believers' baptism is enjoined.