"And while you thus covenant with God, the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost,
covenant with you, and with the child through you, to be the God of your
seed, affording you special help in training the child, bestowing
special blessings upon it tending to its spiritual good, having a
particular regard for it as something lent to him, and belonging to you;
while, in another sense, it is lent to you, and belongs to him; and he
and you are to regard the child agreeably to this beautiful
transmutation of ownership and loan. The baptism itself cannot save the
child, any more than the Lord's Supper can save you; but it is among the
first of means to promote the salvation of the child, not merely through
its effect on you, or its remembered grace and goodness when the child
can be made to appreciate it; but above all, and through all, and in
all, it seals that covenant of a covenant-keeping God, assisting your
efforts and those of the child,--that promise, I say, 'I will be his
God, and he shall be my son.'"
We named the little boy, PHILIP, as a memorial of the road-side baptism.
We stood under the shadow of that great rock, and worshipped Abraham's
God. "Doubtless thou art our father, though Abraham be ignorant of us,
and Israel acknowledge us not." The voice of prayer was joined by chimes
and symphonies from trickling rills, and the freshening breeze in a
silver-leaved maple, leaning at an angle of thirty-five degrees, just
above us in the rock, all as quiet as the dear infant's breathing;
while, now and then, the sudden flapping and rushing of birds' wings
made the monotone around us more soothing.
From a little jet of water, that formed an arc of about an inch, as it
burst into life and then disappeared in a great moss-bed, I caught my
palm full, and laid it upon the unconscious head.
The little hands were suddenly lifted and dropped, as though a slight
shock had been experienced, then a smile played round the mouth, and the
sleep seemed deeper.
And will God in very deed dwell on earth? Will the adorable Trinity be
present at such a scene as this? Present! "All power is given unto me in
heaven and in earth. Go ye, therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing
them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost."
He will not appoint this ordinance, and fail to be present; the God of
redemption is a party to that transaction by which an immortal soul,
with an existence commensurate with his own, is consecrated to him by
its natural guardians, acting in the place of God, and for the child,
and joining them in covenant.
"Shall we ever forget this?" said the husband to his wife, as we were
riding along that beautiful afternoon.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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