BAPTISMAL RITUALS. The subject of baptism having recently been pressed prominently upon public attention, it has been thought that a few curious particulars relating exclusively to the rite as anciently performed would be interesting. In the earliest days of the Christian Church those who were admitted into it by baptism were necessarily not infants but adolescent or adult converts. These previously underwent a course of religious instruction, generally for two years. They were called during their pupilage, ‘catechumens,’[2] a name afterwards transferred to all infants before baptism. When such candidates were judged worthy to be received within the pale of the Church, their names were inscribed at the beginning of Lent, on a list of the competent or ‘illuminated.’ On Easter or Pentecost eve they were baptised, by three solemn immersions, the first of the right side, the second of the left, and the third of the face. They were confirmed at the same time, often, in addition, receiving the sacrament. Sprinkling was only resorted to in cases of the sick and bedridden, who were called _clinics_,[3] because they received the rite in bed. Baptism was at that early period accompanied by certain symbolical ceremonies long since disused. For example, milk and honey were given to the new Christian to mark his entrance into the land of promise, and as a sign of his spiritual infancy in being ‘born again;’ for milk and honey were the food of children when weaned. The three immersions were made in honour of the three persons of the Trinity; but the Arians having found in that ceremony an argument favouring the notion of distinction and plurality of natures in the Deity, Pope Gregory by a letter addressed to St. Leander of Seville, ordained that in Spain, the then stronghold of Arianism, only one immersion should be practised. This prescription was preserved and applied to the Church universal by the 6th canon of the Council of Toledo in 633. The triple immersion was, however, persisted in in Ireland to the 12th century. Infants were thus baptised by their fathers, or indeed by any other person at hand, either in water or in milk; but the custom was abolished in 1172 by the Council of Cashel. Footnote 2: From the participle of a Greek verb, expressing the act of receiving rudimentary instruction. Footnote 3: From a Greek word signifying a bed, whence we derive the word _clinical_. The African churches obliged those who were to be baptised on Easter eve to bathe on Good Friday, ‘in order,’ says P. Richard, in his _Analyse des Conciles_, ‘to rid themselves of the impurities contracted during the observance of Lent before presenting themselves at the sacred font.’ The bishops and priesthood of some of the Western churches, as at Milan, in Spain, and in Wales, washed the feet of the newly baptised, in imitation of the humiliation of the Redeemer. This was forbidden in 303 by the 48th canon of the Council of Elvira.