All preliminaries having been arranged, the discussion began on Monday morning, June 19, 1820, at Mount Pleasant, Ohio. It was attended by a large concourse of people and created great interest. Mr. Walker’s first speech was very brief, and as it gives the gist of his whole contention throughout the debate, I will give it in full: My friends, I do not intend to speak long at one time, perhaps not more than five or ten minutes, and will, therefore, come to the point at once: I maintain that baptism came into the room of circumcision; that the covenant on which the Jewish Church was built, and to which circumcision is the seal, is the same with the covenant on which the Christian Church is built, and to which baptism is the seal; that the Jews and the Christians are the same body politic under the same lawgiver and husband; hence the Jews were called the congregation of the Lord; and the bridegroom of the church says, “My love, my undefiled is one”—consequently the infants of believers have a right to baptism. In response to this speech Mr. Campbell said that the pedobaptists acted as if they did not themselves believe infant baptism to be true, since, in point of fact, they did not put baptism in the room of circumcision, as they did not confine it to males only and extend it to servants as well as to children, perform it on the eighth day, etc.; and then proceeded to point out various differences between the two institutions which rendered the supposed substitution of the one for the other impossible. Among these he particularizes the fact that circumcision required only carnal descent from Abraham, but that baptism demanded faith in Christ as its indispensable prerequisite; and that baptism differed from circumcision in the nature of the blessings it conveyed, which were spiritual and not temporal: “Baptism is connected with the promise of the remission of sins and the gift of the Holy Spirit.” This utterance is his first public recognition of the importance of baptism. While he then distinctly perceived and asserted a scriptural connection between baptism and remission of sins, he seems at this time to have viewed it only in the light of an argument and to have but a faint conception of its great practical importance in the economy of grace.