The “word” in question is defined in Romans x. 8, 9: “If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and believe in thy heart that God raised Him from the dead, thou shalt be saved!” Let the hearer respond, “I do so confess and believe,” on the strength of this confession he is baptized, and in the conjoint act of faith and baptism--in the _obedience_ of faith signified by his baptism--he is saved from his past sins and made an heir of life eternal. The rite is the simplest and most universal in application one can conceive. In heathen countries baptism recovers its primitive significance, as the decisive act of rupture with idolatry and acceptance of Christ as Lord, which in our usage is often overlaid and forgotten. This interpretation gives a key to the obscure text of St Peter upon the same subject (1 Ep. iii. 21): “Baptism saves you--not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the questioning with regard to God of a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.” The vital constituent of the rite is not the application of water to the body, but the challenge which the word makes therein to the conscience respecting the things of God,--the inquiry thus conveyed, to which a sincere believer in the resurrection of Christ makes joyful and ready answer. It is, in fine, _the appeal to faith_ contained in baptism that gives to the latter its saving worth. The “word” that makes Christian ordinances valid, is not the past utterance of God alone, which may remain a dead letter, preserved in the oracles of Scripture or the official forms of the Church, but that word alive and active, re-spoken and transmitted from soul to soul by the breath of the Holy Spirit. Without this animating word of faith, baptism is but the pouring or sprinkling of so much water on the body; the Lord’s Supper is only the consumption of so much bread and wine.