Proper Subjects For Baptism
Hear the argument of some:“What an oversight on the part of the Lord, in the covenant of circumcision, not to observe that a child eight days old could not understand what it was about! What a waste of piety to baptize an infant of days when it cannot understand what you are doing to it.
It cries, poor thing; therefore, how ridiculous to baptize it! It plucks the preacher’s gown, or chuckles and coos in the preacher’s arms; therefore how absurd to admit it into the covenant I For myself let me say that when I baptize a child I baptise human life,— human life,—life redeemed by the Son of God.
The infant is something more than an infant, it is humanity; it is an heir of Christ’s immortality. God not only baptizes great trees, but the daisies as well. He enriches Lebanon and Bashan with rain, but does He not also hang the dew of the morning upon the shrinking rose? Account for it as you please, children are under the covenant.
The child does not understand the alphabet, do not teach it You say the child will understand by and by; exactly so; that answer is good; and by and by the child will understand that it was baptised in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, three persons in one God.—PARKER.