The Road-side Baptism.

How beautiful the water is!
To me 'tis wondrous fair;
No spot can ever lonely be,
If water sparkle there.
It hath a thousand tongues of mirth,
Of grandeur, or delight,
And every heart is gladder made
When water greets the sight.

Mrs. E.O. Smith.

Sweet one! make haste, and know Him too;
Thine own adopting Father love;
That, like thine earliest dew,
Thy dying sweets may prove.

Keble.

We were about to turn a corner in a defile of the mountains, and a large perpendicular buttress of the ridge stood out, so as nearly to close up the road. It presented a surface of about twenty feet directly in front, as we drove up, and, from the top, which was nearly a hundred and twenty feet from the ground, a cascade fell into the air for about forty feet, and, without touching anything, became dishevelled, and disappeared in mist.

It was one of the most beautiful objects which I ever saw. It was pure white, relieved against the wet and very black rock. It waved to and fro in the air like a streamer; it had a slow pulse, lifting it and letting it drop, like the appearance of a waterfall seen from the window of a car in motion, only this was irregular and quite slow; it was soft and fleecy; it made no audible noise; it looked dangerous to see it fall from so great a height; but it was caught in the air, to your relief, as one who falls in his dream lights upon his soft bed. The lines of Gray, in his Bard, were suggested by the sight of this mountain, though not by any close resemblance:

"Loose his beard; his hoary hair
Streamed like a meteor to the troubled air."

The ladies had other images suggested by it. One said, "It is a beautiful hand, waving Godspeed to us on our journey." That brought tears into the eyes of some of us, reminding us so of meetings and partings at home, and chording well with our pilgrim condition. We concluded to make response; and we tarried there.

The rock seemed to be full of water, oozing out from the seams, dripping over rich mosses, with jets, here and there, leaping into the light with a bound of a few inches, and quietly expiring among the thick weather-stains and lichens, as if satisfied with their brief existence. The little things made me think of the sweet souls of infants passing into time, and then immediately out of it. As we listened, we heard what Addison describes in his version of the twenty-third Psalm:

"And streams shall murmur all around."

The ladies took off their bonnets, and we our hats, and we stood under the cascade, looking up, and feeling, or fancying that we felt, the cool spray on our heads and faces. We drank of the rock, and we thought of that Rock which followed Israel. It seemed good to have such an image of Jesus as such a rock, with the strength of the hills in it, and with its inexhaustible springs, its beautiful entablature, its cool shadow, following a company through a desert. What thoughts and feelings did it give us respecting our adorable Immanuel, God with us. Dear Susan, looking up, said, "Lead me to the Rock that is higher than I."

After invoking the blessing of God, and refreshing ourselves from our little store, our friends wandered away by themselves, and left us to enjoy the opportunity for prayer, which we supposed they also sought in withdrawing from us.

As they returned, the father had the little boy on his two hands, and, approaching me, he looked up to the cascade, and said, "'See, here is water; what doth hinder me to be baptized?'"

I was at no loss to understand the quotation and the request.

"Would you like to have the little one baptized here?" said I.

"We should," they both exclaimed. "We are going into a destitute place at the West, and there is no church, you tell us, within several miles of where we expect to live. It is very uncertain about our being able to procure baptism for the child there; and where could we enjoy the ordinance more, or make it more impressive upon our hearts, than here, so long as we have no house of God, which we remember, however, from 'the hill Mizar'?"

I told them that the experience of Philip and the eunuch, in the desert, was, just as likely as not, the same as ours. "See, here is water." The probability of its being a road-side spring, in a rock, or out of the earth, was greater than of its being a pool in the desert, large enough to immerse a man in it, leaving out of view the inconveniences of being bathed along the way. We have both gone "down out of the chariot," said I—(you would have smiled to see our great, strong, muddied wain)—and we have done what the literal Greek says they did, "went down to the water;" and when we start, we shall "come up from the water." But let us read 'the place of the Scripture' which the eunuch was reading when Philip joined him.

Susan took from her bag the blue velvet-covered Bible, which you gave her, unclasped it, and turned to the fifty-second chapter of Isaiah, at my request, and began to read. O, how soft and sweet was the sound of a female voice, repeating words of inspiration in that beautiful, solitary spot! The Scriptures had not been divided into chapters and verses for the eunuch, as for us, but we noticed that the last verse of the chapter preceding "the place of the Scripture which he read," not divided from it in his copy of Isaiah, was, "So shall he sprinkle many nations;" which, we thought, proved that the eunuch had had the idea of baptism suggested to him by those words; and quite as conclusively proving it, as "buried with him in baptism" proves immersion.

However, being agreed on all these points, we made no long discourse about them, but dwelt upon the Son of God as the Redeemer of Abraham's seed, and in whom all the promises of God, including those made to Abraham, are yea, and in him amen.

I said to my friends, "The Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, are about to write their several and joint names on this child's forehead.

"As a lamb has the owner's mark upon his side, this child is to be claimed by them, to be brought up for the service and glory of its redeeming God.

"You are to give him away, to be disposed of by the Most High. You are to be, for Him, what the mother of Moses was for Pharaoh's daughter—nurses to your own child. This dear child lay helpless and exposed, with all of us, to destruction; the Redeemer passed that way; he heard its cries: he had compassion upon it; he saved it from the condemning sentence of divine justice; and now he calls you, and says, 'Take this child, and bring it up for me, and I will give thee thy wages.' He does not commit the child to church, nor pastor, nor Sabbath-school, but to its own father and mother, who may and will avail themselves of all the appointed and the useful helps for its nurture and admonition in the Lord; but he looks to you, as having the chief and principal responsibility, to bring up this child for God.

"You covenant to lay your plans for this child, so that he may, by the surest means, live for God. To this end you will pray with him and for him; teach him what was done for him in baptism, and before, and afterwards; how God was beforehand with him, and was found of him who sought him not. He is to be trained up as a Christian child, with a view to his early conversion, and your great concern is not to be, how he may promote his private happiness, or yours, but how he may best serve God.

"To this end, you will, from the first, watch over all his moral faculties, and instil into him the principles of truth and uprightness; not letting him run loose among the vanities of the world, and feed upon its miserable, corrupted sentiments, and choose worldly and godless persons for his intimate associates, his manners and his habits being like a garden which runs to weeds, and his whole nature left to the perils of sin, trusting to some sudden act of conversion to bring him right; but you will rather be diligent to 'fill the water-pots with water,' and wait for Christ to turn it into wine. You intend, and you promise, that you will educate this child from the beginning with all that strictness of Christian principle which you would expect of him were he, in his infancy, to be a professing Christian, his duty being the same, and, consequently, yours toward him, whether he is regenerate or not,—one and the same law of God being our rule, irrespective of conditions.

"In all times of sickness and peril, you are to feel that this child is the Lord's, to be disposed of by him, without consulting you. If called to die and leave him, you will remember that you received him from God, that he belonged to God at first, and when he was placed in your care; and that God, who thus has the most perfect claim to him, will perfect that which concerns him, even if his parents are in the grave.

"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.

"Never," said she; but she added, sensible woman as she was, "the beauty and sentiment of the place seemed to me nothing, compared with the privilege of covenanting with God, and having him covenant with us for the child. After all," said she, "I would have been glad to have had the baptism in our little church at home, and to have secured good Mrs. Maberry's prayers, and those of our church, for the child, at its baptism. I must write to her, and get her to tell the Maternal Association about it, and ask them not to forget little Philip."

"What would you have named it," said my wife, "had it been a girl?"

"O," said she, smiling, "I was thinking on the hill, that, if it had been a girl, I should have called it Candace, for the Ethiopian queen."

"And Canda, for shortness and sweetness, I suppose," said her husband, his eyes twinkling and sparkling with love, as he looked at her, and from her upon us.

"He's a sweet little thing, you know he is," said the mother, burying her face in the child's bosom, and giving it something between a good long smell and a good long kiss, or both; a thing which mothers alone know exactly how to do.

"Suppose," said I, "that, instead of little Philip, it had been you, sir, and Mrs. Blair, who had needed to be baptized.

"Here you are, on a journey. You do not know that you will be able to avail yourselves of religious ordinances, in your new home, for a long time to come; and, besides, regarding baptism not merely as a profession of religion, but as an act of Almighty God, sealing you with his appointed sign of the covenant, you have strong desires to receive it, here in this 'way unto Gaza, which is desert,' from my hands.

"'See, here is water,' in rich abundance. But, alas! there is no pond, nor pool, no lake, nor river!"

"Even if there were," said my wife to Mrs. Blair, "I should shudder to have you venture into untried waters, in this lonely place. Fear, at least, would prevent any peace of mind, or satisfying enjoyment."

"'What doth hinder me to be baptized?' you would properly say to me," I continued. "'O,' my reply could be, 'the water is not in an available shape. Had we time to scoop out a tank in the earth, or make a stone baptistery in the rock, then you might be 'buried with him by baptism into death.' But it is impossible. This living fountain of waters in the mountain, full and overflowing though it be, does not allow of Christian baptism. Besides, as to suitable apparel, and all the necessary arrangements for comfort, not to say propriety,—you see that baptism, here is out of the question.'"

"Do you think," said Mrs. Blair, "that the Head of the church has appointed any such invariable mode of administering baptism,—one that cannot be applied in numerous cases?"

I said to her, "I cannot believe it. The genius of Christianity seems opposed to it. Let all who will, use immersion; we love them still, and rejoice in their liberty, but I cannot agree that it was the New Testament method. Even had it been, I should expect that the rule would be flexible enough to meet cases of necessity."

"I was thinking," said Mr. Blair, "that, at least, four fifths of all the people of God have gone to heaven unbaptized, if immersion is the only valid mode of baptism. This is rather a serious thing, if the solemn words, 'He that believeth, and is baptized, shall be saved,' look only to baptism by immersion. It seems to me," he added, "that the providence of God would have brought in some great reformation from so calamitous an error in the church, if it were an error. Some Luther, or Calvin, or Knox, or some John Baptist, would have been raised up, as in other emergencies, to bring the church back to her duty."

"How clearly," said I, "does that seem to prove that all the people of God have, as Paul says, 'One Lord, one faith, one baptism,' however variant their modes of worship and administration may be."

"How many baptized children, from Christian families," said my wife, "are gathered together in heaven! I cannot think of them as the unfortunate subjects of a superstitious or corrupt observance, at the hands of the ministers of Jesus, in all ages of the world. There must seem to them, as they increase in knowledge, a beautiful fitness in their having had those adorable names inscribed upon them, with God's own initiatory seal of his covenant. What loving-kindness it must appear to them, that God gave them the ordinance of baptism, and became their God! How it will stand out before their minds as a principal illustration of being saved by grace!"

"And then, again," said Mr. Blair, "think of the millions of children in heaven who were not baptized,—saved, the most of them, from heathen and pagan lands. How 'the gift by grace, which is by one man, Jesus Christ, hath abounded unto many.' Baptism is not an austere law. There is nothing austere or rigid, in any sense, connected with it; but it makes me think of the water itself, scattered in so many beautiful and pliable forms all over the earth, in fountains, water-falls, dew, rain-drops; and, when it cannot 'stand before His cold,' it comes down softly upon us, in crystal asteroids and all the geometrical forms of snow. I love to think that God has associated that beautiful element, the water, with religion. And now it does not seem accordant with the works and ways of Him, of whom we say, 'How great is his goodness, how great is his beauty,' to make one obdurate mode of bringing the water in connection with us essential to an ordinance, whose element seems everywhere to shun preciseness."

"Water is certainly a beautiful emblem of open communion," said one of the ladies. "It must be conscious, one would think, of violence done to its ubiquitous nature, to be made the occasion of separating beloved friends, at the Table whose symbolized Blood has made them one in Christ."

But we had to part. I told them that my wife and I would certainly be sponsors for little Philip, in the best sense; we would make a record of its history, thus far, among our family memorials; tell our children about him, and charge them in after life to inquire for him, and lose no opportunity of doing him good. Though, as to that, I could not help saying, no one knows in this world who will be benefactor or beneficiary.

"Our children will always be interested in each other," said his wife, "for their parents' sake."

"Can we not sing a hymn?" said the husband.

We found that our voices made a quartet. Susan was ready with her beautiful contralto, Mrs. Blair sung the soprano, Mr. Blair the tenor, and I the base.

THE BAPTISMAL HYMN.

"Lord, what our ears have heard,
Our eyes delighted trace—
Thy love, in long succession shown,
To Zion's chosen race.
"Our children thou dost claim,
And mark them out for thine;
Ten thousand blessings to thy name
For goodness so divine.
"Thee, let the fathers own,
And thee, the sons adore,
Joined to the Lord in solemn vows,
To be forgot no more.
"Thy covenant may they keep,
And bless the happy bands
Which closer still engage their hearts,
To honor thy commands.

"How great thy mercies, Lord!
How plenteous is thy grace!
Which, in the promise of thy love,
Includes our rising race.
"Our offspring, still thy care,
Shall own their fathers' God;
To latest times thy blessings share,
And sound thy praise abroad."

We saw them and their baggage on board the wagon that was to take them over to the river; we waved our farewell, and sent our kisses; and, just as they were turning a corner which hid them from our view, the father stood up in the wagon, and held little Philip as high as he could (the mother, of course, reaching up her arms to hold them both fast), as though to catch the last benediction. The long, flowing white dress of the child gave the picture a waving, vanishing effect, reminding us of our first sight of the cascade, which, with the whole transaction to which it gave occasion, has taken a permanent place in our sleeping and waking dreams.