unproductive,--a mere unmeaning form in which a prior faith is
pleased to express itself, as the conclusion of a work already
accomplished. The great error here lies just in this, that they mistake it
as an act of faith, whereas it is an act of Christ. They think it is the
formal rite through which they elect and receive Christ; whereas it is the
sacrament in which Christ elects and receives them.

If, in church worship, man placed himself in a relation to God, without God
placing Himself in a relation to man, then we might reject infant baptism.
But this is not so. God, in baptism, places Himself in a relation to the
subject, receives the subject until it become a part of the organism of
grace in its subjective and objective force, and is recognized as a member
of the church of Christ. Now the falsity of the position assumed by the
enemies of infant baptism lies just here, that only the subjective side of
baptism is held up, while its objective, sacramental character is left
altogether out of view. It reverses the relative positions of faith and
baptism, making the former to take the place of the latter, and holding
that any one dissociated with the church, can receive and exercise a true
living faith, which overthrows the very idea of the church itself. It makes
faith first, baptism second, entering the church third; whereas baptism
comes before the conscious faith of the subject. If so, then why object to
infant baptism?

Baptism is that sacrament by means of which the order of divine grace is
continued. It generates faith, and its development is from authoritative,
to free, personal faith. "What the personal election of Christ was to the
first circle of disciples, that baptism is for the successive church, the
divine fact through which Christ gives to His church its true and eternal
beginning in the individual." If so, then is it not plain that baptism goes
before the self-conscious faith of the subject? And if this church-founding
sacrament brings your child into a living and saving relation to the
church, then why deny it that baptism? Dare you reverse the divine
procedure which God has ordained for the salvation of His people? And if
Christ is related to the individual only through the general; if He is
related to the members only through the body, and having fellowship with
them only as the Head of that body, then is it not plain that your
children, in order to come to Him as such, to be incorporated with Him an