ld no longer hold
Such frozen figures, stiff as they are cold;
Relenting forms would lose their power, or cease,
And e'en the dipped and sprinkled live in peace;
Each heart would quit its prison in the breast,
And flow in free communion with the rest.

COWPER.

Opening my entry door, on my return, several faces looked out to welcome
me, all in the house having waited till a late hour, with surmises as to
the cause of my long absence, and then all dispersed, except the
venerable, and not yet aged, grandmother of little Bertha. With her it
was always pleasant to talk.

_Mr. M._ Have you had no company this evening? I was in hopes that the
Moores would come in, as they promised to do.

_Mother._ They have been gone nearly an hour. Mr. Moore wished to read
husband's letter, so Bertha lent it to him.

_Mr. M._ Father will be glad to know how much good his letter is doing.
Cousin Eunice would be glad to see it, and I wish to read it again, for
I find that I am likely to need more instruction, if I am to discuss the
subject as I did this evening with Mr. Kelly.

_Mother._ Was he at home? I hope you did not get into a controversy
about baptism; for, of all things, nothing dries up religious feelings
like that.

_Mr. M._ The subject has taken too practical a hold upon my feelings to
have that effect. I find myself more and more led to believe that God
gave his church an appointed form of baptism, and that that form was
sprinkling; for I search the New Testament in vain for a single case
where immersion seems to have been practised. I believe that, under the
operation of early tendencies, of which Paul writes to the
Thessalonians, the church began to prefer immersion as more sensuous,
making a stronger appeal to the passions. But I believe, with the New
Testament for my guide, that immersion was not practised by the apostles
themselves. The word baptize had, even in the Saviour's time, to go no
further back, come to mean a thing done irrespective of the mode. How
would it sound, "I have an immersion to be immersed with, and how am I
straitened?" &c. "Are ye able to be immersed with the immersion that I
am immersed with?" I believe that sprinkling was the original mode of
Christian baptism. And it seems to me unlikely that God would appoint an
ordinance, and not appoint, by precept or example, the mode of it. I
believe that the mode of baptism was appointed, as well as the rite
itself, and I see no in