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ing great research, and questions relating to truths beyond our ken, where guarded and uncertain tones are only a duty. There are others, where the decision has become conviction, a kind of intuition, the result of years of thought; which has been the day to a man's darkness," the fountain-light of all his seeing;" which has interpreted him to himself, made all clear where all was perplexed before, been the key to the riddle of truths that seemed contradictory, become part of his very being, and for which, more than once, he has held himself cheerfully prepared to sacrifice all that is commonly held dear. With respect to convic tions such as these, of course, the arguments by which they are enforced may be faulty, the illustrations, inadequate, the power of making them intelligible very feeble,nay, the views themselves may be wrong; but, to pretend to speak with hesitation or uncertainty respecting such convictions, would be not modesty, but affectation.

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For let us remember in what spirit we are to enter on this inquiry. Not in the spirit of mere cautious orthodoxy, endeavoring to find a safe mean, between two extremes,inquiring what is the view held by the sound and judicious and respectable men, who were never found guilty of any enthusiasm, and under the shelter of whose opinion we may be secure from the charge of anything unsound. Nor in the spirit of the lawyer, patiently examining documents, weighing evidence, and deciding whether upon sufficient testi mony there is such a thing as "prevenient grace" or not Nor, once more, in the spirit of superstition. The superstitious mother of the lower classes baptizes her child in all haste, because she believes it has a

mystic influence on its health, or because she fancies that it confers the name without which it would not be summoned at the day of judgment. And the supersti tious mother of the upper classes baptizes her child, too in all haste, because, though she does not precisely know what the mystic effect of baptism is, she thinks it best to be on the safer side, lest her child should die and its eternity should be decided by the omission. And we go to preach to the heathen, while there are men and women in our Christian England so bewil dered with systems and sermons, so profoundly in the dark respecting the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, so utterly unable to repose in Eternal Love and Justice, that they must guard their child from Him by a ceremony, and have the shadow of a shade of doubt whether or not, for omission of theirs, that child's Creator and Father may curse its soul for all eternity!

We are to enter upon this question as a real one of life and death; as men who feel in their bosoms sin and death, and who want to determine no theological nicety, but this: Whether we have a right to claim to be the sons of God or not? And if so, on what grounds? In virtue of a ceremony? or in virtue of a certain set of feelings? or in virtue of an Eternal Fact, the fact of God's Paternity?

I reply to two objections.

I. The apparent denial of original sin.

II. The apparent result that baptism is nothing.

I. The text selected is a strong and distinct one. It proclaims the value of baptism. "Baptism saveš us." But it declares that it can only be said figura

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tively. "The like figure whereunto even baptism doth also now save us."

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Now, the first reply I make is, that in truth the Romish view seems to make lighter of original sin than this. Methinks original sin must be a trifling thing if a little water and a few human words can do away with it: a trifling thing, if, after it is done away, there is no distinguishable difference between the baptized and unbaptized; if the unbaptized Quaker is just as likely to exhibit the fruits of goodness as the baptized son of the Church of England. We have got out of the land of reality, into the domain of figments and speculations. A fictitious guilt is done away with by a fictitious pardon; neither the appearance nor the disappearance being visible...

Original sin is an awful fact. It is not the guilt of an ancestor imputed to an innocent descendant, but it is the tendencies of that ancestor living in his off spring and incurring guilt. Original sin can be forgiven only so far as original sin is removed. It is not Adam's—it is yours; and it must cease to be yours, or else what is "taking away original sin"?

Now, he who would deny original sin must contra dict all experience in the transmission of qualities. The very hound transmits his peculiarities learnt by education, and the horse of Spain his paces taught by art to his offspring, as a part of their nature. If it were not so in man, there could be no history of man as a species; no tracing out the tendencies of a race or nation; nothing but the unconnected repetitions of isolated individuals, and their lives. It is plain that the first man must have exerted on his race an influence quite peculiar: that his acts must have

biased their acts. And this bias or tendency is what we call original sin.

Now, originál sin is just this denial of God's Paternity, refusing to live as His children, and saying we are not His children. To live as His child is the true life to live as not His child is the false life. What was the Jews' crime? Was it not this: "He came unto His own, and His own received Him not; " that they were His own, and in act denied it, preferring to the claim of spiritual relationship the claim of union by circumcision or hereditary descent? What was the crime of the Gentiles? Was it not this: that when they knew God, they glorified Him not as God, neither were thankful"? For what were they to be thankful? For being His enemies? Were they not His children, His sheep of another fold? Was not the whole falsehood of their life the worship of demons and nothings, instead of Him? Did not the parable represent them as the younger son, a wanderer from home, but still a son?

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From this state Christ redeemed. He revealed God not as the Mechanic of the universe; not the Judge; but as the Father, and as the Spirit who is in man, "lighting every man," moving in man his infinite desires and infinite affections. This was the Revelation. The reception of that revelation is Regeneration. "He came unto His own, and His own received Him not; but to as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God, even to as many as believed on His Name." They were His own, yet they wanted power to become His own.

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Draw a distinction, therefore, between being the child of God and realizing it. The fact is one thing

the feeling of the fact, and the life which results from that feeling, is another. Redemption is the taking of us out of the life of falsehood into the life of truth and fact Of His own will begat He us by the word of Truth." But, remember, it is a truth: true, whether you believe it or not; true, whether you are baptized or not.

There are two ways in which that Revelation may be accepted. 1. By a public recognition called baptism. 2. By faith. In two ways, therefore, may it be said that man is saved. "We are saved by faith." But it is also true, figuratively," Baptism saves us.”

II. If baptism is only the public recognition and symbol of a fact, is not baptism degraded and made superfluous?

2. Baptism is given as a something to rest upon; nay, as a something without which redemption would soon become unreal; which converts a doctrine into a reality; which realizes visibly what is invisible.

For our nature is such, that immaterial truths are unreal to us until they are embodied in material form. Form almost gives them reality and being. For instance, time is an eternal fact. But time only exists. to our conceptions as an actuality by measurements of materialism. When God created the sun, and moon, and stars, to serve for "signs, and for seasons, and for days and years," He was actually, so far as man was concerned, creating time. Our minds would be only floating in an eternal Now, if it were not for symbolical successions which represent the processes of thought. The clock in the house is almost a fresh creation. It realizes. The gliding heavens, and the