V.
BAPTISM A SYMBOL
By Geo. D. Boardman, D.D.
Pastor of First Baptist Church, Philadelphia.
[The stepson of Adoniram Judson]

And now why tarriest thou? arise, and be baptized, and wash away thy sins, calling on the name of the Lord—Acts 22:16.

Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death? Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. 5 For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection—Romans 6:3-5.

Buried with him in baptism, wherein also ye are risen with him through the faith of the operation of God, who hath raised him from the dead—Colossians 2:12.

All these things spake Jesus unto the multitude in parables; and without a parable spake he not unto them—Matthew 13:34.

I. In this world of ours, where spirit and matter are joined in mysterious wedlock, truth unexpressed is but half a truth. She does not become whole and triumphant till she issues forth in symbol. It is an epoch, then, for Truth when she finds complete expression; for thus alone is her latent omnipotence liberated.

We loiter not to account for this fact; we only ask you to note the fact itself. “It is difficult,” says the Guest in the Statesman of Plato, “fully to exhibit greater things without the use of patterns;” and Lord Bacon declares that “as hieroglyphics came before letters, so parables came before arguments. And even now, if any one wish to let new light on any subject into men’s minds, and that without offence or harshness, he must still go the same way, and call in the aid of similitudes.” (Bacons’s Works, vol. xiii., p. 80.) Truth unexpressed is to human beings as though she were not. Truth expressed is the crowned conqueror of the eternities, and symbols are her coronation robes.

That God in communicating with the race proceeds on this principle, that truth in order to be seen and realized as truth must be expressed, is evident on every hand. Glance at some illustrations.

1. Look, first, at nature herself. That man has studied nature to but little purpose who has not learned that one of her chief ministries to her Divine Lord is to furnish forms, vehicles, symbols, for his truth. The question which Milton puts into the mouth of Raphael is not altogether puerile:

“what if earth
Be but the shadow of heaven, and things therein
Each to other like, more than on earth is thought?”

The universe is one grand school, teaching man’s soul by countless and pregnant analogies, patterns, symbols, parables. What though man perceives not its lessons? Is it any the less a school because he is dull, or perverse, and will not learn? Oh! it needs no poet’s eye—only the thoughtful man’s—to perceive that the universe is one vast temple of divine hieroglyphs, teaching the observant scholar gravest lessons of duty and obedience, love and sacrifice. The things on earth are patterns of the things in heaven. On all God’s works are written God’s truths, discoursing, in emblem and type, of divine power and wisdom, goodness and righteousness, greatness and patience; of man’s responsibility, and sin, and duty, and destiny; of death, resurrection, judgment, immortality, heaven, hell. Nature, from atom to star, is one mighty parable of God to man, illustrating for him, by her manifold laws, and forces, and activities, and shows the sacred words which the Spirit has given to holy chroniclers and poets, prophets and evangelists, and preaching in a universal tongue through her countless phenomena of birth and death, growth and decay, sleeping and waking, sowing and reaping, light and darkness, mountain and ocean, numbers and spaces, universal gravitation and chemical affinity. Herein, in fact, is the significance of the soul’s earthly life; herein, a final cause of her insertion among the manifold parables of nature, among its emblematic forces, and movements, and phenomena, that she may be educated unto God’s glory, and her own perfectness in eternity.

2. Ascending, now, into the higher range of supernatural revelation, we are not surprised to find the same symbolic element thoroughly permeating all Holy Scripture, from the account of the arrangement of the first chaos into order beneath the brooding wind of God, emblematic of the arrangement of the soul’s chaos into order beneath the brooding of the same Divine wind, or Spiritus, down to the types and figures of the world to come, beheld in Apocalyptic vision. Look at the Old Testament economy. See how densely packed it is with type and symbol; with typical localities, as Eden, Egypt, Sinai, Jerusalem; with typical personages, as Adam, Cain, Abel, Melchisedek, Abraham, Isaac, Ishmael, Moses, Joshua, David, Zerubbabel; with typical events, as the Deluge, the Call of Abraham, the Offering of Isaac, the Wrestling of Jacob, the Bondage in Egypt, the Passover by the Destroying Angel, the Exodus, the Wilderness Wandering, the Passage of the Jordan, the Settlement in Canaan, the Babylonian Captivity, the Restoration; with typical objects, as Jacob’s Ladder, the Burning Bush, the Pillar of Cloud and of Fire, the Manna, the Smitten Rock, the Brazen Serpent, the Tabernacle, the Outer Court, the Laver, the Altar of Incense, the Candlestick, the Vail, the Holy of Holies, the Ark of the Covenant, the Mercy-Seat, the Cherubim; with typical rites, as Circumcision, Lustration, Day of Atonement, Sacrifice, Sprinkling of Blood, Imposition of Hands, Scapegoat, and the like, almost endlessly. What, in fact, is this entire Old Testament economy but a magnificent scheme of symbol; or, as the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews, in one all-comprehending word, describes it, parable? (Heb. 9:9.)

3. Nor, when we ascend into the still higher range of the New Testament, do we escape, as is sometimes imagined, the dominion of symbol. Look, for instance, at the characteristic method of Jesus as a teacher; and surely, if ever man taught with authority, it was he. See how commonly and naturally his doctrines take on a parable or symbol form. Erase from the gospels all that he has said in form of parable, and figure, and metaphor, leaving, as the record of his teaching, only what he taught in direct statements, and you will be amazed at the comparative meagreness of the residue; and you will feel that his biographers speak the truth when they say that without a parable spake he not unto the people.

4. And, finally, Jesus himself, the Son of God incarnated in the Son of Man, is himself the symbol of symbols, being himself the manifestation of the divine in the human, or the Word of God—that is, God’s thought, and feeling, and character, expressed to men, the image of the invisible God. (Col. 1:15.)

We state, then, as the result of our survey of nature and of Holy Scripture, that God’s well-nigh universal method of declaring truth is by means of symbol, this being its form, vehicle, and interpreter. Perhaps I should say, without qualification, his universal method; for all expression, whether in form of speech, or writing, or act, or phenomenon, is really symbol. Truth, in order to be recognized and felt as truth, must take on some kind of form, and come out into aspect or expression.

II. Accordingly, when a human being, having been morally subdued by the most stupendous events which have occurred in this world’s history, and made conscious in his own experience of a personal change so radical that he cannot call it less than a new birth, or second creation, wishes to declare these mighty truths, the strong presumption is raised in advance, that God, who has a symbol for his truth every where else, will also have a symbol for his truth here. So transcendent are the facts and truths involved in the act of regenerating a man’s moral nature; so stupendous are the consequences, in space and time, flowing from it; so express are God’s commands, that he who experiences these great truths should make them known to others, that we should unhesitatingly predict, in advance, that God would provide for these truths a special symbol, which should be as impressive as it is expressive; for, in fact, no truth can make impression till it has expression.

Let us now suppose that some one is standing before us as a candidate for membership in a church. He has just passed through this transcendent process of regeneration, and now wishes to make public confession of his faith. What are the leading truths, as connected with this great event of regeneration, which he would naturally wish to express?

1. The first is confession of sinfulness.
There are two figures or types under which Holy Scripture chiefly sets forth its conception of sin.

(a) The first is that of death. We stay not to point out the frightful accuracy of the figure; we simply direct your attention to it. Whatever there is painful and repulsive in the spectacle of a corpse; its unnatural disfigurement; its insensibility to sight, and sound, and touch, and love; its utter, unending helplessness; its corruption and loathsomeness—all this is taken in Scripture as the portraiture of the sinner. He is “dead in trespasses and sins.” “The soul that sinneth, it shall die.” “In the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.” “The wages of sin is death.” (Eph. 2:1; Ezek. 18:4; Gen. 2:17; Rom. 6:23.) Throughout Scripture, death and sin, as type and anti-type, evermore walk together in ghastly, inseparable wedlock. In making public confession of his sinfulness, then, this candidate, standing before us, would naturally, first of all, wish to set forth in symbol his belief in the Scriptural teaching, that sin is death. How, then, shall he symbolize to others his confession that he has been spiritually dead—buried in the sepulchre of sin?

(b) The other most frequent Scriptural designation of sin is that it is uncleanness. How thoroughly this conception of sin, as being a state of impurity, defilement, pollution, pervades the Scripture, is evident from the immense stress laid by the Mosaic ritual on the necessity of guarding against all manner of ceremonial defilement. Particularly were all dead bodies, and those diseases which might be described as a living death, marked off as unclean, to be regarded as special types of the filth of sin. So contaminating was sin conceived to be, that whatever came in slightest contact with a dead body was defiled, and needed, whether it were animal, or man, or garment, or article of furniture, rites of purgation. Nor does this idea of uncleanness fall out in the New Testament conception of sin. Rather is it intensified. Under the old covenant, sin, regarded as a defiled and defiling principle, was surveyed chiefly in its outward, ceremonial, phenomenal aspects. Under the new covenant sin is set forth, as an inward defilement, being filthiness of soul. Not that which goeth into a man defileth him, but that which cometh out of him—this defileth a man. For from within, out of the heart, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, thefts, blasphemy, deceit, pride, foolishness. These are the evil things which, coming from within, defile a man. (Matt. 15:17-20.) The state of sin, therefore, is a state of uncleanness as well as of death. And precisely this it is which this candidate for the church, brought under the illuminating, regenerating influences of the Spirit, most keenly feels. With him sin is something more than a gloomy idea: it is a positive defilement. It is something more than an accidental flesh injury: it is a hereditary taint. It is something more than a superficial spot or stain, or local tumor of the skin: it is a total, radical defilement of the hidden man of the heart. And this it is which fills our new-born disciple with such intense self-loathing. “Unclean! unclean!” are the words of his heart as well as of his lips. It is this sense of defilement, this consciousness of total pollution, which has driven him to the purging blood of the Cross for cleansing. Impurity of soul is, therefore, a cardinal truth necessarily implicit in the gospel scheme. Had there been no uncleanness among the people, there had been no Fountain opened in the house of Judah. How, then, shall this convert to Jesus set forth this prime fact, doctrine, and consciousness of soul-uncleanness alongside with his acknowledgment of spiritual death? Surely both facts are cardinal enough to demand full, fit expression. Suppose he has invented some emblem for symbolizing his spiritual death—what shall he invent as the symbol of his total spiritual defilement?

2. The second great truth which this new convert to Jesus would naturally wish to express when making his public confession, is his entrance upon a holy career.
(a) Many are the figures which Holy Scripture uses to set forth its conception of the new state into which the regenerated sinner enters. Of these none is more frequent or expressive than the term life. As death is the standing type of sin, so life is the standing type of righteousness. “He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation: but is passed from death unto life.” “The wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life, through Jesus Christ our Lord.” “To be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace.” “The law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death.” The regenerate “walk in newness of life.” “He that hath the Son hath life.” “I am the bread of life.” “I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.” “He that believeth in me hath eternal life.” “I give unto them eternal life.” (John 5:24; 6:35,47; 10:10,28; Rom. 6:4,23; 8:2,6; 1 John 5:12.) This, in fact, is the chief aspect of redemption on its human side. Life, eternal life, is the key-note of the gospel.

Upon this new life our new-born disciple believes he has entered. He has passed from death unto life. Dead in sin, he has been raised unto God. Conversion is a resurrection. How vital, then, that in publicly avowing his belief that he has passed from death unto life, he should symbolize his resurrection! Having, as we will suppose, discovered or invented some symbol to set forth his spiritual death, how shall he find or devise some symbol to set forth his spiritual resurrection?

(b) But this resurrection is to a life of righteousness or purity. As in his unregenerate state he had not merely been dead, but also polluted, so now, in his regenerate state, he has not only been quickened, but also purged. Need you be reminded that total purification is the grand cardinal blessing of the gospel, so far as its simply restorative power is concerned? Even under the old covenant, a chief part of the Mosaic scheme and liturgy consisted in lustrating rites. And the superiority of the new covenant over the old is declared to consist in this very thing, that while the old could serve only to the purifying of the flesh, the cleansing from outward defilement, the new can purge the conscience itself and inmost recesses of the soul from their inward defilement. (Heb. 9:13,14.) The grand distinguishing blessing of the gospel, considered as a remedial, restorative economy, is this, that it cleanses from all sin, purifying even as God is pure. And this man, standing before us, has, by our supposition, passed under the quickening power of the gospel, and, as a new-born soul, is undergoing its purifying processes. If then, in making public confession of his faith, it be an appropriate and even vital thing that he express his sense of total defilement, it is equally appropriate, even vital, that he express his desire for total purification, and his belief in its possibility. How, then, shall he do it? The first problem is to symbolize his death in sin; the second, his resurrection to life; the third, his total defilement; the fourth, his total purification. What shall the symbol or symbols be?

3. The third great truth which this new convert to Jesus would naturally wish to express, is the instrument and power by which he has been quickened and purged.

This, of course, cannot be any act or volition of his own. Uncleanness cannot cleanse itself, death cannot resuscitate itself any more than Beelzebub can cast out Beelzebub. What, then, is the energy by which the sinner, dead in filth, is made alive again and purged?

(a) Need any Christian be told that the death of the Son of God is the source of his people’s life? “I am the life-giving bread which came down from heaven. If any man eat of this bread he shall live forever: and the bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.” “Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life.” Since “without shedding of blood there is no remission,” God hath sent forth his Son to be the “propitiation for our sins, through faith in his blood.” “Christ, our passover, is sacrificed for us,” “his own self bearing our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness.” “The church of God he hath purchased with his own precious blood:” “We have redemption through his blood.” “The blood of Jesus Christ, his Son, cleanseth us from all sin.” “Being justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him.” (John 6:51,54; Acts 20:28; Rom. 3:25; 5:9; 1 Cor. 5:7; Eph. 1:7; Col. 1:14; Heb. 9:22; 1 Peter 1:19; 2:24; 1 John 1:7.) Thus cardinal in the gospel scheme is the fact of Christ’s death.

“The gates of Paradise
Open stand on Calvary.”

(b) Observe now, that in that death the believer in Jesus, through God’s grace and his own faith, is an actual participant. It is a clear and frequent teaching of Holy Scripture, expressed by a great variety of metaphors and idioms, that the church, that is, the true spiritual ecclesia, is organically united to Jesus Christ. Christ’s people are one in and with him. He is the Vine: they are the branches. He is the Head: the church is his body. He is the Bridegroom: the church is his bride. He is the second Adam: the church is his spiritual posterity. (John 15:5; 17:11, 21-23; Rom. 5:12-19; Eph. 5:22-23; Col. 1:24.) This is the profound meaning of that characteristic, distinguishing formula of the Epistles which declares the believer to be IN CHRIST.

Now this fundamental doctrine of the believer’s organic union with and in-being in Christ, involves in it the doctrine that the believer fulfilled the law of God in the person of Christ. The law said: “The soul that sinneth it shall die.” (Ezek. 18:4.) The believer has sinned—and still he shall live. And yet not one jot or tittle of God’s law has failed or shall fail. The believer, in virtue of his being in Christ, died when Christ died. In virtue of his being in Christ, his sin was punished and the law vindicated when Christ endured the cross; and so the believer, in the sphere of Christ, fulfilled all righteousness. And with this doctrine all the Scriptural declarations concerning the believer exquisitely harmonize. For instance, St. Paul, writing to Christian believers, says: “We thus judge, that if one died for all, then all died.” The believer is said to have “fellowship with Christ’s sufferings;” to be a “partaker of his sufferings;” to be “filling up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ for his body’s sake, which is the church.” He is said to have “suffered with Christ;” to have been “crucified with Christ;” “buried with Christ.” (Rom. 6:8; 8:17; 2 Cor. 5:14; Gal. 2:20; Phil. 3:10; Col. 1:24; 2:12; 1 Peter 4:13.) And as the propitiatory death of Christ is the source of his own life, so is his participation in Christ’s death the instrumental means of his own resurrection.

(c) But this resurrection is, as we have seen, a resurrection to a life of purity. How is it, then, that Jesus the crucified is not only the source and means of our resurrection to life, but also our purger from all unrighteousness? Who does not feel that Christ’s mission to the world, surveyed simply in its human aspect, i. e., in its relation to man himself was a mission of cleansing—of restoration to the Edenic purity? It was for this very purpose that he was manifested, that he might take away sin, and so destroy the works of the devil. (1 John 3:8.) Observe, the question under this head of discourse is not concerning God’s nature and wrath, or man’s penalty; but concerning the washing away of man’s uncleanness. Behold, then, the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sins of the world. (John 1:29.) But how does he take away the sins of the world? I content myself here, in this article of statement, with a single, direct, matter-of-fact answer. Christ practically, i. e., in the sphere of our own human experience and consciousness, takes away the sin of the world by coming down into the world’s plane, enduring sympathetically its burdens and woes, sharing with it its natural evil and curse, and so overcoming it with the evidences of a love and co-passion, that is divinely real and divinely great. What these evidences are may be seen in the manger, in the wilderness, in the garden, in the judgment-hall, on the cross, in the tomb. Ah! here, in the gloom, and damp, and noisomeness of the sepulchre, the proof of a love divinely real and divinely great culminates. Suffering love can soar no higher than when it sinks, a murdered, dungeoned corpse, in Joseph’s grave. Love practically ceased to suffer, it is true, when Jesus hanging on the cross, bowed his head and yielded up the ghost. But typically it reached the lowest deep of abasement when it lay shrouded and still in the grave. Jesus laid away in the tomb seems more dead to us than Jesus suspended on the cross. Oh! if this, the buried Jesus, does not break and melt my stony heart, then nothing can; and Mercy, incapable of mightier exploit, shall rightly join with Wrath in stamping it down to nethermost hell. But as divine love culminates in Joseph’s tomb, so does divine power. Love, descending out of heaven by the cross into the grave near by, passes under the guiltiest, lowest soul, and may lift it by its own celestial buoyancy. And this is the Power which is overcoming, cleansing, transfiguring humanity. Celestial love stands and knocks unweariedly at the door till the stolid, filthy occupant, subdued at last by her patience and all-conquering beauty, opens the door and lets her, in; and then, having won her entrance, she sweeps, laves, and cleanses, and garnishes it, till at length, transfigured by her indwelling, she makes it clean and shining, like one of the justified spirits made perfect. (Heb. 12:23.) Thus does the blood of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, cleanse from all unrighteousness. (1 John 1:7,9.) And as the most transcendent event in the world’s history is the burial of the Son of God, pressed down into his grave by the weight of an infinite righteousness, which could save only as infinite love bore that weight; so the most transcendent event which ever occurs in the history of any human being is when this same infinite love subdues him, and purifies him, even as God is pure.

And this, by the supposition, is the belief of our new convert to Jesus. He is waiting to confess his faith in Jesus the crucified. If then it is appropriate, and even necessary, that he should symbolize both his death and defilement in sin, and his resurrection and cleansing, how much more appropriate and necessary that he should symbolize the most transcendent events in the world’s history and his own, even the burial of that Jesus whose love to him, in order to raise and cleanse him from all unrighteousness, propitiated infinite justice by infinite self-oblation! The buried Jesus, being the sign and proof of a love that poured itself out to the death, what shall he invent and use as the symbol of his buried Friend, Vicar, Cleanser, and Saviour? The first problem is to symbolize his spiritual death; the second, his spiritual resurrection; the third, his total defilement; the fourth, his total purification; the fifth, the power and instrument by which he is resuscitated and purged. What shall the symbol, or symbols, be?

4. The fourth great truth which this new-born disciple would naturally wish to express in this his formal confession is that this buried Jesus is indeed the Son of God, and so a resuscitating and cleansing Power divinely efficacious.

It is a sad, unspeakably sad thing, to see the Son of man lying ghastly and mute in his grave. Was it after all nothing more than man’s love that bore the fasting and temptation, the poverty and shame, the agony and bloody sweat, the cross and sepulchre? But look again! See the stone rolled away! Behold the shining angels standing at either end of the sepulchre! Listen! “Why seek ye him who liveth among the dead? He is not here, but is risen, as he said!” Ah, now! I know that Jesus is more than man. That dying love, bursting the bonds of death, has proved itself by that act to be divine. Now I am certified, beyond all manner of doubt, that Jesus, in undertaking to be both the Propitiator of Jehovah and Regenerator of character and Restorer of paradise, has undertaken a work to which he is adequate. I have the demonstration, that the gospel is indeed a gospel—a good tidings worthy of all acceptation; for the Father, in raising his Son from the grave, has set his seal to his Son’s work that it is true.

Thus cardinal in the gospel-scheme is the fact of Christ’s resurrection. How far Holy Scripture thus regards it will appear from a single citation: “If Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain: ye are yet in your sins.” (1 Cor. 15:14-17.) See how much this apostolic statement involves. Christ rested the validity of his claims as the Messiah of God, and the attestation of his work as a Saviour, on the fact of his own resurrection. But if Christ did not rise, then his decaying corpse demonstrates that he was not what he claims to be, but instead thereof a crazy enthusiast, or arrant impostor. If Christ did not rise, all that he had said was false—all that he had done and endured was in vain—all that his people had hoped for was blank and worthless. If Christ did not rise, the one thing alone which could have given to the atonement its worth as an accomplished and certified fact was wanting, and on the stone which had been rolled up against Joseph’s sepulchre, might be inscribed: “No glad tidings! No pitying God! No vindicated law! No laver of regeneration! No Saviour! No heaven!” If Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain: ye are yet in your sins. But, on the other hand, if Christ be risen, then the gospel is certified as true; all becomes substantial and harmonious and complete. Nothing is wanting to prove the absolute perfection and divineness of the gospel fabric. For when Jesus rose from the dead, the keystone was inserted into the gospel arch, binding it together in immortal strength and symmetry. And nothing is left for us to do but to join with cherubim and seraphim in shouting: Grace, Grace unto it!

Observe now that as Holy Scripture represents the believer as having participated in Christ’s death, so it represents him as having participated in Christ’s resurrection. It asserts that believers are risen, not only like Christ, but also with him. They are said to be not only heirs of God, but joint heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with him, that we also may be glorified together. For if we be dead with him, we shall also live with him, and reign with him. God, who is rich in mercy, for the great love wherewith he loved us, even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, and hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus. (Rom. 6:8; 8:17; Eph. 2:4-6; 2 Cor. 3:1-4.) In virtue of the believer’s mystical union with Christ, Christ’s death was his death, and Christ’s resurrection his resurrection.

To symbolize Christ’s resurrection, then, is manifestly as essential as to symbolize his burial. How then shall our friend, who by the supposition has not only had fellowship with Christ’s sufferings and been made conformable unto his death, but also with the power of his resurrection, (Phil 3:10) how shall he, about to make public confession of his Lord and Saviour, shadow forth to others the risen Jesus? What symbol shall he invent that will set forth before others his belief that him whom wicked hands had crucified and slain, God has exalted to be a prince and a saviour? The first problem is to symbolize his spiritual death; the second, his spiritual resurrection; the third, his total defilement; the fourth, his total purification; the fifth, the sacrificial death in which he has participated; the sixth, the vindicatory resurrection in which he has shared. What shall the symbol, or symbols, be?

5. The fifth great truth which this new convert to Jesus would naturally wish to express, is his belief in the coming resurrection of the body and the heavenly immortality.

“If in this life only we have hope in Christ,” exclaims an apostle, hunted down every day of his life like a partridge among the mountains, “we are of all men most miserable.” (1 Cor. 15:19.) And this is the grand, all-inspiring thing of the gospel, that it has the promise not only of the life which now is, but also of that which is to come. (1 Tim. 4:8.)

The religion of the Nazarene is, characteristically and intensely, a religion of hope. Other religions are bounded by visible horizons, and are expected to culminate in the sphere of the tangible. But the religion of Jesus Christ bursts through all such bars, and is at liberty only as it fills out the expanse of the eternities. Life, life; eternal life, is the keynote of Christ and his gospel. So, too, if there be any thing that was characteristically apostolic, it was the intense gaze which the apostles were wont to fasten on the future world. Their citizenship was in heaven. They walked by faith, not by sight. They endured as seeing him who is invisible. They felt that they were in very deed saved by hope. They looked for and hasted unto the coming of the day of God, when he, who was their life, should appear, and they should appear with him in glory. They watched, as if on tip toe, for that glorious reappearing, when their absent King should come the second time without sin unto salvation. (Rom. 8:24; 2 Cor. 5:7; Phil 3:20; Col. 3:4; Titus 2:13; Heb. 11:28; 2 Peter 3:12.) They were pre-eminently men of expectation, drawing their daily and hourly inspiration from the powers of the world to come. They never preached Jesus without preaching also the resurrection. Oh, that resurrections pre-supposing, as it did, the atoning death, sealing its worth and glorifying it—that blessed resurrection was their theme, their ecstasy, their conquering pæan.

This, then, is one of the grand, fundamental, characterizing truths of the gospel, that Jesus Christ hath abolished death, and brought life and immortality to light, being himself the resurrection and the life. (John 11:25; 2 Tim. 1:10.) How, then, shall this friend of ours, who, by the supposition, has felt in his own breast the power of that resurrection, (Phil 3:10) as the earnest of his own, symbolize to others his blessed assurance that death has lost its sting, being swallowed up in victory? What symbol shall he invent which shall shadow forth to others his confident expectation that the day is coming when this corruption shall put on incorruption, and this mortal immortality; and he himself shall walk with Christ in everlasting chastity and peace and glory? The first problem is to symbolize his own spiritual death; the second, his own spiritual resurrection; the third, his own total defilement; the fourth, his own total purification; the fifth, the atoning death by which he has been made alive and cleansed; the sixth, the accrediting and joy-giving resurrection; the seventh, the resurrection of his own body, and so the heaven to come. What shall the symbol, or symbols, be?

Such are the leading truths which any one about to make a public confession of his Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ would naturally wish to express. They are the cardinal points of a Christian’s creed, bearing him from this polluted earth to the saintly heaven through the redeeming work of a divine Mediator, first abased and then exalted. I have asked you, at the close of each successive point, to select or devise some symbol which should shadow forth that point. I now ask you to invent a symbol which shall comprehend all these points in a single emblem. It will be a difficult task; for these truths contemplate the believer and his Saviour at the extremes of their conditions—the believer in his death and filth, and also in his quickening and spotlessness; the Saviour at the nadir of his humiliation and also at the zenith of his glorification. Nothing is so wide apart as the uncleanness of sin and the chastity of holiness, except Jesus the buried and Jesus the risen. And now I ask you to express, in one single emblem, these antipodal truths. It is a colossal task. Put, then, your inventive powers to utmost tension. Search the heavens above: search the depths below: what do you find above, below, that will help you?

III. But I will spare you the fruitless trouble. I will give you the pattern shown me in the mount. Wouldst thou symbolize thy death in sin and thy resurrection to holiness? Then be buried by BAPTISM into death; that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so thou also mayst walk in newness of life. (Rom. 6:4.) Wouldst thou symbolize thy total defilement and thy desire for total purification? Then arise and be baptized, and wash away thy sins. (Acts 22:16.) Wouldst thou symbolize thy belief in a buried and risen Mediator, and thy participation in his death and resurrection? Then be buried with him in baptism, wherein also arise with him. (Col. 2:12.) Wouldst thou symbolize thy confident expectation that thou shalt share in his blissful immortality? Then submit thyself to baptism—descending into the liquid tomb and emerging: for if thou art planted together with him in the likeness of his death, thou shalt be also in the likeness of his resurrection. (Rom. 6:5.) Oh, glorious symbol this of the Christian’s creed! He may tell me in words all that he believes about himself and about his Lord. He may tell me of his sins and his hopes—his tears for the past and his resolves for the future. He may tell me all that Jesus has done for him, and all that he intends to do for Jesus. But when I see him silently submitting himself to holy baptism, I read a more eloquent story, told in a language which all peoples of the earth can understand; which changes not with the flight of years; which no oratory can rival; which carries the head, because it has first carried the heart; which is the truth of God expressed in the act of man. Not that there is any thing in the ordinance which savours of regenerating or sanctifying tendency. For baptism is a symbol, not a power; a shadow, not the substance. And it shadows forth, at the same instant, the most momentous events in the history of Christ and in the history of the Christian; all that Christ has suffered and done for us; all that we mean to suffer and do for Christ; all that we are by nature; all that we hope to be by grace. Verily, none but a God infinite in counsel could have devised a rite so simple and yet so dense with meaning and glory! To him be all the praise!

IV. Brethren, my task is done. I have shown you that the principle of symbolism pervades all nature—all Scripture; that Jesus himself is the symbol of symbols—God’s mighty parable to man. In asserting, then, that baptism is a symbol, I have asserted nothing which is an exception to God’s method of communicating with the race, but something which is in exquisite harmony with it. In setting forth baptism as a symbol, I have shown you that it expresses the distinctive, cardinal, vital truths of the gospel; truths without which there is nothing but hell; with which the kingdom of heaven is opened unto all believers. I have shown you that baptism, as being a symbol, is also a creed; being as truly a doctrinal formula enunciated in act, as is the Apostles’ creed or the Nicene enunciated in words. In carrying out this train of thought, you will bear me witness that I have assailed no man or sect or heresy, feeling assured that if there be error in the world, it can be best overcome, not by fighting it, but by quietly putting the truth alongside of it; for truth, although of slower growth than falsehood, is longer lived. It only remains for me to show that baptism, taken as a symbol, is, and was designed of the Master to be, a power, to be wielded as such by the church of the living God.

What power there is in a symbol, we need not go to the books or across the ocean to learn. Visit within me one of the battle-fields of the Civil War. All around us—right, left, before, behind—the red sea of battle heaves and roars. But look! By yonder turn in the valley the billow swells highest and reddest. Here seems the maelstrom of the fury—the crucible spot of the fight. Here platoon blends with platoon, bayonet crosses bayonet, breast hurtles against breast. And now another awful shock, fiercest of all; and then, above the groan of dying and boom of gun, swells a shout, long, clear, ecstatic: “It is ours!” What is “ours”? A smoke-blackened, shot-riddled, bayonet-rent bit of bunting—as a piece of cloth, nothing; as the star spangled banner, every thing. Into that banner are gathered country and constitution and government and liberty and glory and fireside and altar. As a piece of cloth it is nothing; as a symbol, it is the concentrated essence of the United States. And this is its power. So long as the flag floats over his ranks, the soldier feels that he has every thing to fight for—every thing to make him fight. Wrest his flag from him, and he feels that all is lost.

Even so is it with baptism, the heavenly devised banner of Immanuel’s gospel and church. As a mere act, it is nothing but a ceremony; as a mere ordinance, nothing but a command; as a symbol, it is the gospel of the Nazarene crystallized into formula, or rather, vitalized into a conscious, joyous incarnation. Substitute any other banner for it, and you substitute a human device for a divine—a heresy for a gospel—secessionism for loyalty. Use it as a rite, but not as a symbol, and you surrender the flag, the day, the cause. Accept it as a symbol, preach it as a symbol, administer it as a symbol, and it will sweep forth conquering and to conquer, until throughout the whole world there shall be but one fold as already there is but one Shepherd. By this sign—not Constantine’s, but Constantine’s Master’s, we shall conquer.

The Madison Avenue Lectures were published in 1867 by the American Baptist Publication Society. It contained 18 lectures and were delivered in the Madison Avenue Baptist Church, New York, by special request of the pastor, Henry G. Weston, D.D.

The marked excellence of the Lectures, as expositions of the truths which are embodied and exhibited in the precious ordinances of the gospel, and of the views which are held by the members of the “Baptized Churches,” as they were originally called; their broad and thorough survey of the topics brought under discussion; and the genial spirit of true Christian courtesy which breathes through them, give promise of a wide usefulness. Hence, they are committed to the press, in the earnest hope that the Lord will use them as a means of advancing His own truth and of promoting that object so dear to the Lord, and to all who walk in fellowship with him,—the full, and joyous union of His people in the truth.

—Introductory Note from the original publication.