PART VI.

STATE OF THE OLD TESTAMENT ARGUMENT.

SECTION XLV.—_Points established by the foregoing Evidence._

A review of the preceding pages will discover the following points to have been established.

1. Baptism was a rite familiar among the Jews at the time of Christ’s coming, and not a new institution then first introduced.

2. Paul being witness, it was an ordinance imposed on Israel at Sinai, as part of the Levitical system.

3. There is no trace, in the Levitical law, of an ordinance for the immersion of the person, in any circumstances, or for any purpose whatever.

4. There is not, anywhere, in the Old Testament an allusion to immersion as a symbolic rite, nor a figure derived from it, although those Scriptures are full of allusions and figures referring to the symbolic import of the pouring and sprinkling of water.

5. There was an ordinance for the immersion of certain things very slightly defiled; which at once illustrates the ritual value of immersion as compared with sprinkling, and the plainness of the language where immersion was meant.

6. The baptisms, therefore, to which Paul refers as having been “imposed on” Israel, could not have been immersions, and the word, _baptizo_, did not in his vocabulary mean, to immerse.

7. The only institutions to which he can have referred are comprehended under the two heads of, administered rites, and self-performed washings.

8. The self-washings were not sacraments, or seals of the covenant, but monitory symbols of duty.

9. The gradation of these washings, the frequency and circumstances of their observance, and the limited facilities available, render it impossible that they can have been immersions.

10. Their symbolic significance, the words used to describe them, the customs as to ablutions, and the washings of the priests in the court of the sanctuary, and of the high priest in the holy place, concur to demonstrate that they were ablutions performed by affusion.

11. The administered rites were sacramental seals of the covenant. They were essentially one in meaning, office, and form; and were invariably performed with a hyssop bush, by an official administrator, sprinkling the recipient with living water, in which was the blood or ashes of sacrifice.

12. In the Hellenistic Greek, the language of the Septuagint, the Apocrypha, and the New Testament, these purifications by sprinkling were called _baptisms_, and they were known and designated by that name by the primitive fathers of the Christian church.

13. These sprinklings of the law were the “divers baptisms” of Paul. So far, therefore, from _baptizo_ meaning to dip, or, to immerse, and nothing else, it is an indisputable fact that for at least fifteen hundred years after the first institution of the rite, baptism was always performed by sprinkling.

14. The ordinance was first instituted to seal the covenant by which the church of God was founded in Israel; and that form of it in which the ashes of the red heifer were used was divinely appointed as the ordinary rite for the reception of applicants to the privileges of that covenant and church.

15. Its symbolism set forth all that is recognized in the Scriptures as meant by Christian baptism. Especially and distinctively was it the sacrament of the purification, or remission of sins.

16. The figure presented in the form of sprinkling or pouring is derived from the rain descending out of heaven, penetrating the earth and making it fruitful; and it signifies the Spirit of life from God imparted to the dead, entering the heart, purging its corruption, and creating new life. To the case of indwelling corruption, with reference to which this rite was appointed, no external washing, such as immersion is supposed to represent, can be of any avail.

17. Affusion is the constant form of action in the ritual law, whether with water, blood, or oil, to signify the efficient agency of the Lord Jesus, in all the functions of administration in his mediatorial office.

18. The recipients of the Levitical baptism, were, at its first institution, the whole congregation of Israel, old and young, thus purified from the defilements of Egypt, sealed unto the covenant of God, and installed as his church. Afterward, they were all, without distinction of sex, age, or nation, who having been suspended for any cause from the communion of the church of Israel, sought in the appointed way restoration; or who were received into it, as infants or proselytes.

19. While this rite was the door of admission to the privileges of the covenant, at Sinai, and so long as the Levitical system survived, it is appropriated by the Spirit, as the chosen figure by which is set forth, in prophecy, the bestowal of the grace of Christ upon the Gentiles, in the gospel day, and upon Israel, restored. “So shall he sprinkle many nations.” “Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean.”

20. The figures of speech corresponding to the forms of sprinkling and pouring appear everywhere in the Old Testament. Pervading and determining the entire structure of the ritual law, they reappear continually, in the historical records, in the devotional and penitent utterances of the Psalmist, the discourses of the Preacher, and the expostulations and warnings of the prophets, and in their glad anticipations of the grace of the coming Messiah. With one and the same spiritual meaning everywhere, these figures pervade and control the whole texture of thought and mode of expression of the sacred writers.

21. This rite of purification by sprinkling was not only thus familiar to Israel, but, under corrupted forms, it had been disseminated throughout the civilized world; so that when the apostles went forth to carry the gospel to the nations, the ideas of sin and guilt, defilement and cleansing, thus nourished, were a very important element in the providential preparation of the world to appreciate and accept the salvation of Christ. While such was the case, the fact is equally significant that among the nations contiguous to Israel there is no trace of ritual purification by immersion,—a form of observance which, had it existed in Israel, could not have failed of imitation by her idolatrous neighbors.

Thus assiduously and multifariously were the people of Israel taught, and trained—by instructions, by warnings, by promises, by rites and ceremonies, enjoined and observed at the sanctuary and at home, which laid hold upon them in every relation of their being and every function of their lives—to conceive of themselves in all their sinfulness and need, and of the coming Messiah in his offices of grace, in the light of this ordinance, and according to the similitude embodied in it. For fifteen centuries these influences were continually at work, until the very bent and tendency of their thoughts and conceptions, in so far as they yielded themselves to the divine agencies thus applied, were moulded to the forms of those rites.

In view of the facts thus developed, two questions present themselves for thoughtful consideration as we proceed with our inquiry. (1.) Is it to be imagined that John and Jesus, in coming to fulfill the prophecies of the Old Testament, which were embodied in sprinkled baptism, would ignore that ordinance, and silently substitute in its place the rite of immersion; thus bringing to naught and repudiating the products of the divine discipline so assiduously pursued through all those centuries, and dissolving every tie of association between the gospel of Christ and the hopes and expectations which the saints had been taught to cherish, by the unanimous testimony of the law, the prophets, and the Psalms, all speaking in the language of the repudiated rite? (2.) Since the name of _baptism_, was, beyond question the designation used for the Levitical sprinklings, how else can we understand John, Christ, and the apostles, than as meaning the same thing, in the similar use which they make of the same word?