Why, then, are infants baptized, when by reason of their tender age they cannot perform Faith and Repentance ?

Because they promise them both by their sureties, which promise, when they come to age, themselves are bound to perform. THIS question and answer is intended to meet a difficulty that was almost sure to suggest itself.

If Repentance and Faith are, as we have seen, necessary qualifications for Baptism, how can it be right to baptize infants, to whom Repentance and Faith are impossible?

Now, how are we to meet this difficulty? Well, first of all, we must remember that Repentance and Faith are necessary, because allowed sin and unbelief would raise barriers to God's grace, which could not be got over. And as infants have neither actual sin nor unbelief, there can be no barrier in their case that would shut out God's grace; and therefore we conclude that they are fit subjects for Baptism.

Then as to a promise of Repentance and Faith being made for them by others, if any one objects and asks how can one person answer for another? The answer is that the necessity of Repentance and Faith does not in any way depend upon a promise made or not made. They are necessary, in the very nature of things, for everybody alike, whether any promise is made or not.

So as the infant is bound in any case to repent and believe, there can be no real objection to his sureties promising repentance and faith in his name, since the child would be equally bound whether these promises were formally made

or not.

There is, unfortunately, a great deal of ignorance and misunderstanding in the matter of God-parents or sureties. It should be remembered, to begin with, that while Baptism is a sacrament of Divine authority, the institution of sponsors is only a practice of the Church.

Ignorant people have been known to think that the surety is responsible for the child's sins until the child is confirmed, and that then the child takes them upon himself!

I need hardly tell you how foolish such a notion is. Sin and responsibility are not things which can be passed from one to another. Each person must bear his own burden.

The real meaning of the institution of God-parents is, first of all, that in Baptism a profession of faith and repentance should be made by some one; and, secondly, that the Church should have some security that the child received into her communion should be instructed in the Christian religion.

If a child's parents should die or desert their charge, the duty of seeing after his religious education would devolve upon the God-parents.

In any case, when the child is grown up to years of discretion, whether he has had God-parents or not, whether his God-parents have done their duty or not, he himself is bound, in the very nature of things, to live a life of repentance and faith, is bound to forsake sin, and to endure as seeing Him who is invisible.

If you feel the truth of this, I am sure you could not fall into such a mistake as to suppose that it is not until a person is confirmed that he is bound to repent and believe. You do not need to be told that the duty of living a life of repentance and faith becomes binding from the first moment that a child knows the difference between right and wrong, and can know what he has to forsake, and in whom he must believe.

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Why then are infants baptized?

POINTED out to you in our last Lesson the difficulty that has arisen about Infant Baptism.

What I said, then, might be enough, if there were not special need to dwell upon this subject.

But I am afraid that there is such special need. Those who object to the doctrine and discipline of the Church have made a dead set at the practice of Infant Baptism.

It is necessary, therefore, that you should be taught something more about it.

There is one large and important sect especially, that scouts the notion of Infant Baptism.

This is the sect of the " Baptists," or, rather, as they should be called, and as they were originally called, "Anabaptists," that is, Repetition Baptists.

This sect teaches that it is useless and foolish to baptize unconscious infants. And if a person baptized in infancy joins their society, they treat his former baptism as a nullity, and baptize him over again.

They support their contention by some plausible arguments. They say that Baptism is a conscious profession of faith, and that since an infant cannot make a profession of faith, and indeed has no faith to profess, he ought not to be baptized.

They say, Where is Infant Baptism commanded in the New Testament? It might be enough to say that Christ's Church was founded, and its sacraments administered, before a single line of the New Testament was written; and that the baptism of infants has been the immemorial practice of the Church.

But as the objectors do not regard the authority of the Church, we may answer their question by asking another. You ask where Infant Baptism is commanded in the New Testament. I ask, in return, WHERE IS IT FORBIDDEN ?

The Christian Church grew out of the Jewish Church; the Christian sacraments sprung out of Jewish ordinances. Christ

said Himself, that He came not to destroy the Law, but to fulfil it. The letter of the Jewish ordinances has passed away, but the spirit of them survives.

Now the practice of the Jews was to receive male children into covenant by the rite of Circumcision, and female children (though this is not certain) by a sort of baptism.

Surely if Christ said nothing to the contrary, it would be taken for granted that the children of Christian parents should be received into the Christian Church, as Jewish children were received into the Jewish Church.

And when did Christ say anything to the contrary? Did He not rather say, "Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not, for of such is the Kingdom of God" (S. Mark x. 14).

If the children of Jewish converts to Christianity might not be baptized, then they were better off as Jews; for, as Jews, children though they were, they were admitted into covenant with God.

And then as to its being unreasonable that unconscious infants should receive the gift of God's grace, it must be remembered that it was by no choice on our part that we were born into this world of sin and sorrow, and why then should we not be born again to a new life, without choice on our part?

Infancy presents no barrier to the receiving of a sinful nature from the first Adam; why, then, should it be supposed to be a bar against receiving the new nature of the second Adam?

This, then, is our answer to the question-" Why then are infants baptized?"

Why was the sacrament of the Lord's Supper ordained? For the continual remembrance of the sacrifice of the death of Christ, and of the benefits which we receive thereby.

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THINK it will help you to understand this if you keep in mind what I told you last Sunday.

I told you that the Christian Religion arose out of the Jewish Religion, that the Christian Church sprung from the bosom of the Jewish Church.

All that was good and true in the Jewish Religion passed on into the Christian Religion, leaving only a dead husk behind. The Church of Christ became the true Israel.

Thus the two great ordinances of the Jewish Dispensation passed into the two great sacraments of the Christian Dispensation.

The Jewish Passover became the Lord's Supper, the Christian Eucharist.

So what the Passover was to the Jewish Church, the Lord's Supper is to the Christian Church.

The Lord's Supper was, as you know, instituted by our Lord at the Passover. It was that they might keep the Passover, that Jesus and His Apostles were gathered together in the upper room at Jerusalem, on that memorable night that preceded the day of His Passion.

The bread which Christ blessed was the unleavened bread of the Passover; the wine which He blessed was the mixed cup of the Passover. So S. Paul speaks of Christ as our Passover, our Paschal Lamb, sacrificed for us" (1 Cor. v. 7).

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It follows, then, that the Lord's Supper was intended to be in the Christian Church what the Passover had been in the Jewish Church.

Now the Passover was both a Sacrifice, and a Feast upon a Sacrifice; therefore the Lord's Supper is both a Sacrifice, and a Feast upon a Sacrifice.

And this is borne out by the words of institution—“ Do this in remembrance of me," or "Make this, as my memorial." “The breaking of bread" is a memorial before God, a solemn pleading of the One Sacrifice of Christ.