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and the poor. If a murderous mob. burned a
mau to death last Sunday night, what shall we
say of the minister who wastes his half hour
next Sunday in discussing the various theories
of the atonement? If, where church members
hold the balance of power, the city government
is honey-combed with graft, if saloons are open
on every corner and vice stalks all the streets
at night, what of the pulpit that occupies itself
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? 1111 muucci Ui Utt^UiUl I >V J.LU11 piCSOIll UUIX1X1Ution
is on, why take time to speculate on the
number of the elect? Jesus set us no such example;
nor John the Baptist, nor Amos. The
prophets dealt with the needs of their own day,
they denounced the idolatry of their own times,
they applied the fundamental principles of
righteousness to the problems of the people among
whom they dwelt, their preaching was perilously
direct. These also are days and times which
demand the same directness; we ourselves are
the people who need to be called constantlyto the
practice of common righteousness, and reminded
of the present obligation of the eleven commandments.
And besides all this the great
world outside waits in the bondage of its sin for
the simple message of salvation through Jesus
Christ unmixed with any of the complexities of
systematic theology.
One sometimes hears men fresh from the theological
seminaries preaching Sunday after Sun^o,r
^ ?i?i? 1
uoj uu uuicilia Ui tuc U1U SUllUlOSllU iiieuiugy.
Those old questions would be very interesting
if only Satan were off on a vacation. But old
sin is taking on every day new and perplexing
forms as our boasted civilization advances, and
is like to deceive the very elect. It is against
these present shapes of evil that the battle must
be fought; it is the difficulties and perplexities
of this year that must be met. One is tempted
to suggest a well-endowed chair of '' Present Day
Problems" for all theological seminaries, from
which the broadest, livest men of the Church
shall show young men what to preach about?
a daily course running through the three years.
The Bible does not need twisting into ornamental
forms with homiletic ingenuity. It is a book
of large simplicity. Give it the plain understanding
of practical sense and it yields its permanent
lessons for the life and needs of all the
world.
Preachiner must tret somewhere A r?rettv
conceit, an odd way of looking at some old text
may awaken a momentary surprise; but for the
true purposes of the preacher these things are
but impertinencies unless they lead out into life
and service for today and tomorrow, unless they
make men and women live for something, unless
they help the Church to see its urgent duty
and its boundless opportunity.
"Weaverville, N. C.
AMEN.
The Methodist habit of saying "Amen" in
their early history had something to do with the
increase of religious fervor, and, although less
common today, does not seem out of place in
many of their meetings. The nr?o.t.iee. whk never
so common among Baptists, although in revivals
and at other times it has been spontaneous and
appropriate. But it is not now common in more
formal meetings, and while an occasional
"Amen" is not out of place in our great denominational
assemblies, a single individual may easily
make a nuisance of himself by shouting
"Amen" and groaning all through an address
as though he had the stomachache, especially
when there is little religious fervor in the address,
and not much to call out "Amen" even
from a Methodist. A Southern brother who occupied
a front seat at the Bantist World Al.
liance gave us a horrible example of how a thing,
proper in itself, may be carried to extremes.?
Journal and Messenger.
PRESBYTERIAN OF THE SO
SPRINKLING.
BY KEV. B. F. BED1NUEK.
in.
We have uow learned from the Bible that God
commanded the sprinkling of water to signify
the cleansing of the heart from sin; that Christ
baptized the disciples by pouring out the Spirit
upon them, and that John the Baptist used water
as God commanded, namely, by sprinkling it
upon the penitent.
By reading through your Book you find the
word baptize, in various forms, about one hundred
times. It is usually not translated, but
simply transliterated, or transferred, into the
English, in several places it is translated by
the word "wash." Thus in Mark 7:4 we are
told " * * except they wash * * *" as the washing
of cups, and pots, brazen vessels, and of
tables," or " beds," is in the margin. The Greek
in this verse is "baptize" and "baptism." Did
they immerse themselves '' when they came from
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uinin^ii xjivx tiic,y immerse tueir xaoie
couches on which they reclined at meals? Certainly
not. Nobody believes they did. But they
did purify themselves often. How? "Here is
Elisha the son of Shaphat which poured water
on the hands of Elijah," 2 Ki. 3:11. The Jews
in Christ's day multiplied the ceremonial cleansiugs
commanded in the law of Moses, and made
a religious rite of washing the dishes! Again in
Luke 11: 38 we read the Pharisee was scandalized
by our Lord's ignoring their addition to the law
by not baptizing himself before dinner.
"Washed" is the translation, but the Greek
word is "baptized." Uid he expect him to immerse
himself? No; few Jews ever did. Light
is thrown upon this by the story of the wedding
feast in Cana, Jno. 2:1-10. In v. 6 you find
these words: "And there were set there these
six waterpots of stone, after the manner of purifying
of the Jews, containing two or three firkins
apiece." At most about eighteen gallons of
water, an amount utterly inadequate for immersion,
but plenty for each one to sprinkle himself
before going in to dinner.
Purifying and baptism are identical also in
Jno. 3: 25, 26. John's disciples seek to settle a
dispute with the Jews "about purifying" by
asking John about his baptism. They certainly
understood John's baptism to be the old ceremonial
rite of purification, always performed by
sprinkling. John had intimated that his "baptism
unto repentence for the remission of sins"
was only the outward symbol of what Christ
would do, when he said (Matt. 3:12) "he will
thoroughyl purge his fiour," etc. It is as though
he said, '' I give you the outward sign with which
you have been familiar for centuries, but he will
cleanse your hearts-"
We have already seen that Paul used the
word "baptism" (Heb. 9:10) in unmistakable
reference to the various forms of the rite of
purification as commanded by God to show the
cleansing of the soul from sin. There are two
great types of sin used in the Old Testament?
death and leprosy. Purification from contact
with the dead is directed in detail in Num. 9 as
already noticed. Cleansing from leprosy is described
in Leviticus 14th chapter. Both are by
sprinkling water mingled with blood. The
atoning blood conveyed to the unclean by the
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wctier?ay hi uui 01 me uioou 01 onrisi applied
to the sinner by the Holy Spirit.
We have now found from New Testament
writers, Mark, Luke, John and Paul who unmistakably
call the sprinkling of the Old Testament
rites, BAPTISM. If sprinkling was baptism
to them it must prove to every sincere and
fair mind that such is the meaning of the word
in the New Testament. "Why then was it not
called baptism in the Old Testament?" you
BTH [ October 4, 1911
may ask as others have. Simply because the
Old was written in Hebrew and the New Testament
in Greek and baptize is a Greek word.
xiius n is seen we uu not ueeu 10 go out 01 me
Bible to get a meauiug for its words. It is a
sufficient guide in itself. The best intrepreter of
scripture is scripture itself. Stick to the word
as written by inspiration of God and you will
never dream of anything else being meant by
water baptism than the God-commanded way of
signifying the cleansing of the heart from sin
by the sprinkling of water.
CATHOLIC DENIAL OF PROTESTANT
SALVATION.
BY JUAN ORTS GONZALES.
That Catholics deny the possibility of salvation
to Protestants is proven from undoubted sources.
"We may here consider proofs derived from the
Syllabus of Pius IX, the Magna Charta of present
day Romanism.
I use the authorized translation made by the
Eminent Fernandez Montana, one of the most
reliable, if it is not the best Roman Catholic
authority on this subject, and I reproduce his
views word for word from his Spanish edition
of 1905.
On page 172, chapter 17, he says, in commenting
on proposition 17 of the Syllabus: "We must
not conceive any good hope concerning the eternal
salvation of those who do not belong to the
true Church of Christ." Bear in mind that by
the words '' the true Church of Christ,'' he means
tiie Roman Catholic Church. At the bottom of
the page referred to he says in Latin: "Extra
Ecclesiam nulla datur salus," which means
there is no salvation at all out of the Church of
Rome.
Proposition 18 of the Syllabus says: "Protestantism
is a form of religon dlferent from the
true Christian religion and in such system and
form of religion no one can please God as it
can be done within the Roman Catholic Church.''
Commenting on this same proposition on page
140 he says: "in the old times and even today
the followers of Luther and Calvin, etc., put a
great stress in convincing the world that every
"man nun nnrlnnKfnrl 1 Kn oovn/1 inifhm +V?a T?
vmm. uuuvut/UVVUJ KfKj OUTgU TIHUIU tUC XWHIftll
Catholic Church; but they pretend that every
man can be saved also in the dissenting sects,
ii they are Christian. But the true Christian
Church, that is, the Roman Catholic Church,
protests and teaches that only within her there
are the necessary means for salvation and therefore
that only within her souls can be saved;
out of her, and even in the heretic dissenting
sects as a whole, souls are lost. And such doctrine,"
he says, "is self-evident and entirely
plain, because as a whole the Churches, heretic,
schismatic, Greek, Russian, Egyptian, Armenian,
Abyssinian, and the Protestant sects, Lutheran,
tjaivinistic, zwinglian, etc., neither accept all the
sacraments instituted by Christ nor the real complete
faith, which things are essentially necessary
to salvation."
It is true that he says on page 134, quoting
Pius IX, "Those who ignore the true religion,
if such ignorance is invincible, are free from sin
before God." I question seriously whether the
Catholic editor who has crticised my statements
on this subject is aware of what invincible ignorance
means according to the Roman Catholic
theology. It means, if we applied it to Protes
tants, that they never doubted about their own
religion, that they never thought that some other
religion may be the true one, that they have done
their best to study and find out the true religion
and above all amd particularly that they never
have heard intelligibly anything about the Roman
Catholic religion. Such being the meaning
of invincible ignorance, how many Protestants