of entrance into a new and universal communion. In that early age the scene of the transaction was either some deep wayside spring or well, as for the Ethiopian, or some rushing river, as the Jordan, or some vast reservoir, as at Jericho1 or Jerusalem, whither, as in the Baths of Caracalla at Rome, the whole population resorted for swimming or washing.

The earliest scene of the immersion was in the Jordan. That rushing river - the one river of Palestine - found at last its fit purpose. Although no details are given of the external parts of the ceremony, a lively notion may be formed of the transaction by the scene which now takes place at the bathing of the pilgrims at Easter.2 Their approach to the spot is by night. Above is the bright Paschal moon, before them moves a bright flare of torches, on each side huge watch-fires break the darkness of the night, and act as beacons for the successive descents of the road. The sun breaks over the eastern hills as the head of the cavalcade reaches the brink of the Jordan. The Sacred River rushes through its thicket of tamarisk, poplar, willow, and agnus-castus, with rapid eddies, and of a turbid yellow color, like the Tiber at Rome, and about as broad. They dismount, and set to work to perform their bath; most on the open space, some further up amongst the thickets; some plunging in naked, most, however, with white dresses, which they bring with them, and which, having been so used, are kept for their winding-sheets. Most of the bathers. keep within the shelter of the bank, where the water is about four feet in depth, though with a bottom of very deep mud. The Coptic pilgrims are curiously distinguished from the rest by the boldness with which they

1 Compare the account of the young courtiers of Herod plunging in the tank at Jericho. Joseph. Ant. xv. 33. The word Barrisw is used for it.

2 This account is taken from Sinai and Palestine, chap. 7. I have hardly altered it, lest the original impression should be lost.

dart into the main current, striking the water after their fashion alternately with their two arms, and playing with the eddies, which hurry them down and across as if they were in the cataracts of their own Nile; crashing through the thick boughs of the jungle which, on the eastern bank of the stream, intercepts their progress, and then recrossing the river higher up, where they can wade, assisted by long poles which they have cut from the opposite thickets. It is remarkable, considering the mixed assemblage of men and women, in such a scene, that there is so little appearance of levity or indecorum. A primitive domestic character pervades in a singular form the whole transaction. The families which have come on their single mule or camel now bathe together, with the utmost gravity; the father receiving from the mother the infant, which has been brought to receive the one immersion which will suffice for the rest of its life, and thus, by a curious economy of resources, save it from the expense and danger of a future pilgrimage in after-years. In about two hours the shores are cleared; with the same quiet they remount their camels and horses; and before the noonday heat has set in, are again encamped on the upper plain of Jericho. Once more they may be At the dead of night, the drum again wakes them for their homeward march. The torches again go before; behind follows the vast multitude, mounted, passing in profound silence over that silent plain so silent that, but for the tinkling of the drum, its departure would hardly be perceptible. The troops stay on the ground to the end, to guard the rear, and when the last roll of the drum announces that the last soldier is gone, the whole plain returns again to its perfect solitude.

seen.

Such, on the whole, was the first Baptism. We are able to track its history through the next three centuries. The rite was still in great measure what in its origin it

had been almost universally, the change from darkness to light, from evil to good; the "second birth" of men from the corrupt society of the dying Roman Empire into the purifying and for the most part elevating influence of the living Christian Church. In some respects the moral responsibility of the act must have been impressed upon the converts by the severe, sometimes the life-long, preparation for the final pledge, more deeply than by the sudden and almost instantaneous transition which characterized the Baptism of the Apostolic age. But gradually the consciousness of this "questioning of the good conscience towards God" was lost in the stress laid with greater and greater emphasis on the "putting away the filth of the flesh."

Celebration

in the Pa

tristic age.

Let us conceive ourselves present at those extraordinary scenes, to which no existing ritual of any European Church offers any likeness. There was, as a general rule, but one baptistery 1 in each city, and such baptisteries were apart from the churches. There was but one time of the year when the rite was administered—namely, between Easter and Pentecost. There was but one personage who could administer it the presiding officer of the community, the Bishop, as the Chief Presbyter was called after the first century. There was but one hour for the ceremony; it was midnight. The torches flared through the dark hall as the troops of converts flocked in. The baptistery 2 consisted of an inner and an outer chamber. In the outer chamber stood the candidates for baptism, stripped to their shirts; and, turning to the west as the region of

1 At Rome there was more than one.

2 In the most beautiful baptistery in the world, at Pisa, baptisms even in the Middle Ages only took place on the two days of the Nativity and the Decollation of John the Baptist, and the nobles stood in the galleries to witness the ceremony. See Dr. Smith's Dictionary of Christian Antiquities, i. pp. 160

161.

sunset, they stretched forth their hands through the dimly lit chamber, as in a defiant attitude towards the Evil Spirit of Darkness, and speaking to him by name, said: "I renounce thee, Satan, and all thy works, and all thy pomp, and all thy service." Then they turned, like a regiment, facing right round to the east, and repeated, in a form more or less long, the belief in the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, which has grown up into the so-called Apostles' Creed in the West, and the so-called Nicene Creed in the East. They then advanced into the inner chamber. Before them yawned the deep pool or reservoir, and standing by the deacon, or deaconess, as the case might be, to arrange that all should be done with decency. The whole troop undressed completely as if for a bath, and stood up,1 naked, before the Bishop, who put to each the questions, to which the answer was returned in a loud and distinct voice, as of those who knew what they had undertaken. They then plunged into the water. Both before and after the immersion their bare limbs were rubbed with oil from head to foot; 2 they were then clothed in white gowns, and received, as token of the kindly feeling of their new brotherhood, the kiss of peace, and a taste of honey and milk; and they expressed their new faith by using for the first time the Lord's Prayer. These are the outer forms of which, in the Western Churches, almost every particular is altered even in the most material points. Immersion has become the exception and not the rule. Adult baptism, as well as immersion, exists only among the Baptists. The dramatic action of the scene is lost. The anointing, like the bath, is reduced to a few drops of oil in the Roman Church, and in the Protestant churches has entirely disappeared.

1 Bingham, xi. 2, § 1, 2.

2 Ibid. xi. 9, § 3, 45; xii. 1, 4. Possibly after immersion the undressing and the anointing were partial.

What once could only be administered by Bishops, is now administered by every clergyman, and throughout the Roman Church by laymen and even by women. We propose then to ask what is the residue of the meaning of Baptism which has survived, and what we may learn from it, and from the changes through which it has passed.

I. The ordinance of Baptism was founded on the Jewish- we may say the Oriental-custom, which, both in ancient and modern times, regards ablution, cleansing of the hands, the face, and the person, at once as a means of health and as a sign of purity. We shall presently see that here as elsewhere the Founder of Christianity chose rather to sanctify and elevate what already existed than to create and invent a new form for Himself. Baptism is the oldest ceremonial ordinance that Christianity possesses; it is the only one which is inherited from Judaism. It is thus interesting as the only ordinance of the Christian Church which equally belonged to the merciful Jesus and the austere John. Out of all the manifold religious practices of the ancient law-sacrifices, offerings, temple, tabernacle, scapegoat, sacred vestments, sacred trumpets-He chose this one alone; the most homely, the most universal, the most innocent of all. He might have chosen the peculiar Nazarite custom of the long tresses and the rigid abstinence by which Samson and Samuel and John had been dedicated to the service of the Lord. He did nothing of the sort. He might have continued the strange and painful rite of circumcision. He, or at least His Apostles, rejected it altogether. He might have chosen some elaborate ceremonial like the initiation into the old Egyptian and Grecian mysteries. He chose instead what every one could understand. He took what, at least in Eastern and Southern countries, was the most delightful, the most ordinary, the most salutary, of social observances.