=(3) The Example of the Apostolic Church.=--The example of the apostolic Church in the matter of the means of grace is especially significant. In the apostolic age, it might have seemed as though these simple exercises might be dispensed with. What need of regularly appointed forms when the Holy Spirit was so immediately manifested? Yet as a matter of fact all of the essential forms of Christian custom were present from the beginning. Regularity and diligence were cherished even in the first exuberance of the Jerusalem church. Enthusiasm of spiritual life did not lead to the despising of ordinary helps; the early disciples "continued stedfastly," "day by day," "with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread at home, they took their food with gladness and singleness of heart." Acts 2:46.
The use which the apostolic Church made of the Bible might seem to some modern men particularly surprising. A book religion, men say, is a stagnant religion; living faith is independent of dead documents; it is only when the early enthusiasm is lost that belief becomes crystallized in submission to venerable authority. This sort of religious philosophy shatters on the plain facts of the apostolic age. Admittedly that was an age of freshness and independence. There never has been such an outburst of religious enthusiasm as that which planted the faith in Jerusalem and carried it like wildfire throughout the civilized world. Yet another fact is equally plain--this wonderful enthusiasm was coupled with the utmost reverence for a book. Nothing could exceed the unquestioning submission which the early Christians paid to the Old Testament Scriptures. The exuberance of apostolic Christianity was intertwined with a book religion!
The explanation, of course, is simple. Submission to a human book means stagnation; but genuine submission to the Word of God means always what it meant in the apostolic age--heroism and victory and life.
=(1) Baptism and Circumcision.=--The sacrament of baptism had its truest predecessor in circumcision, the Old Testament sign of union with the covenant people. Baptism as well as circumcision is a sign of the covenant, though the varied symbolism marks the advance of the new covenant over the old.