_Pastor._ Those friends who advised you so, think, perhaps, too much of the ceremony itself, and not so much of what it signifies. Now the pleasure of being baptized is nothing compared with having God enter into a covenant in your behalf when you knew nothing about it.
_Mrs. Ford._ They said to me, also, "What right have you to do it, instead of letting her have the choice and privilege of doing it herself hereafter?" I told them that, if we acted on that principle, in the treatment of our children, there would be a long list of useful things, which we do for them, to be postponed.
_Pastor._ We can benefit another without his consent. The question is, whether it is a benefit to a child for God and its natural guardians to make a covenant together in its behalf.
_Mr. Benson._ It surely is so, if God truly is a party to such a covenant. But where is the proof that he is? That is my trouble. They tell me that this covenanting with God for a child, and sealing it with an ordinance, ceased with Abraham, who was a Jew; that it was a Jewish custom, which died out.
_Pastor._ Abraham a mere Jew! God's covenant with a believer and his children a Jewish covenant! Never was there a greater mistake. Paul tells us expressly it was not so. Get me a Bible, Helen, and bring me a lamp. I read these words: "And the promise that he should be heir of the world was not to Abraham and his seed through the law, but through the righteousness of faith." His relation to the world was independent of dispensations; it grew out of that faith which he had in common with all believers to the end of time. "And he received the sign of circumcision, a seal of the righteousness of the faith which he had yet being uncircumcised, that he might be the father of all them that believe, though they be not circumcised." Christ also says: "Moses, therefore, gave unto you circumcision; (not because it is of Moses, but of the fathers.)" Abraham was not a Jew when God covenanted with him, any more than you, madam, were Mrs. Ford, when, at the age of sixteen, as you have told me, you entered into covenant with God. That covenant had chief respect to your immortal soul, and yet it reached in its influences to all the conditions of that soul while here in the flesh. So God covenanted with Abraham as a believer, not as a mere national ancestor; yet temporal and spiritual blessings came in rich measures upon his immediate descendants. But we read, "So then as many as be of faith are blessed with faithful," that is, believing, "Abraham." "And if ye be Christ's, then are ye Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise." Can anything be plainer than this?