basis, as in Abraham, he would require the consecration of the parent and the children. He would make the family, not the individual, the foundation. of his earthly kingdom: "Thee and thy seed." The family comes in and goes out on the responsibility of adult years. The convert has come to years of discretion, and goes in voluntarily, taking with him, however, his irresponsible and unchoosing children. So he who apostatizes ejects his infant offspring from God's earthly kingdom. They have no option, and are "cut off." Thus the family in its seed and generations becomes again alien from God, as its ancestors were. This is family admission and family rejection, since the covenant specifies, "thy seed after thee.” A marked feature of this second seal of the second part is the regard it compels to the posterity of the believer. While circumcision sealed Abraham's covenant with God, it sealed his seed in their generations.

This sacred sealing of men, and setting them apart from a worldly to a divinely-constituted spiritual kingdom, was never before distinctly done. It was not done at any preceding time with Abraham. Yet that God had such a kingdom in the times of the prophets and patriarchs, all confess, as also that it was a visible organization at the advent of Christ. The prophets rejoice in its prosperity, mourn over its decline, and glory in its millennial prospects. It is the spiritual centre of the Mosaic religious system, the Church in the wilderness, and the sacrificing, anti-idolatrous body in Egypt. We trace it back as a body, organic and manifest, till we come to the

system inaugurated by this covenant, and to the society sealed by this rite; and we can trace it no farther. The New Testament, by a great variety of allusions, traces it to the same period and source. So we think that we find here the beginning of the visible Church of God.

Indeed, if a covenant ecclesiastical was not adopted at this time, and a Church-state entered into, what was the nature, design, or extent of that second part of the Abrahamic compact? It was spiritual and not temporal: its embracing line was one of faith and not of blood. Its seal was to be repeated from age to age, on successive generations, long after the promised land was inherited, and the real-estate compact executed. The limits of country assigned to those thus covenanted and sealed were not "from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates,” but "from sea to sea, and from the river to the ends of the earth." Its seal was preserved, and applied to Jewish offspring and proselytes, till the coming of our Lord. It was, then, a rite of initiation to what, if not to the Church of God? But if the Church of God, then that body first took human form in the Abrahamic Covenant.

3

CHAPTER III.

THE OTHER THEORY.

THERE is another and an opposing theory as to the origin and constitution of the Church of God. This theory discards substantially the Old Testament as a book of authority on this topic, and leaves us with the singular question whether the Old-Testament saints were Church-members, or could find a Church to join. We shall best state the theory in the words of an able exponent and advocate of it.1

He is stating the "principles held to be true and fundamental by nearly all the Baptists in our land." "One of these principles is, that the New Testament is our ultimate authority in respect to Church order and action.” "We are unable to discover in them [the Old-Testament Scriptures] any proper model or account of a Christian Church." "The Jewish nation may indeed have been typical of the spiritual Israel or kingdom of Christ, just as the Jewish sacrifices were typical of Christ, the Lamb of God; but it would be as unsafe to infer the organization of a Christian Church from the national organization of the Israelites, as it would have been to infer the

1 Close Communion. By Rev. A. Hovey, D.D., professor in Newton Theological Seminary. (Bib. Sacra, xix. 133, et seq.)

manner of Christ's death from the manner of slaying a lamb by the Jewish high-priest." "Evidently, so far as the Bible is concerned, we are remitted to Christ and his apostles for light on all questions of Church order and action." "Another of these principles is, that the constitution and work of Christian Churches are definitely fixed by the New Testament." "To found the Church was the work of Christ and his inspired followers."

Speaking of the converts on the day of Pentecost, he says: "These Christians were baptized; they were under the guidance and teaching of the apostles; they met together almost daily for social worship; they provided for their poor with great liberality; and they were living in the same city. Were they not, then, to all intents and purposes, a Christian Church, a distinct, organized, responsible body, prepared to act in concert upon all matters of discipline and common interest? If not, when did they become such a body? body? A community of baptized believers, under common instruction, and united in worship, — what is that but a Church of Christ? "

These quotations are a clear and ample statement of the other theory as to the origin and constitution of the Church. On such a theory and assertion of it we remark in several particulars.

a. It is a violent division of the Bible as a book of authority. We glory, as against the Papist, in the saying of Chillingworth, "The Bible, the Bible only, is the religion of Protestants." Yet here, in set

tling a "fundamental principle" for one of the Christian denominations, about seven-ninths of the whole Bible is practically set aside as authority.

The question of the beginning, structure, growth, and final conquest of the Church in this world is fundamental to God's redemptive economy for man. Immediately following the need of a Redeemer, Christ was promised and manifested; and pre-eminence was given to him in this world as "the Head over all things to the Church." This headship, and to a body, he maintains conspicuously through the Old-Testament history. Why, then, should seven-ninths of the records of this "body of Christ" be challenged and set aside when we come to inquire into the constitution of the body? The Old Testament is good authority for the creed of a Church: why not for a constitution? "Whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning." We so divide the Bible on no other question of a fundamental kind; and so doing it here puts it in the position of a slighted, overshadowed, and divided wit

ness.

In the civic court, impeachment excludes the witness totally. His testimony may not be divided, to be accepted and rejected as may serve a purpose. The Bible is a divine unit among books, though the bookbinder put it up in two volumes, or the Bible Society issue it in twenty. If going backward one chapter from Matthew to Malachi, four hundred and fifty years, takes us outside of "ultimate authority in respect to Church order," why should not the fifteen hundred between Matthew and Moses