scarcely remember to have met with. It is beneath indignation, and almost beneath contempt. But for the sacredness of the subject, we would commend it to our laughter-loving readers in place of the last comic Almanac. But it is printed; it is issued from a respectable publishing house; and it has had, we understand, a considerable circulation in some sections of the country. "A book's a book, although there's nothing in 't," and the volume before us abundantly proves that a book may be a book with much less and worse than nothing in it. We devote to it, therefore, a brief notice, although reluctantly, as we cannot persuade ourselves to transfer to our own pages its accumulated scurrilities regarding the rite of Baptism. The author seems, himself, to harbor a faint suspicion that his work does not strikingly exemplify the amenities of controversial literature. "The manner of the author," so he prefaces," will probably appear to some rather abrupt and sarcastic." As to the abruptness,' we assure him that his work would have been the better for more of it, and for the results of his sarcasm' he need not be alarmed. The Baptist cause has a long lease of life if it encounters no more formidable weapon than the sarcasm of Mr. Philippe Wolff.

"He freely acknowledges that he has not made the futile attempt of conciliating Baptists by soft words and honeyed arguments: that, on the contrary, he has spoken out all his mind frankly, and sometimes reflected severely upon them as a whole." Thoughtful, conscientious, self-sacrificing man! How hard it must have been to keep from casting his pearls before swine! How difficult to hold back the "soft words and honeyed arguments" which were just ready to burst from his loving heart, and assume the severity demanded by the insensate and impracticable temper of the people with whom he had to deal! How sore a trial to one so eager to dip his pen in honey, to find himself compelled to dip it in gall! Every day does not present instances of the heroism which can sacrifice Christian charity on the altar of sectarian controversy, and perhaps Mr. Wolff might have well inquired whether he was called upon for so large an offering, and whether, if respect for his opponents did not require him to

maintain truth and decency, it was not due at least to himself and to the sacred subject which he was handling.

"But while doing this (merely reflecting on Baptists as a whole), he has carefully abstained from all personalties." This was kind of him; and it will be a great comfort to every individual Baptist who may consult this book, to know that he is not likely to meet any personal aspersions upon himself, but that the author's abuse is generously restricted to the entire denomination.

"He knows that he can never obtain forgiveness for writing such a book, from that class of people to whom their peculiar views are like another Gospel, the truth of which is neither to be questioned nor investigated." Now, we can assure the author of this book that he may dismiss his apprehensions that the people whom he assails will be the hardest to please in this matter. If his friends can forgive him, those whom he accounts his enemies can abundantly afford to. Baptists can scarcely cherish ill will toward such an assailant. "O that mine enemy would write a book," is an exclamation dating back to a very remote antiquity, and if Baptists do not rejoice over this book, and more than forgive its author, it will be because they are more solicitous for the honor of our common Zion, and more anxious that its precincts should not be invaded by rude and unhallowed feet, than that an opponent of their cause should appear in an attitude of pitiable imbecility. Baptists, as such, we assure our amiable but self-denying censor, will forgive him. Whether Pedobaptists can, is a question for themselves to settle. Did we belong to that enlightened and noble body which (wrong as we deem it in an important point of Christian ritual) is filling our land and the world with the fruits of its fervid piety and holy enterprise, we could not read such a book as this without indignation and shame. It is a bad sign of our times that it could be published at all; it would be almost inexplicable if among pious and enlightened Pedobaptists it could obtain anything approaching to a decent circulation.

As to their "peculiar views" being to the Baptists “like another Gospel," we beg to correct the author. Their peculiar

views are not to them like another Gospel, but a very important, though of course not the most vital, part of the one original Gospel of Christ and his Apostles. It is the peculiar views of their opponents which, substituting in part a ritual for a spiritual Christianity, they deem to belong to another Gospel. And as to the question whether they hold that the truth of their views is to be neither questioned nor investigated,' the world will judge. Baptists have probably sense enough to know that their views will be investigated, whether they like it or not, and they have no consciousness with themselves of shrinking from the inquiry. If the Baptists covet anything, it is impartial and thorough investigation. If they have any ground of reliance for the progress of their sentiments, it is here. The prevailing usage of the Protestant world is against them; to that, therefore, they can make no hopeful appeal. Wealth, and power, and social position, throughout Christendom, preponderate overwhelmingly against them; these, therefore, cannot be their trust. But the prevailing scholarship of the Protestant world is, as it ever has been, little else than unanimously with them. To this, therefore, they can appeal with confidence; and all that they ask is, that the question be decided, not in the forum of traditional and prejudiced usage, but in that of scholarly inquiry. We appeal from Philip drunk to Philip sober: from the practices of the great erudite lights and leaders of the Church, to their deliberate recorded judgments. We are perfectly willing that a jury of the most eminent Pedobaptist scholars should be summoned to try the case, and we readily abide, for we know in advance, their decision. When Rev. Philippe Wolff comes forward and declares immersion to be no baptism, and only an indecent and profane parody of a Christian institution, he is crossing the track, not merely of Baptist opinion, but of the collective scholarship of the world. He is running a reckless and headlong tilt against the great leaders of that host under whose banners he is himself enlisted. The truth is, as to the mode of New Testament baptism Baptists need not say one word. They can find ample refuge from any storm of argument or invective under the broad shields of the

leaders of the opposing ranks. The question has been settled for them; settled long since by the voice of Christendom; settled by the almost unanimous suffrages of men who would not allow even inconsistent individual practice to adulterate their testimony to the truth. The case has been decided, and if it is to be re-opened-to which the Baptists have not the slightest objection, we submit that abilities of another order than those of Mr. Philippe Wolff will be demanded to secure a reversal of the decision.

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Our author's initial chapter is on the two kinds of baptism, that of water, and that of the Spirit. We have no interest in dwelling upon it, further than to say that the author's reference of the baptism in Mark xvi., "He that believeth and is baptized, shall be saved," to the baptism of the Spirit, is an exposition in which he probably stands nearly alone, and always will. That the injunction of the Lord in Math. xxvi., Baptizing them in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost," has reference to water baptism, our author himself has not the hardihood to deny. No reasonable man can doubt that the corresponding passage in Mark has the same reference. Nor does this view place faith and baptism upon the same footing as conditions of salvation. Faith is the one indispensable and sufficient condition; baptism is naturally and properly connected with it as the established and invariable mode by which the new-born believer's allegiance to Christ was expressed. The substance and the symbol are here naturally associated, as they ever were in the subsequent procedure of the Apostles. The book of the Acts is a perpetual commentary on the language of the Commission, and shows how literally the Apostles understood, and how faithfully they carried out its injunction.

The author's second chapter is devoted to the Fathers of the Church. He does not like the Fathers, and one would suppose from the abrupt' way in which he deals with and abandons them, that he had not derived from the study of them much aid and comfort. "We renounce completely," he says, "the use of the Fathers, and we shall not invoke their testimony in support of our doctrines on baptism." "It is

only toward the commencement of the third century, that the testimony of the Fathers on controverted points in the practice of baptism, becomes clear and decisive. But it is then already too late to decide with certainty, through this means, what must have been the practice of the Apostles. A century and a half was more than sufficient to modify, considerably, both the doctrine and the practice of baptism, which already we find sadly mixed up with superstition and paganism." Still, it is from no fear as to the nature of patristic testimony, that the author declines resorting to it. "We are convinced, on the contrary, that the testimony of the Fathers on behalf of infant baptism would crush its adversaries, and that even those patristical extracts which are most prized by the Baptists, as favoring their doctrine, witness in reality against them when sifted and closely examined." Perhaps they do; and perhaps the practice of the Fathers had become as corrupt regarding the subjects of baptism as he himself assures us it had become regarding the mode. He tells us (p. 88) that the Fathers found their immersion in an imitation of the rites" of Paganism, and who can assure us that their infant baptism came from any better source? We will simply say that, whatever the defects of the early Fathers, this complete repudiation of their testimony regarding this public rite of initiation into the Church, scarcely augurs favorably for our author's cause. In regard to the Fathers, Baptists treat them as they treat all the secondary authorities. They follow them so far as they followed Christ, and simply make use of them as helps in determining, or rather, perhaps, in demonstrating what was Apostolic usage. None can be more sensible than we of the early deterioration which took place in the spirit and doctrines of the Church. The undue magnifying of the efficacy of baptism led to the extension of the rite to infants and to the sick, and this again led to the occasional substitution of sprinkling for immersion. Yet the universal recognition by the Fathers of immersion as the baptism of the Church, is a fact which no sophistry can disguise, and no ingenuity can explain away. The attempt to father it upon the rites and usages of heathenism is worse than ludicrous;