ROM the prominence given in the preceding pages to the restoration of baptism to the place it occupied in the primitive age, the impression may have been made that this was the only matter of importance that Mr. Scott rescued from the false views entertained concerning it, and the disuse as a practical element of the gospel scheme, into which it had fallen. Had this been all, it was no light matter to have restored an ordinance of the gospel which had been perverted to purposes certainly not contemplated by its author: as in infant sprinkling, as almost universally practiced, which was, indeed, a practical rejection of the ordinance, the change being so complete as to make the mode, subject, and design, all different from what they were in the hands of the apostles. In the light of the great Commission, faith and baptism are manifestly enjoined on none save those who had the ability to believe the gospel and obey its teachings; and the manner in which the apostles carried out the Commission, in requiring a personal faith and obedience in order to the enjoyment of the favor of God, and a place in the Church of Christ, is proof that infant sprinkling is an afterthought, a human addition, which abrogates the divinely-enjoined [281] requisite for baptism--"If thou believest with all thy heart thou mayest."

      But even among the Baptists who rejected infant baptism, there seemed to be no clear conception of the divine purpose or design of the ordinance, for the form or mode of which they stood up so stoutly. Conversion with them, as with nearly all the existing religious parties, did not consist in believing and obeying the truth, but in being made the subject of an indescribable supernatural power, which resulted in the regeneration of the soul that came under its influence. This they regarded as an effectual call--a being born again--a being made alive from the dead--in which it was claimed that the dead sinner was as passive as Lazarus when he lay in the sepulchre, and with as little power to raise himself from the death of sin, as the brother of Mary and Martha to waken from the sleep of death. They received none to baptism save those who professed some such change as above noted; such they regarded as converted, as the children of God, and yet, with strange inconsistency, refused them membership in their churches, and a place at the Lord's Table until they were baptized; thus practically denying that baptism was an element of conversion, or one of the conditions of pardon, since conversion and pardon in their view must precede baptism, thus making it more difficult to enter the Baptist church than it was to enter the kingdom of God. In their view, men were in Christ before they were "baptized into Christ," regenerated, or born again, before they were "born of water" as well as of spirit, as Christ had said. Had it, then, been the beginning and end of Elder Scott's work to set [282] this matter right--it was a great and needed work; but he claimed to have effected a reform in many other important particulars. His advocacy made many other things straight which had been crooked before, and he thus presents the various new points included in his plea.

      "1st. It introduced Faith on Evidence.

      "2d. Repentance on Motive.

      "3d. Obedience on Authority.

      "4th. It instituted a new advocacy, namely, immediate obedience. "5th. It brought remission to all souls.

      "6th. It put the gift of the Holy Spirit where the Scripture puts it.

      "7th. It destroyed in this manner false standards which men and ministers had set up, and brought back obedience to the gospel and Scriptures as the test of remission.

      "8th. It discriminated between faith and hope, for the people instinctively felt that their feelings were not a proper standard by which to try their pardon and conversion.

      "9th. It proved what had not been seen before--that the Calvinistic and Arminian systems were one at last, and could both be resolved into arbitrary spiritual operations, and it introduced in form this Reformation.

      "10th. It restored the creed of our religion to its proper place and eminence above all other things in the gospel.

      "11th. It harmonized our experience with Scripture by calling us to duty; for the experience of professors heretofore was at war with the Word of God, and was regarded as a standard of conversion.

      "12th. It threw aside all those pompous but human words with which the gospel was loaded--such as total depravity, effectual calling, special operations, special [283] grace, general and special atonement, irresistible grace, common operations of the Spirit, special call, universal salvation, dead faith, dead letter, spiritual regeneration, sprinkling, pouring, crossing, sponsors, eternal justification, initial justification, Christian experience, spiritual faith, application of the Word by the Spirit, act of faith, direct and reflex acts of faith, feeling pardon; those highly dangerous technicalities which had long incumbered and obscured the gospel, and which had put down the language of Scripture, and made the Word of God of no effect; were wholly negatived and laid aside.

      "13th. It limited the faith and love of the gospel to a person; not a doctrine or a fact.

      "14th. It delivered from false centers of affection, as well as false centers of faith; for while it held up the Lord Jesus in his divine nature for faith, it also held him up in his offices for affection; for it baptized men for remission of sins by his blood. A doctrine was no longer the center.

      "15th. It rescued us from the dominion of false feeling and false experiences.

      "16th. One of the first effects of the advocacy was to give us the most distinct apprehension between faith and feeling, fancy and experience.

      "17th. It was perfectly exclusive, and refused to make the slightest concession to the value of creeds--making the Bible the only rule and guide."

      Nearly all these matters are of prime importance, and most of them had, in a great measure, been lost sight of; and, in restoring those evident truths, and the better practice which grew out of a clear preception of them, he performed a work for which we can not be too grateful. In discovering the truths which had, in a measure, been lost, he also discovered the weakness of the errors which had been [284] substituted for the forgotten or neglected truth. Of the weakness and insufficiency of creeds, and the more excellent way of the Bible, he thus writes:

      "It is a truth of singular importance that sects make no creeds for sinners, but for their own party church. Their creeds are intended to show what their church believes; all that they expect the sinner to believe is, that he has been the subject of special operations of the Spirit, and has been converted. The recovery of the truth, therefore, was really the recovery of a creed that belonged to the world; this discovery had a world-wide importance, as will appear from the following arrangement:

      "1st. The truth recovered.

      "2d. The analysis.

      "3d. Baptism for the remission of sins.

      "4th. The invitation to immediate obedience.

      "5th. Taking the converts and boldly baptizing them at once.

      "The analysis, viz.: Faith, Repentance, Baptism, Gift of the Holy Spirit, and the Resurrection, was infinitely important, because it enabled us to see the difference between duty and blessing, principle and privilege; what God does in the matter of salvation for us, and what he has left us to do for ourselves. Faith, Repentance, and Baptism, are duties, as every person must admit; Remission of Sins, the Gift of the Holy Spirit, and the Resurrection are blessings, as all will allow. Now, we must not confound the one with the other--we must not put blessing before duty, This is the great error of Protestants and Catholics."

      Underlying all the great truths which he advocated [285] was the thought of personal responsibility, that had been weakened by false teaching, and which he felt could and should be strengthened by a clearer understanding of the truth. Leaving that out was one of the most mischievous errors of the prevalent religious teaching of the times, and its restoration one of the chief aims of Scott's labors. In regard to this he says:

      "Responsibility to parents, teachers, and magistrates, is a doctrine of such grave importance, that it can not for a moment be dispensed with in society. Any thing tending to impair this instinct is dangerous to the morals and safety of mankind; there is, indeed, without it no security to either life or property. It is the very condition of civilization, progress, and public tranquillity; wherever the love of duty and the dread of law have created the greatest amount of virtue, there public peace is placed on the most secure basis.

      "That there are doctrines abroad, however, which directly tend to weaken our sense of responsibility to God, and, indirectly, to society; that fatalism has filled many with religious resentment; that Calvinism has made men who believed it reckless and despairing, either because they saw not the evidence of their own election, or because they were maddened to vengeance against God fore as they imagined, having, from all eternity, doomed them to damnation absolutely; that is, as their creeds express it, 'without respect to good or evil, but simply as monuments to his vindictive justice,' is too well known to require proof. The doctrine that, above all others, signalized the re-inauguration of the original gospel was man's responsibility to God. On the validity of this, a draft [286] was made on the faith of every congregation, and every individual to whom it was addressed. Every soul who heard was called upon, on the pain of condemnation forthwith, to believe the gospel; every man was urged to arise immediately and, without delay, 'repent and be baptized, for the remission of sins.' This was to bring the blessings of the gospel of the glorious God within the grasp of all minds, and to place men's responsibility where it ought to be--with themselves. They were to obey immediately, and no apology would be accepted. This was not only to save many, but also to bring the public mind, directly or indirectly, under the solemn convictions of responsibility, and thereby make our holy religion the handmaid of society in which our domestic, municipal, and State, and national relations, obligations, and duties, required to be supported and invigorated by all the force of a higher authority--the authority of God.

      "Thus, the re-initiation of the primitive gospel was a grand accession of new strength to the moral forces of society, as well as the church, and taught all men every-where to evince, on all proper occasions, spontaneously, a sense of common right and the supremacy of law. All the teachings of the various sects founded on arbitrary election, decrees, operations, experiences, rather than faith in Christ, were negatived, and the blessed Son of God, alone, as the impersonation of the Divinity, and the grand comprehension of our religion, was held forth alone for faith."

      Thus, a living personal Christ was substituted for dry and often repulsive doctrines which had in them no food for the hungry soul; and a sense of personal [287] responsibility, and the need of immediate obedience was substituted for a paralyzing fatalism, and the passive waiting for God's own good time and way--as if God were not ever ready to bless--as if prophets and apostles had never cried "turn ye, turn ye;" as if Christ had never said, earnest and tenderly, "Come unto me."

      The importance of this portion of his work can scarcely be overestimated; it was not the restoration of an ordinance to its proper place, or a better arrangement of some one item of the gospel; but it was the settling of the true relation of God and man to each other--showing that man was not powerless and dead, but able to understand his Maker's voice and obey his mandates; and that God would be gracious and forgiving to all that would hear, and turn, and live. The God of the popular theology was one like the Mexican General who ordered every tenth man of his prisoners to be shot, no matter who he might prove to be--and men were like those prisoners awaiting the sentence without knowing how to avert it, or where it would fall. The God of the Bible, whom Scott delighted to present to the minds and hearts of his hearers, was the Father of the Prodigal, tender, compassionate, forgiving; the sinner, the Prodigal himself, reckless, wayward, wretched, sinful, yet capable of the high resolve, "I will arise, and go to my Father;" capable of feeling his Father's tenderness, and being melted by it when he took him in his warm embrace; capable of sobbing out his penitence and sorrow; capable of being gladdened by his welcome and pardon.

      The chief feature in the labors of Scott is, that he [288] added no new elements to religion, as did the founders of all other religious sects and parties; he simply called attention, long, earnestly, and persistently, to truths once well known, but, in a great measure, forgotten; and arranged in their original order the elements which were universally regarded as constituent parts of the New Testament, but which had lost much of their power on account of the perverted, and, in some instances, inverted order in which they were taught and practiced. A Christian experience, when he began his labors, was required before a profession of faith in Christ had been made; the ordinance of baptism was made to precede teaching, faith, and penitence; and the Holy Spirit, which was promised to those that believed, was, almost universally, taught to be sent to the sinner, to enable him to believe; the theory being prevalent that, while men could believe almost any body or any thing, they had not power to believe what God said to them in his Word, without the supernatural help of the Spirit of God. Without this Spirit to enlighten, produce faith, and regenerate the man, not a step toward God could be made; while the Scriptures expressly taught "that not to make them sons, but because they were sons, God had sent forth the Spirit of his Son into their hearts, crying Abba Father." Gal. 4:6. Such a thing as being baptized on a simple profession of faith in Jesus Christ as the Son of God, would have been regarded not only as a novelty in those times, but a heresy; and nothing would have been further from the teaching and practice of the day than to hold that a man may become a Christian by simply following the instructions given by the apostles to those [289] who desired to know the way of life, or by doing just what was done by those who, under their labors, were brought into the fold of God.

      To return to these old and forgotten paths was the great object of Scott's labors, and not many years had passed after he had thrown all else away, until his preaching, and that of his fellow-laborers was distinguished by the expressions, "The true gospel," "The original gospel," "The primitive gospel," "The Pentecostian gospel," and "The Jerusalem gospel;" none of these terms were current prior to that time, and their very use proves at least that he and they claimed to preach that gospel to which all these expressions pointed. In a word, there was nothing new in the movement in which he was engaged; let us examine it and we shall find nothing at all resembling the novelties and peculiarities which characterized the labor of Calvin, Fox, Wesley, and all other religious reformers. What is Calvinism, but a religious philosophy? Quakerism, but a religion without ordinances, and practically without a Bible, since much of its plain teaching is ignored, and more superseded by the "inner light" by which its adherents profess to be guided. Wesley's system is an amended form of Episcopalianism among its novelties, unknown to the Bible, are its class, and band meetings, its system of probation--a six months' trial, and doctrine of perfection; and all of them with a membership of infants not recognized in the New Testament, and doctrines which do not admit of being expressed in the language of the Word of God. Calvinism has its five points, which are directly antagonized by the five points of Arminianism, and every one of which, [290] moreover, may be antagonized by express declarations of the Word of God. But in the permanent and practical recovery and reorganization of the true gospel, there is nothing liable to the objections which may be urged with truth against all the systems in which so much of the human is mingled with the divine.

      He saw the error into which the various reformers had fallen, and carefully avoided them, and, while against the six months' trial of Methodism, the teaching of Scripture might be urged, that converts "were added to the church the same day," and against the particular redemption and final perseverance of Calvinism may be urged the declarations that "he, by the grace of God, tasted death for every man," and the If, full of meaning in "If ye do these things, ye shall never fall," who can find an objection either in reason or Scripture against the course pursued by Scott, which was to set forth the Lord Jesus Christ as the object of faith--to insist on hearing Him as God had enjoined--to insist on repentance unto life, and instant obedience to be shown in baptism for remission through his blood, followed by the rich promise of the gift of the Spirit, and the hope of eternal life. In regard to this point he says: "Without more accurate views of the first principles of the gospel than Luther, Calvin, Wesley, Carson, and Haldane seem to have possessed, it would have been hazardous, nay, presumptuous, to have created a new party; this would have been only to create a new sect. I did not indulge in enthusiasm; I left behind no blunders to be corrected;" and this he said because he had framed no new theory, invented no [291] strange doctrine, but budded on the firm foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ being the chief corner-stone. He neither despised nor disparaged the work of those great and good men, whose work, though imperfect, had prepared the way for his own; but realizing that all errors and mistakes had arisen from a departure from the Word of God, he determined to sit at the feet of the Great Teacher, and teach no other lessons than those which he gave.

      He made the Word of God his companion by day, and meditated upon it in the night-watches, and, in consequence, made much of its language his own, so that he could draw freely on his memory for the choicest things in the Book of God; and from this rich treasury he brought forth freely things new and old. Like David, his heart inclined to the law of the Lord, and thus, at times, his thoughts concerning it would flow: Oh, Book of God! thou sacred temple! thou holy place! thou gold incense altar! thou heavenly shew-bread! thou cherubim-embroidered vail! thou mercy-seat of beaten gold! thou Shekinah in which the divinity is enshrined! thou ark of the covenant! thou new creation! thou tree of life, whose sacred leaves heal the nations! thou river of life, whose waters cleanse and refresh the world! thou New Jerusalem, resplendent with gems and gold! thou Paradise of God, wherein walks the second Adam! thou throne of God and the Lamb! thou peace-promising rainbow, encircling that throne, unsullied and unfallen! Image of God and his Son who sit thereon, what a futurity of dignity, kingly majesty, and eternal glory is hidden in thee! thou art my comfort in the house [292] of my pilgrimage. Let the kings and counselors of the earth, and princes, who have got gold and silver, build for themselves sepulchers in solitary places, but mine, oh, be it mine, to die in the Lord! Then "earth to earth, and dust to dust," but the great mausoleum, the Word of the Lord, be the shrine of my soul. [293]

[LEWS 281-293]