Christian Experience

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     Christian experience, like matrimonial, parental, or filial experience, is immutably the concomitant and the product of the relation indicated by the word to which it is affixed. None but those, in any state or relation, can possess or enjoy the experience peculiar to that state or relation. None but a parent can have or enjoy parental feelings or emotions. None but those in the conjugal relation can possess or enjoy conjugal affections. The experience of a patriarch, a parent, a husband, a wife, a son, or a daughter, can only be realized and enjoyed by those actually living in those relations....No more can any one who is an infidel, a skeptic, a mere Jew, or a Gentile, possess, realize, or enjoy the experience of a Christian.

     Are not these positions so palpably evident to everyone who understands the language in which they are expressed, as to demand no other evidence or proof of their truthfulness than the simple statement or assertion of them? We, therefore on these conceded facts, are compelled to affirm that none but a Christian can have a Christian's experience.

     Whatever, then, constitutes a Christian, must be previously possessed by any and every one before he can be truthfully, and in fact, denominated a Christian. He may, indeed, be a Methodist, a Calvinist, a Lutheran, a Congregationalist, a Presbyterian, an Episcopalian, a Romanist, or a Dissenter; but a Christian he cannot be without a Christian faith, a Christian love, a Christian hope, or in other words, a Christian experience.

     A Jew necessarily has a Jew's experience, so far as his religion is concerned. A Pagan has, in like manner, a Pagan's experience. A Mahometan has a Mahometan's experience; so has a Christian a Christian's experience. But be it again emphatically stated that the state, the condition, and the relations must precede any experience whatever.

     These almost, if not altogether self-evident positions, when calmly considered, and weighed in the balance of pure reason, constitute an unanswerable objection to the Baptist institution of demanding something else, or something more than a declaration of faith in the person, mission, and work of the Lord Jesus Christ, in order to immersion--indeed of demanding a Christian experience as a basis of, or as a preliminary measure to, a confession of faith in order to baptism, into the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit!

     What Christian experience had the three thousand Pentecostan converts to relate, who, on hearing Peter declare the facts of Christ's life, death, burial, resurrection, ascension, and glorification, demanded the will of Christ; and on hearing which, resigned themselves into the hands of the apostles?

     On hearing the imperative oracle uttered by Peter, seconded by one hundred and twenty disciples present, were they not immersed for the remission of their sins? Did they not receive the Holy Spirit as the Holy Guest in Christ's own household of faith?...This being conceded, we ask, have we not then ascertained the one only rational, moral, and Christian basis of Christian faith, hope and love; of Christian union, communion, and cooperation?...Can any one present a foundation more simple, more attractive, more enduring, more in harmony with all the past, the present, and the future conditions of humanity! --Alexander Campbell.