churches and church members to resolve that when he was driven out of the Baptist Church they also would share his fortune, and accept loss of reputation and exclusion from their former brotherhood for the sake of the principles they had learned from him.  Now, when we reflect that this embraced not only young men, but old men—­men already arrived at that period of life at which it is most difficult to change our habits of thinking and acting, it becomes a question of profoundest interest; were these men able to make a change so radical as to plant themselves completely on reformation principles, and to abandon everything in their old Baptist order incompatible therewith?

When we remember that this movement embraced gray-haired Baptist ministers, who all their lifetime had been accustomed to lead and not to follow, we curiously inquire, Did they do this, or did they locate themselves on a sort of half-way ground which was a compromise between reformation principles and old Baptistism?

Let us briefly notice wherein they changed, and wherein they did not change.

1.  They laid aside the name Baptist and took the name Christian.

2.  They built upon the Bible alone, instead of the Philadelphia Confession of faith.

3.  They taught that the church began at Pentecost, rather than with the preaching of John the Baptist.

4.  They baptized men into a profession of faith in the Lord Jesus, that he is the Messiah, rather than into a Christian experience, made up of voices in the air, marvelous and strange sights, trances and rapturous feelings.

5.  They taught that in conversion and sanctification, the Holy Spirit operates through the truth.

Thus far the change was radical, but here a large minority paused and brought with them into the reformation their old Baptist Church usages.  The Baptists in the Great West and South are known as “Missionary Baptists,” and “Old Baptists,” or “Hardshell Baptists.”  Adoniram Judson and Luther Rice, who had been sent to Burmah by a Congregational Missionary Society, made known to the Baptists that they themselves had become Baptists, and had been repudiated by their own society, and asked for help.  The Missionary Baptists are by far the most enterprising in all that pertains to the spread of Christianity.  They are the most numerous, most wealthy, best educated, and most liberal.  In translating the Bible into all languages, in carrying it into all lands, and in sending the gospel to all nations, they have made some amends for that unrelenting bitterness which they have shown toward our brethren from the first day till now.  We shall glance at what has hitherto been their order by making certain extracts from the Central Baptist, published in the year 1870.  The reader must bear in mind that we are writing of those old days: