And yet with the plainest teachings of the gospel before them, is it not strange that there are so many virulent enemies to infant baptism?  Their rejection of it seems to rest mainly upon the untenable position that baptism has meaning and force only when it is the fruit of an antecedent, self-conscious faith on the part of the subject, and that it is but the outward demonstration of a separate and prior participation of some inward grace.  As infants have not a self-conscious faith, it is believed, therefore, that they are not, of course, fit subjects of baptism.

There is a cunning sophistry in all this.  It goes upon the supposition that faith necessarily demands the prior development of self-consciousness.  It assumes that faith is bound to a particular age, and can be exercised only after the full and complete development of the logical consciousness, and is dependent upon it; it also assumes that this faith must necessarily be exercised by the subject of Christian baptism.

Now this is all mere assumption.  There is no scripture for it.  In all this, the distinction is not made between faith in its first bud, and faith in its ripe fruit.  The first may exist in the unconscious infant, just as undeveloped reason exists there; because natural powers do not generate supernatural faith.  Faith is the gift of God; and its existence does not depend upon any particular stage of mental development.  The enemies of infant baptism can see nothing in baptism.  They can see no objective force in that holy sacrament; but regard it as something merely external, extraneous, unproductive,—­a mere unmeaning form in which a prior faith is pleased to express itself, as the conclusion of a work already accomplished.  The great error here lies just in this, that they mistake it as an act of faith, whereas it is an act of Christ.  They think it is the formal rite through which they elect and receive Christ; whereas it is the sacrament in which Christ elects and receives them.

If, in church worship, man placed himself in a relation to God, without God placing Himself in a relation to man, then we might reject infant baptism.  But this is not so.  God, in baptism, places Himself in a relation to the subject, receives the subject until it become a part of the organism of grace in its subjective and objective force, and is recognized as a member of the church of Christ.  Now the falsity of the position assumed by the enemies of infant baptism lies just here, that only the subjective side of baptism is held up, while its objective, sacramental character is left altogether out of view.  It reverses the relative positions of faith and baptism, making the former to take the place of the latter, and holding that any one dissociated with the church, can receive and exercise a true living faith, which overthrows the very idea of the church itself.  It makes faith first, baptism second, entering the church third; whereas baptism comes before the conscious faith of the subject.  If so, then why object to infant baptism?