Baptism is that sacrament by means of which the order of divine grace is continued.  It generates faith, and its development is from authoritative, to free, personal faith.  “What the personal election of Christ was to the first circle of disciples, that baptism is for the successive church, the divine fact through which Christ gives to His church its true and eternal beginning in the individual.”  If so, then is it not plain that baptism goes before the self-conscious faith of the subject?  And if this church-founding sacrament brings your child into a living and saving relation to the church, then why deny it that baptism?  Dare you reverse the divine procedure which God has ordained for the salvation of His people?  And if Christ is related to the individual only through the general; if He is related to the members only through the body, and having fellowship with them only as the Head of that body, then is it not plain that your children, in order to come to Him as such, to be incorporated with Him and related to Him in a saving way, must come to Him through the church,—­must become a member of it, and that too in the manner and through the medium He has prescribed, viz., baptism?

He who, for the reason, therefore, that children can have no self-conscious faith, refuses to have them baptized, but exposes his ignorance of the divine procedure of grace as developed in the church, of the true moral relation between parent and child, and of the scripture idea of the Christian home.  Why not for the very same reason refuse to teach them, to have them pray, to bring them up to church service?  Yea, why not deny to them salvation itself?  For the very same reason for which you reject infant baptism, you must also reject infant salvation; for faith is held up in the Word of God as a qualification for salvation with more emphasis than as a qualification for baptism.  Hence if you say that infants cannot be baptized because incapable of faith, you must also say, by a parity of reasoning, that infants cannot be saved, because incapable of faith.

This is a dilemma, and to avoid it, some enemies to infant baptism have even confessed that they see no hope for the salvation of children.  Thus Dr. Alexander Carson says, “The gospel has nothing to do with infants.  It is good news, but to infants it is no news at all.  None can be saved by the gospel who do not believe it!  Consequently by the gospel no infants can be saved!” But if out of Christ there is no salvation, then tell me, how will infants be saved?  We have no answer from these enemies, yea, there is no answer!