Ohio History Journal

Rejoicing in Divine Workmanship.         227

 

 

REJOICING IN DIVINE WORKMANSHIP.

Abstract of a sermon preached by the Rev. George W.

Lasher, D. D., editor of the Journal and Messenger, Cincinnati,

Ohio, in the First Baptist Church. Text: Psalm CXLIX, 2.

"Let Israel rejoice in Him that made him; let the children of

Zion be joyful in their King."

There are two ways of writing history; the one to refer

every event to some over-ruling power superior to man and to

human agency; the other to find the spring of every event in

some other antecedent event. Israel was taught to understand

that, whatever the instrumentalities used, it is God who works

in and through and by means of the instrument, so that, in the

last analysis, it is Jehovah who casts down or raises up, creates

or destroys. This was the idea in the mind of the author of the

psalm and of the text. And the principle which underlies the

history of the ancient Israel also underlies the history of the

modern "Israel," the people of God, to-day.

In attempting to direct the thought of the Baptists of Galli-

polis, on this centenary occasion, this principle must not be for-

gotten nor overlooked. We must take into account the divine

guidance, the evidence of a divine purpose, the development

from small beginnings, the evolutions and the retrogressions, the

renewed impulses and the recurring relapses which have charac-

terized the history of the Baptists; we should mark well, and

with peculiar joy, the onward march, the increasing influence

and the present dominance of the great principles which give

occasion to cite the language of the psalmist.

Let us try to answer three questions:

1. Who are the Baptists?

2. Whence are the Baptists?

3. Whose workmanship are the Baptists?

1. Who are the Baptists? We answer, They are a peculiar

people. They stand before the world as exponents and advocates

of truths and principles which it is liable to forget; which, in-

deed, have been overlooked again and again, and which would

now be lost sight of but for those who are called by our name.

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Baptists stand for what is known as "a converted (regen-

erated) church membership." With all their faults and with all

their failures to conform their practice to their theory, Baptists

have never forgotten the fundamental principle of their historic

faith, viz.: that the visible Church of Christ should be made up

of those, and those only, who give evidence of having been born

of God, whose hope of eternal life rests upon the atonement of

Christ, in which the professor of religion has come to have a

personal interest. We do not deny that some of our neighbors

seem to themselves to be doing the same things. But the differ-

ence between them and us is in this-that they sprinkle water,

in the name of the Trinity, upon the faces of their children, and

call them members of the church, "members of the body of

Christ;" or they tell us that, having been born of parents who

are church members, the infants are church members, and are,

therefore, entitled to receive recognition as such; or, they tell

us that baptism is intended and appointed of God to be the

means or instrument for the perfecting of the work of the word

in the heart, so that, while repentance and faith may be present,

it is needful that baptism be received, in order that sin may be

remitted. It is readily seen, therefore, that Baptists are a

peculiar people. They stand for the great principle which they

find inwrought in the word of God, and which was the founda-

tion of the Apostolic church. For its vindication they point to

the New Testament and to the history of the Apostolic age.

2. Baptists stand for an entire separation between Church

and State. Jealous as they are for the gospel; anxious as they

are that all the nations may come to a knowledge of the truth;

untiring as they are in efforts to carry the gospel to the ends of

the earth: pioneers in modern missions, they yet ask nothing of

the State. They delight in quoting that saying of the Master,

"Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and unto God

the things that are God's." They are not willing that those who

have no interest in the God of the Bible, who profess no allegi-

ance to the Christ of Calvary, shall be taxed to maintain the in-

stitutions of Christianity. They do not believe that Christianity

can be best and permanently promoted by legal enactments, nor

that human governments have anything to do with the religious

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Rejoicing in Divine Workmanship.        229

 

life of the people. They ask simply that they be free to exer-

cise their own faith, and to practice according to their own con-

victions; that they have opportunity to make known their views

and exemplify their practice before the world, with none to in-

terfere, either to aid or hinder. Baptists are not politicians.

They say to legislators, "Gentlemen, hands off. Let religion

alone. We ask nothing of you, except that you unbind and

loose." The first amendment to the constitution of the United

States was secured by Baptists-that section which says: "Con-

gress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion,

or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." Baptists have labored,

and others have entered into their labors, not knowing whence

came the blessings in which they often rejoice.

3. Baptists stand for a faithful obedience to the commands

of the Lord Jesus Christ. They do not profess to be above

criticism. They are too painfully aware that they do not, in all

things, come up to the divine requirements. They often quote

to themselves that caution of their Lord against straining out

the gnat and swallowing the camel. But they do not wilfully

minimize, nor obscure, nor change a commandment of their

Master. They understand that the Lord Jesus gave a command-

ment to "disciple" the nations and to baptize the believing-the

discipled-and no others, in the name of the Father, the Son,

and the Holy Ghost. They dare not alter the terms of that

commandment. They believe that baptism is given to be an

emblematic testimony to faith in the Christ, because of His death

as an atonement for sin and His resurrection to a new and glori-

fied life. They believe that, in order to show forth these great

ideas and to perpetuate them before the world, it is requisite that

the believer be buried with Christ, "in the likeness of his death,"

and be raised again "in the likeness of his resurrection." They

therefore repudiate all else that is called by the name of baptism,

and practice only that which they have received from the Lord

by example and precept.

For these reasons Baptists do not shrink from the penalty

of being called "a peculiar people."

2. Whence are the Baptists? Their own answer is, Of

Christ and his Apostles.

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1. They refuse to regard as authoritative anything that

originated this side of the New Testament. It matters little to

them what "the Fathers" of the second century taught, or what

the Church of that century practiced. Those things may be of

historical importance and interest; but whatever the Church

of the second century taught, as distinguished from the teach-

ings of the Church of the first century, that is to be distrusted

and rejected. They find that views cherished by them were

held by individuals and small communities, during all the ages

by John Wycklif, John Huss, and others; but they care little for

these, except so far as they bore witness to the truth.

2. They find that, at the time of the great religious awaken-

ing in Europe, in the sixteenth century, not only Martin Luther,

Staupitz, Cajetan, Bullinger, Melancthon and their associates

were thinking and reading the word of God, but that others, a

mighty host, were thinking and searching the scriptures,

" whether those things were so." They find that among these

were such men as Simon Stumpf, Conrad Grebel, Felix Mantz,

Balthazar Hubmeier, George Blaurock, and a host of others,

men of learning, priests of the Church of Rome, who had come

to doubt the correctness of her teaching and practice; earnest

students of the Bible, both in the Hebrew and the Greek; and

that these men, with their associates, became convinced of the

error of infant baptism, requiring of each member of their order

a personal profession of faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, and bap-

tism on the ground of such profession. They find that these

men refused to have their children sprinkled, and for this reason

many of them suffered death by fire and water, or by the sword.

These were the Swiss "Anabaptists," from whom we date the

rise of the Baptists of England and America.

As to the sword, these men said: "It is not to be used to

defend either the gospel or those who receive it." As to baptism,

they said: " From the scriptures we learn that baptism signifies

that by faith in the blood of Christ our sins have been washed

away and we have died to sin and walk in newness of life."

Concerning infant baptism, they said: "We balieve the Scrip-

tures teach that all children who have not arrived at the knowl-

edge of good and evil are saved by the sufferings of Christ."

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Rejoicing in Divine Workmanship.          231

 

The doctrines of these men passed down the Rhine to Hol-

land, and thence across the Channel to England, where, in the

next century (the seventeenth), they were cherished by such

men as William Kiffin, Benjamin Keach, John Bunyan, and

others. The Westminster Assembly met in 1642, and it was not

till 1647 that the Confession was adopted and published; but in

1643, "seven congregations" of Baptists in the city of London,

agreed upon a Confession which challenges admiration to-day,

and which there has been but little occasion to alter.

In 1631 (twelve years before the formulation of the Con-

fession above named) Roger Williams, a graduate of Pembroke

College, Oxford, and a minister of the Church of England,

arrived in Massachusetts. He was an inquirer after truth, little

regardful what others might think or do. He became pastor of

a Congregational Church in Salem, Massachusetts, but soon be-

gan to put forth ideas for which the colonists around him were

not prepared. In 1635, he was banished from the colony, and

in January, 1636, he landed at Wheet Cheer rock, in Rhode

Island. In March, 1639, he was baptized by Ezekiel Holliman,

and having in turn baptized Holliman and ten others, formed a

Church which is held to still exist and to be the oldest Baptist

Church on the American Continent-the first Baptist Church of

Providence, Rhode Island. In 1638 (three years after the

arrival of Williams and one year before his baptism), Hanserd

Knollys, likewise a minister of the Church of England, who had

become dissatisfied with the practices of that Church, arrived in

Massachusetts, having come to escape the persecution to which

he was subjected in his own country. He became pastor of a

Congregational, or Puritan Church, in Dover, New Hampshire,

and in the course of three years, had made such progress in the

direction of the truth that, with a portion of his congregation,

he became a Baptist. Soon after, he was recalled to England by

his enfeebled father and there became one of the leading Baptists

of his age; but the portion of his Dover Church which accepted

his teachings removed, first to Long Island, New York, and

and thence to New Jersey, where they formed the Baptist

Church Piscataway, which still exists. About the same time

other men of similar views arrived in the country from England,

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and settled, some in Rhode Island, others in Pennsylvania, and

others in Delaware. They all came to hold the same views of

Bible doctrine and to practice according to the same rule.

3. Whose workmanship are the Baptists? They are frank

to say that they did not make themselves. They have, at all

times, regarded the Omnipotent God as both the author and the

finisher of their faith. No people has more frequently or more

sincerely quoted that scripture, "Not by might nor by power,

but by my Spirit, saith the Lord." They have not been a

worldly-wise people. They have never depended upon kings

and governors for the advancement of their principles.  For,

though they have been among the most loyal and patriotic of

citizens, their rulers have regarded their lives as of but little

account, and have been willing to see them exterminated. Such

were the pains and penalties imposed upon them during the first

two hundred years of their history that their growth in num-

bers was very slow, and they came to almost regard it a crime

(as the State regarded it, and as it is now regarded in Russia)

for one to proselyte, or put forth efforts to win others to a

knowledge of the truth. In Switzerland, Zwingle (who looked

with favor upon the views of Grebel and Blaurock, until he saw

that they involved the principles of a pure church) became their

most bitter enemy. Hubmeier was burned; Mantz was drowned;

Blaurock was whipped and banished; Hetzer was beheaded;

Grebel, Hottinger and innumerable others were imprisoned,

while the rest of them fled the country. In England, the Dutch

and Flemish "anabaptists" were the peculiar horror of Henry

VIII, when he was wresting his subjects out of the hands of the

Pope. When the wilderness of the New World began to attract

attention as an asylum for the oppressed-especially for those

whose religious convictions rendered them obnoxious to home

laws-it was found that not only Puritans of the Cotton Mather

stripe, but those of more radical convictions, were ready to

brave the sea and the land of the savage that they might enjoy

what they could not have in their native land.

And here again the growth of the Baptists was slow, at

first, and their churches were sporadic. But when the revolu-

tion of 1776 had been accomplished, and the first amendment of

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Rejoicing in Divine Workmanship.         233

 

the Constitution had been adopted (in 1789), immediately they

began to increase in numbers and to put on the strength of their

Maker, God. At the time of the adoption of the amendment to

the Constitution (that which placed them upon an equality with

any other religious denominations) the Baptists of the United

States numbered less than 65,000, or about one to every 56 of

the population. In 1812, less than twenty years after, they

were as one to thirty-eight; in 1832, as one to thirty-three; in

1852, as one to thirty; in 1872, as one to twenty-five, and in

1889, as one to twenty-one. And all this has been achieved

without a hierarchy, without a bishropic, with no great court to

which difficulties can be referred, and notwithstanding it is re-

quired of every person proposing to unite with the Baptist

Church that he give to the brotherhood "a reason for the hope

that is within him," and that he receive the unpopular rite, a

baptism beneath the surface of the water in the name of the

Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. These things are marvel-

ous in our eyes. For the growth of the past century we can

give no adequate reason, except that God is in it.

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