personal unfitness of the subject, nor moral unworthiness, can affect the nature of the Sacrament, or detract from the reality and virtue of the baptismal transaction.

4. But when the Catechism distinguishes between the external washing with water and the internal washing with the Holy Spirit, the spiritual efficacy of Baptism is ascribed, not to the external washing itself, for the external washing considered by itself is not the sacramental transaction, but to the blood and Spirit of Christ. Spiritual efficacy, however, is not ascribed to the blood and Spirit of Christ as such, or as abstracted from the external washing with water, but to His blood and Spirit as sacramentally connected with the external washing with water in the baptismal transaction.

5. The spiritual efficacy of Baptism is not tied to the moment of administration.

This proposition does not mean that the baptismal transaction may be an empty or purely external washing, the internal washing with the blood and Spirit of Christ being not sacramentally connected therewith.

But the proposition means that the cleansing and renewing efficacy of Baptism is not limited by the moment of time when the Sacrament is administered.

The grace conferred at the time of administration is efficacious retrospectively and prospectively; being effectual for the taking away of the sins of the subject that have been committed in time past or that may be committed in time to come.

6. The grace conferred by Baptism is efficacious retrospectively. The person baptized being through the medium of the Sacrament introduced into the covenant and engrafted into Christ, and thus joined to Him in His death and resurrection, receives the forgiveness of inborn and actual sins. The dominion of the kingdom of darkness is broken, and the guilt of his transgressions is taken away. He passes from the sphere of the curse and of death into the sphere of grace and of life.

7. The grace conferred by Baptism is efficacious prospectively. The efficacy of the Sacrament extends to sins that may be committed after it has been administered; and this efficacy

is as certain and complete in its relation to the future as it is in its relation to the present and the past.

As natural birth has force and effect for the whole period of natural life even unto death, the filial relation never being annihilated, so has the new birth, or the washing of regeneration, full force and effect for the entire subsequent, ethical and religious history of the subject, the virtue of the new spiritual relation being at no time absolutely abolished. The penitent prodigal, be he never so guilty, may ever recur by faith to the real relation wherein he stands as a child of God by adoption. in Christ; that is to say, he may recur to his Baptism as the seal of God's saving grace, and the pledge of forgiveness which, for the infinite merits of Christ, God is willing freely to grant.

8. Although efficacious as the seal of forgiveness and of the new life both retrospectively and prospectively, yet Baptism does not save the subject ex opere operato. The blood and Spirit of Christ work no spiritual effect in the personal life and personal history of the subject mechanically or magically. The personal experience of forgiveness and the actual development of the objective spiritual relation involves the necessity of repentance and faith on the part of the subject.

The objective efficacious grace of Baptism must be met by a corresponding subjective appropriation of that grace, in order that the subject may actually die unto sin and lead a holy and unblamable life.

The whole truth is expressed in a twofold proposition. Whilst on the one hand we must say: no Baptism, no objective engrafting into the mystical body of Christ; on the other hand we must assert with equal decision: no personal faith, no experience of the forgiveness of sins and no actualized salvation.

Or we may express the truth thus: no Baptism, no adoption; no faith, no salvation.

The principle: no faith, no salvation, is not applicable, using the term faith in the ordinary sense, to baptized infants dying in infancy. They are saved in virtue of the gracious relation which they sustain to Christ by Baptism.

9. Baptism is the act of God whereby He adopts the subject

into the sphere of grace, thus giving him a new position, a new objective relation, and the rights of a child.. Faith is the act of man, the act of the subject of Baptism, whereby he recognizes and acknowledges his new position and relation, and appropriates to himself the free grace of God by which he has been apprehended. Without the first, faith has no proper warrant, no real relation to validate and justify it. Belief becomes an imagination. Without the second, divine grace is only a latent possibility. The new position into which he has been translated does not and cannot become a transforming power in the heart of the subject, inspiring and governing his will and the whole sphere of his ethical and religious life. The old man is not mortified. The new man is not quickened.

10. The infant children of believing parents are to be baptized.

(1.) Because they need the benefits of Baptism. They need the forgiveness of sin and the new life of the Spirit.

(2.) Because they possess a right to these benefits of thecovenant of grace in that they are the children of believing parents. (3.) Because these benefits are promised to them as infants; and divine grace is able to apprehend them, although they are incapable of the conscious responsive activity of faith.

11. Infants are by Baptism engrafted into the Christian Church; and thus a real distinction is constituted between them and the children of unbelievers.

12. The Baptism of infants in the New Testament is analogous to circumcision in the Old. Baptism works an effect for them relatively to Christ and the Christian economy as real and great as the effect which circumcision wrought for the children of the Jews relatively to the Mosaic economy.

These theses are warranted, we think, by the sacramental theory in general and the doctrine of Baptism in particular as taught in the Heidelberg Catechism, and are sustained throughout by all the other confessions of the Reformed Church.

ART. V.-DALTON ON THE HEIDELBERG CATECHISM.*

BY REV. F. K. LEVAN, A. M.

WE have here a truly able, interesting and valuable book. Some guarantee for all this we have already in the well established character of its author, who stands high among Germanspeaking Christians, as a wise worker and a practical writer, whose welcome has been secured in thousands of homes. Rev. Hermann Dalton is pastor of the large and influential Reformed congregation in St. Petersburg, Russia, consisting of German. immigrants and descendants of such, of whom there are many in the Muscovite capital. His popularity has gone beyond the people of his own nationality, and found a response among Russians themselves. When building his large new church a few years ago unfortunately burnt down just after completion, and now happily rebuilding-even the Czar made liberal and marked contributions.

The ability of the book, we think, lies particularly in the wide field of theology which it covers and handles with the ease of a familiar subject, and in the clearness with which it apprehends the Reformed stand-point as growing out of the general movement of the Reformation, and the manifest sense of the Heidelberg Catechism as viewed in this light. Regarding style it leaves little to be wished for. Doctrines, facts and duties are made to stand in organic harmony and address you with a native winning air, of which much of our theological literature so sadly deprives them. Yet practical everywhere. Recondite wisdom in popular form. Weighty observations taken right out of the real world, richest fruit, and fresh as when first

Immanuel. Der Heidelberger Katechismus als Bekenntniss- und Erbauungsbuch der evangelischen Gemeinde erklärt und an's Herz gelegt von Hermann Dalton. pp. 539. Wiesbaden, 1870.

plucked. A friend of ours lately said that he tried to read Bethune's Lectures on the Heidelberg Catechism-very respectable in style and contents, by the way-and found it a task, more than enough. We fear no such remark from an equally capable source with respect to Dalton's work. Racy as a romance, limpidly flowing as the liquid fountain, warmly in sympathy with the universal truth, it breathes throughout the spirit of earnest devotion and loving faith. The author calls his book "Confessional and Devotional." That he has in the main made good his claim for it, constitutes probably its greatest merit, especially for our times. The spirit of our age seems to have unfitted writers, otherwise possessed of ability, for allowing their normal harmony to these twin elements of the Christian life. Confessional authors, as a rule, neither represent nor awaken devotion; while devotional authors very commonly feel constrained to keep at the farthest remove from confessionalism in every form. A practical dualism between them runs through our later literature. Nor will an outward placing them side by side meet the case. There is an inner, normal harmony between them, and the seeing and representing that-naught else—will legitimate itself to the Christian consciousness. Pastor Dalton considers the Heidelberg Catechism as pre-eminently both a Confession and a book of Devotion. The underlying thought holds that as a Confession it is representative of all the other Reformed confessions, general when they betimes become particular, inclusive where perchance the one or the other of them was pressed to become exclusive. This broad basis shuts out no truth of universal force, no single fact or duty which ought to be common to the Christian Church in its most catholic character. It allows and seeks them all. And down on this real bottom-neither imaginary nor arbitrary-of the universal Christian order and system room is found for the true devotional element. It is at home here, and will never be wanting here, where in a most vital sense

"The saints of all ages in harmony meet."

Having such general character we should like to see a wide