modious chapel, holding not more than four or five hundred persons, which was that belonging to the Baptists, who do not like to be called Anabaptists.

ANABAPTISTS,

CALLED BY THEMSELVES BAPTISTS.

Doctrine of Baptism-Immersion-Hudibras-River

Baptism.

"To dive like wild-fowl for salvation,
And fish to catch regeneration."

Butler.

THE service commenced with the singing of some hymns, appropriate to the ceremony: then the minister made, or, at any rate, recited impromptu a comment (which he had, perhaps, got ready beforehand) on

the passage of the New Testament relating to the baptism of Christ in the river Jordan. This good man, who was to take the place of St. John, insisted principally on the point, that the words of Jesus, and the example set by him, and followed by others in the Gospel, were much to be preferred to human inventions (by which he meant the common form of baptism). If the premises were admitted, the inference would be just. So convincing did the reasons he gave appear to the preacher, that he could not help advancing and pressing on in his discourse, as a general vigorously presses on the rear of a flying enemy. I was not so much astonished at his persuasion that he had decided, without appeal, the question, whether a man ought to have his head only immersed in the water, or enter altogether into it,-as in some degree mor

tified, at hearing myself told, by implication, that I was "ill baptized." No matter -I remembered I was in a land of toleration, and within myself forgave the preacher the involuntary affront. After the sermon, and after some more hymns had been sung, the proselytes who were to receive the ordinance, filed off into the adjoining rooms to strip. It is, of course, necessary that the Baptist chapels should be built like bathing-houses. In fact, there was an ample cistern of water in front of the pulpit, about four feet deep, with steps to ascend and descend. Adjoining the chapel, behind the pulpit, are two rooms for dressing and undressing, one for the women, and one for the men. There were five young women to be baptized, between the ages of eighteen and twenty. They came out dressed in a white habit, tied