This morning I am to speak to you on the subject of Individualism in Religion, a distinctive principle of our Baptist people, and I trust that in doing so our hearts may be opened in gratitude and love to God for the noble history which we have borne in the past and for the splendid things for which we stand in the present.

I will read some verses from the Gospel of John, chapter 21, verse 23, "If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee, follow thou me.'' Romans, chapter 14, verse 4, "Who art thou that judgest the servant] of another; to his own Lord he standeth or falleth." Verse 12 of the same chapter, "So then each one of us shall give account] of himself to God." Gal.., chapter 6, verses 4-5. "But let each man prove his own work, and then he shall have glory in regard of himself alone and not of his neighbor, for each man shall bear his own burden."

In God's thought of the world and of humanity, the unit is not the nation, nor the church, nor the family, but the individual. God's instructions and commands are to the individual. God's expectations are of the individual. God deals with man not in the mass but as an individual.

The relationship of humanity to God is likewise individual relationship. Each individual for himself must know God, believe in God, trust God, obey God and love God. These things cannot be done by social groups. Individual man and individual woman must repent, must believe, must give money, must be baptized, must take the Lord's Supper, must die, must go to the judgment and answer for the deeds done in the body for themselves individually and alone, and not for another. This principle has been a fundamental and distinctive principle of the Baptists since John the Baptist proclaimed individual repentance to the people of Jerusalem and Judea from the banks of the Jordan, and in connection with this principle I want this morning to submit for your consideration four propositions.

First: The individual soul is competent to deal with God for itself.

Second: The individual soul is under an imperative duty to deal with God for itself.

Third: The individual soul has the inalienable right to deal with God for itself; and

Fourth: Whatever violates these principles or infringes upon these inalienable rights is wrong in the sight of God and in the sight of man and should, therefore, not be practiced.

The first proposition then is this: That in the sight of God all men are created equal, and share alike the capacity, the duty and the privilege of coming to God alone. This proposition asserts at once that each individual soul is capable and competent of dealing with God for itself to the extent of his duties and his privileges toward God.

Distorted conceptions of God have always made this principle seem unreasonable. To the heathen and pagan mind who thought of God as some raging tyrant or thought of him as some monstrous monarch, the thought of an individual, of any individual soul, approaching God alone and for itself was unthinkable and in proportion as that heathen thought has been brought over into Christianity in the same degree have Christian men and women violated the same principle.

Wrong conceptions of man, those ideas which would exalt one man above another have also been responsible for bad thinking and worse practicing upon this point. In God's sight there is no caste or class or aristocracy or priesthood. All men stand alike before Him and stand on an absolute equality in his sight. The sun is 93,000,000 miles from the earth. Traveling at the tremendous rate with which light goes it requires a long time for one ray of light to reach the earth from the sun. I am five feet, ten inches, high. Here is a man who is five feet, eleven inches high. Relatively speaking, how much nearer is he to the sun than I am? So it is in our relationship to God. Admitting, if we may, individual differences relatively speaking there is an absolute equality. God recognizes it and he expects us to recognize it also.

No man can say to his fellow "I am holier than thou; I am wiser than thou; I am more worthy than thou; and, therefore, am capable more than thou of approaching God both from myself and for thee."

This principle however does not contend that there are no individual differences or even capacities, but it does contend that these individual differences, whatever they are, do not affect the capacity and the inalienable right of the individual man of access to God for himself. My children and your children are all different in their dispositions, inclinations and perhaps in their mentalties, but these individual differences have not one whit to do with their right and their capacity for approaching me as their father, and if I allowed them to have any effect I would be an unworthy father.

I declare to you this morning, my brethren, that if my conception of God was such as some who profess to believe in him, who give the privilege to approach God to one man and deny it to another, that I could not believe in and trust my Heavenly Father as I now do.

The second proposition is that the individual soul, having the capacity to approach God for itself, is therefore under the bounden duty to live up to that ability. Responsibility begins exactly where the power of choice begins, and the responsibility also varies with that power of choice and for the kind of use which is made of that opportunity and that privilege.

The scriptures which I read in the beginning of this discussion declare unequivocally and unmistakably the bounden duty of each individual to approach. God for himself and not for another. Said Jesus to Simon Peter, who became concerned about the other man. "What is that to thee; follow thou me." Said inspired Paul, "Every man shall stand or fall to his own master," and said he again in the same connection "Every one of us shall give account of himself unto God." Said the inspired Paul again in Galatians. "Every man shall bear his own burden."

Now, my brothers, I submit to you that if this is the duty, and the individual possesses the capacity, that any infringement of that is a violation of God's highest and holiest law, and I submit to you another matter; that it is unquestionably and unmistakably wrong to demand of any individual something that he cannot perform for himself, or something for the results of which he is dependent upon the conduct of somebody else. Now that is as fundamental as the eternal truth of God.

The third proposition is this, and it naturally grows out of the other two, that the matter of individual approach to God is not only an imperative duty, but it is a gracious privilege which no one has the right to rob another of.

We concur most heartily with Section 16 of the Virginia Bill of Rights, adopted June 12, 1776, after those long, bloody conflicts of our people for the establishment of religious liberty in America, by petition and by argument and by moral suasion. "That religion, or the duty which we owe to our Creator, and the manner of discharging it, can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force nor violence, and therefore, all men are equally entitled to, the free exercise of religion, according to the dictates of conscience, and that it is the natural duty of all to practice Christian forebearance, love and charity towards each other."

There is not a single religious duty which man is capable of performing and which he, therefore, is under the duty of performing, that he has not the inalienable right to perform himself.

One of the highest privileges of the religion of Christ is personal, conscious obedience to his commands, personal faith and trust in him, and whoever infringes upon that right, or violates that principle, infringes upon one of the holiest and most sacred rights ever given to man by a Sovereign God.

We come now to the conclusion of the whole matter. If I were to stop right here I am sure that every individual in this great audience would heartily agree with every word I have spoken. I trust that there will be as hearty and unanimous concurrence in the conclusion of these propositions.

If every individual has the capacity and is under the duty and possesses the privilege of exercising all religious functions for himself then any infringement upon that privilege, or any violation of this principle, must be wrong in the sight of God and in the sight of man.

This principle of individualism eliminates at once all ritualistic religion, all proxies in religion, all sponsors in religion, all godfathers, god-mothers, priests, ordinances, ceremonies, confessionals, and everything whatsoever that comes between the individual soul and its God. Every ritualistic service that requires a certain form of prayer, or a certain form of worship, or a certain order to be carried out, and makes the worshipers say certain words that are given by another is certainly a violation of that holiest right that belongs to man, the right to worship God and talk to God as the heart itself directs it to do.

A pastor of a prominent church was going down the street one morning, one Monday, when he met the pastor of another church and said to him, "Is it true that you Baptists have no form for prayers and that when you go to worship you can pray and you can worship just as your heart impels you?" And the Baptist pastor said to him, "It is even so." Then this pastor said, "I have been told that but did not know, and yesterday I was brought to think about it more than ever. I sat in our church house; my heart was feeling very tender towards God; my soul was reaching up in its love after God and I said "I just feel like breaking out from the depths of my inmost spirit and praying to God as my heart cried after him,' but I dared not do it for if I had and the church authorities had found it out I would have been severely rebuked for it."

Oh! my brothers, can such still abound in this enlightened twentieth century that the individual soul has not the inalienable right, born of God's infinite love, to worship God for itself and come to God for itself, without the dictates of another?

There is another matter upon which I am under the necessity of speaking in this connection. Infant baptism is a violation of this high and holy principle and an infringement of this high and holy right to approach God for oneself. I read these words from Dean Hodges in his book "The Episcopal Church," page 51.

"The recipients of baptism seem originally to have been persons of mature life. The command 'Go teach all nations and baptize them.' and the two conditions 'repent and be baptized' and 'he that believeth and is baptized' indicate adults. The fact that various eminent Christians in the fourth century were not baptized in infancy suggests that adult baptism was the common rule. Baptism was delayed until it was possible to fulfill the conditions of repentance and faith."

If then, as he asserts, and as other PedoBaptists agree, and I am not quoting Baptist statements now, that baptism originally was for adults and not for infants, why then did the church establish an ordinance which violates a fundamental principle that is so true, and an inalienable right to which each individual can cling? As stated in the beginning of this discussion, it was due to a wrong conception of God's attitude towards man, and a wrong conception of man's relationship to God.

As to the process of reasoning by which this position and this practice came about, I will let you hear the words of Cardinal Gibbons, whose church is responsible for the institution of infant baptism, in "The Faith of Our Fathers'," page 310.

"Original sin, as St. Paul has told us, is universal. Every child is, therefore, defiled at its birth with the taint of Adam's disobedience. Now the scripture says that nothing- defiled can enter the Kingdom of Heaven."

I quote from Cardinal Gibbons again:

"If your child is deprived of Heaven by being deprived of baptism, God does it no wrong, because He infringes no right to which your child had no inalienable title."

I quote from him again in his, "Faith of Our Fathers'," page 312.

"The church" (meaning the Catholic Church) in obedience to God's word, declares that unbaptized infants are excluded from the Kingdom of Heaven."

I quote again from Dean Hodges, of the Episcopal Theological School, Cambridge, Mass., "This doctrine," (referring to the doctrine just stated by Cardinal Gibbons), "which populated hell with infants 'not a span long' was easily applied by a childless clergy to other peoples children. It frightened people into baptizing their infant children."

The process of reasoning, then, is simply, that a child is a sinner; that no sinner can enter Heaven; that baptism washes away sin; therefore, baptism must be administered to the infant.

Now that is founded on a wrong conception of God's attitude towards the world and man's relationship to God. Infant baptism then infringes upon the principle of individualism in religion. It takes an unconscious and helpless person and does for him something that he knows nothing of and that he has an inalienable right to do for himself in selfconsciousness when he comes to a knowledge of his obligations on that line.

Infant baptism goes further than that in relationship to this principle of individualism in religion. It not only robs the child of the privilege which it has an inalienable right to consciously perform for itself, but it forces the child, against its knowledge, and against its consent and against its consciousness into the membership of the church performing that act.

The Episcopal prayer book says: "I received it (the name) in baptism, whereby I was made a member of the Christian church."

The Methodist discipline on matter of infant baptism, requires the minister to say this:.

"Dearly beloved, for as much as all men are conceived and born in sin, and that our Savior Jesus Christ, saith 'except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the Kingdom of God,' I beseech you to call upon God, the Father, through our Lord, Jesus Christ, that of his bounteous mercy, he will grant to this child that which by nature he cannot have; that he may be baptized with water and the Holy Ghost and received into Christ's holy church and be made a lively member of the same." I quote again from the next passage: "In causing this child to be brought by baptism into the Church of Christ."

I submit then that an act which forces a helpless, unconscious one, without his personal consent, into the membership of an organization, be it ever so good, even religious, is contrary to the principles of God's Word, and violates the highest and holiest right of a man, the right to worship according to his own conscience, enlightened by the word of God.

It should be remarked in connection with these quotations that the quotation which I have just read is from an old Discipline of the Methodist Church, while the article in this same Discipline since 1912 has been completely changed concerning the matter of original sin and the condition of the child at birth. They are the same, however, in regard to the matter of church membership and make no difference so far as the violation of the principles of individualism is concerned. It forces one into the membership of an organization without his knowledge or consent.

There is one other word that is to be said. Anything that violates this principle or infringes upon this right, not only does injustice to the highest privilege of the individual himself, but stifles and hampers the highest opportunities and greatest possibilities of that individual. You take any school, or college, or philosophy of religion that moulds men as lead bullets are moulded, and that individual and his personality and his opportunities for the largest chance in life are hampered; but you allow that man, in his thinking and in his religious conduct and in his faith, to be free, individually and politically, and his soul and his mind and his life can expand into the greatest and mightiest that it is possible for God to make out of a man.

As an illustration of this fact, I have only to quote from other denominations themselves; I do not quote our own authorities.

When the World's Sunday School Convention met in Louisville, Ky., some years ago, one of our greatest preachers stood before that vast throng and with the mighty gospel which he preaches and with the impact of his own mighty soul, gripped the minds and hearts of every man and woman there and simply swept the convention off its feet, He did what no other man from any other denomination or from any other nation of the earth was able to do.

Standing on the street corner after services two men of other denominations were heard in conversation like this. One man said "Why is it that we have no such men as that; why is it that our church cannot produce such men, and the other brother put his hand on the shoulder of the first one and said, "The system under which we operate hampers individualism and cramps the soul of the man that would dare rise out of itself, contrary to the teachings of the system by which we are bound."

Individualism must prevail if man is to be what God wants him to be in the highest and fullest sense of God's expectations of him.