Part II: General Introduction

CONTENT of national ensign. Celebrating historic events. Baptism and the Lord's Supper have immense teaching power as God's ordinances among men-his appeal to the eye and heart-his creedal statement - his formulary of doctrine. Ceremonies for worship, ordinances as means of indoctrinating. Symbols indeed, but symbols which never change in form or in what they convey to men.

Their doctrine is always the same - their doctrine concerning God, their doctrine of atonement for sin through the death of Christ, their doctrine of a new heart wrought by the Holy Spirit, their doctrine of a godly life, their doctrine of the final triumph. They are New Testament ordinances with New Testament meaning. The ordinances are new but their doctrine is of old, and independent of all rites and ceremonies. Distinguished from Judaism, yet of the same general import, being of God, and for the enforcement of spiritual truth.

They are as one in the unity of their doctrinal content, and must be considered together. Two sides of one sphere, supplementing- and completing. As monument and memorial, the one sign of the one event for all time-universal in language and meaning. They hold their integrity in three things-spirit, form, purpose - as essential in their administration. They are both of the same spirit, and of the same general purpose, and differ only in form and the elements used. One has its form in the immersion of a believer in water, the other in breaking and eating bread, in pouring out and drinking wine.

The form of the Lord's Supper has not been in dispute, the form of baptism is well defined by Dr. Sanday, an Episcopal scholar of England, and his word is the most recent word of modern scholarship concerning this matter of much dispute, as follows:

The act of baptism corresponds to the three acts of Christ's redemptive work; Immersion=death; Submersion=burial (or the ratification of death; Emergence=resurrection.

Their teaching power is largely in their form. This is their significance, their sign-making power; this makes the form essential in their administration, gives the form prominence with their spirit and purpose, requires that we hold them inviolate as they were commanded and committed to us. They must be as God made and marked them, if they bear to our eyes and hearts the message which God intended. God's Word must be God's Word, his meaning must be kept in view.