|
|
|
|
|
|
II
ESSAY ON BAPTISM1
[1850-1851]
§ 1. IF one of the angels of God were this day to descend from His presence, or to pause from journeying through the places of His dominions-that he might follow the course of our Earth, and watch the obscure planet as it whirled-how strange would its aspect be to him, if the counsels of the Almighty were secret to him, as to us!
He might delight himself for a time in tracing the laws of a Natural system perhaps before unknown to him; worshipping again and again at each renewed delight. But he would quickly turn to observe the race of beings for whom his Creator and theirs once descended on the Earth, and then was slain. And what would be his wonder, as he beheld their multitudes, wandering amidst sands, and mountains, and islands, savage or sensual, erring or imbecile, idolatrous or Godless-hateful and hating one another.
The Earth but twenty-four thousand miles round.
Eighteen hundred and fifty years since God came down upon it.
And half of its inhabitants have never heard of this yet!
If a bank breaks in London, those whom it concerns in India hear of it in six weeks.
God comes down to save men in Syria, and those whom this concerns do not get the news in eighteen hundred years. This would be strange to His Angel, though natural to us.
§ 2. But he would see stranger things yet. He would presently look to the place where Christ had suffered, and to the cities where His Apostles taught-and when he saw room for Christ’s faith hardly yet made in Jerusalem, and the Syrian still ready to perish* where once Christ’s folds were enclosed-when he saw the dust of the desert lie white upon Pergamos and Thyatira-Ephesus and Laodicea-Sardis and Philadelphia-and Smyrna-driving a goodly trade with Christian London in Figs!-would not this be strange to the Angel, though natural to us?
§ 3. But he would see stranger things yet.
He would turn to the group of capes and peninsulas where the name of Christ is named, and where God’s providence has granted the knowledge
* Deuteronomy xxvi. 5.
1 [For the circumstances in which this Essay was written, see above, Introduction, p. lxxv. It has not hitherto been published.]
573
|
|
|
[Version 0.04: March 2008]
