our corrupt nature. As the natural body has a life and sensibility in each of its members, in the eye, in the ear, in the hand, in the foot, so our corrupt nature has various sensations, and makes various movements, at one time a movement of pride, at another of lust, at another of jealousy, at another of indolence, at another of anger, and so forth. These various sensations and movements all hang together, they are all living parts of our corrupt nature, just as hand and foot and eyes are all living members of one body. The prayer is, that we may not only put this corrupt nature to death, but bury it out of sight, and so bury it that it may not rise up again, and that its ghost, so to speak, may not haunt us in the hour of death and in the day of judgment. We are told that "the sting of death," that which is so formidable in death, that which gives death its power of hurting" is sin.”1 And here we pray that our sins-the members of sin's body or of our corrupt nature may be buried with Christ, buried in His grave, and yet never rise as He did, but be like the Lord's grave-clothes, which He left behind Him when He rose,-put away and laid aside for ever, so as never to rise in judgment against us. And this can only be by our true and hearty repentance of them, a repentance which puts away not only the acts of sin, but also all sympathies with it, all tenderness for it, all relentings over it, if so be some of its indulgences and pleasures might be spared to us. Alas! is it not sadly true, and affirmed by our own experience, that old sins, -the sins of boyhood and youth, though long since forsaken, partly by the grace of God, but partly also, perhaps, because we have outgrown them, and other sins, the sins of mature age, have taken their place,-do yet

1 1 Cor. xv. 56.

abide with us still to haunt, to harass, to hinder us,- -are only dead and not buried,—that their phantoms reappear every now and then to trouble our consciences, nay, that for a moment perhaps some old habit of evildoing or evilthinking reasserts its sway, as much as to say, "I am not dead yet, you only half killed me"? And this is because our repentance was not thorough enough, was not as "true and hearty" as it should have been, was merely a dread of sin's consequences, and never went on to become a hatred of sin itself, flowing from an appreciation of the love sinned against. How much reason have we to pray for such a repentance as may not only kill our sins, but bury them; for there is no such obstruction in running "the race that is set before us," as this resuscitation of dead sins from the grave of the past! And this repentance is only to be gained by that putting forth upon our hearts of the Divine power, which is so beautifully sued for in the Collect for the Fourth Sunday in Advent; “O Lord, raise up (we pray thee) thy power, and come among us, and with great might succour us; that whereas, through our sins and wickedness, we are sore let and hindered in running the race that is set before us, thy bountiful grace and mercy may speedily help and deliver us; through the satisfaction of thy Son our Lord."

1 Heb. xii. 1.

CHAPTER XXXII.

EASTER EVEN. (2)

Grant, O Lord, that as we are baptized into the death of thy blessed Son our Saviour Jesus Christ, so by continual mortifying our corrupt affections we may be buried with him; and that through the grave, and gate of death, we may pass to our joyful resurrection ; for his merits, who died, and was buried, and rose again for us, thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. [A.D. 1661.]

"GRANT, O Lord, that as we are baptized." This Collect is not one of those which have come down to us from the primitive ages of the Church. But by this mention of Baptism it carries us back to the primitive ages. For Easter Even was one of the solemn times at which it was customary in the early Church to administer the Sacrament of Baptism. Catechumens, who had been in course of preparation for it during the forty days of Lent, were then brought to the font, and after being plunged in the laver of regeneration, and baptized into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, were clad in the white garment called the chrisom, as a symbol of their having put on Christ ("As many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ "),1 and being now spiritually clothed in His righteousness. These white garments they continued to wear until the first Sunday after Easter, when they were laid up in the vestry of the church as a memento of their baptismal

1 Gal. iii. 27.

also. But why the stated times Because the day commemorate our

vow and privileges, to be produced against them in case they behaved themselves in a manner unworthy of their Christian profession. It is into the centre of this state of things, into a circle of associations so different from anything we nowadays witness in the Church, that this allusion to Baptism introduces us. And it is well that our prayers should preserve, and (as it were) embalm, the memory of the old time, if only to remind us. that the God of our fathers, who did "in their days" so many "noble works," is our God was Easter Even chosen as one of for the administration of Baptism? follows upon Good Friday, when we Lord's death, and immediately precedes Easter Day, when we commemorate His resurrection, and because the inward spiritual grace of baptism, as our Catechism teaches, is a death and a resurrection, "a death unto sin, and a new birth unto righteousness." And there was in the primitive method of administering Baptism a symbolism of death and resurrection, which is now, by the modern method of merely sprinkling the water upon the face of the baptized, very much obscured, if not entirely obliterated. The whole body was plunged under the water for two or three moments, during which, as we cannot breathe in the water, animation was suspended-this was baptismal death-and was then lifted up again into the air and sunlight, so that the process of respiration was resumed, this was baptismal resurrection.

"Grant, O Lord, that as we are baptized into the death of thy blessed Son." What is the meaning of our being baptized into the death of Christ,-a phrase borrowed by the

1 Bingham's "Antiquities of the Christian Church," book xii. chap. iv. pp. 557-558. [London. 1852.]

" 1

writer of the Collect from St. Paul; "Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death?" "To baptize into "2 means to admit by baptism into a society or fellowship. Thus to be “baptized into Moses," is to be admitted into the society to which he gave laws, into the communion of the Jewish Church. To be "baptized into the name of Paul" would be to be formally registered among the disciples of that Apostle; and similarly to be "baptized into Christ," or "into the body of Christ," or into the name of Jesus," is to be received by baptism into communion with Him, and into the fellowship of His Church. To be " baptized into the death of Christ," therefore, must mean to be admitted into communion with a dying and atoning Saviour, not merely with Christ as a teacher come from God (which even Nicodemus, at his first visit to Him, admitted Him to be), but with Christ lifted up on the tree of the cross, like the serpent in the wilderness, with 1 Rom. vi. 3.

2 The phrase "baptizing into" (or unto) is used nine times in the New Testament in addition to Rom. vi. 3, where it occurs twice (as above). (1.) 'Baptizing them into the name of" the Holy Trinity. St. Matthew xxviii. 19.

66

(2.) "Unto what then were ye baptized?" Acts xix. 3.

(3.) "Unto John's baptism." Ibid.

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(4.) They were baptized” (ἐβαπτίσθησαν)

Lord Jesus." Acts xix. 5.

"into the name of the

(5.) "Were ye baptized into the name of Paul?" 1 Cor. i. 13. (6.) "Lest any should say I had baptized into mine own name.' 1 Cor. i. 15.

,,

(7.) "They were all baptized into Moses" (had themselves baptized into Moses, εἰς τὸν Μωσῆν ἐβαπτίσαντο). 1 Cor. x. 2.

(8.) "By" (ev) "one Spirit are we all baptized" (èẞaπтioOnμev) "into one body.' 1 Cor. xii. 13.

(9.) "As many of you as have been baptized into Christ" (eis XplorÒV ἐβαπτίσθητε) “ did put on Christ” (Χριστὸν ἐνεδύσασθε).