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Rh condescended to brood over the shapeless mass of waters, and thence to produce order and life—that water was the means appointed for saving Noah and his sons—that Moses and Israel descended into the water of the Red Sea as into a tomb, and thence arose again, and were delivered—that water cleansed Naaman from leprosy, and the children of Israel from pollution,—we might the more readily believe that water should be consecrated by "for the mystical washing away of sin," and connect the admonitions of His previous dispensations with the greatness of our present privilege.

And whoever thinks lightly of Water-Baptism, if he compare his mind with that of St. Peter, will surely find himself reproved, in that the Apostle held the flood, which covered the face of the whole earth, and the tops of the highest mountains, and prevailed upwards, to be but a shadow and type of the baptismal stream, which each of our little ones enters as a child of wrath, and arises "a child of, a member of , an heir of Heaven." And when men, guided perhaps by these scriptural types, or by tradition, saw in the blood and water which issued from their side a pledge of the expiating and sanctifying character