months, and then cometh harvest? lift up your eyes and look on the fields, for they are white already to harvest." "Other men (patriarchs and prophets) have laboured, and ye have entered into their labours," John iv, 35, 38. The church has always been " God's husbandry" as well as "God's building," and the fields had been under culture for four thousand years. Although the state of morals in the visible church at the coming of Christ was greatly sunken, Jesus said to his disciples, "The scribes and Pharisees sit in Moses' seat; therefore, whatsoever they command you, that observe and do, but do ye not according to their works, for they say, and do not." And of this visible church, John the Baptist and Jesus werė both members, as also his apostles. For in addition to the observance of the rite of circumcision, they kept the passover, up to the eve of Christ's apprehension and crucifixion. The true state of the case seems to be this:-When the Messiah, "the promised seed," the Mediator of the (Abrahamic) covenant," "the minister of the true tabernacle," appeared and presented his claims, those of the visible church who admitted his Messiahship, and were gathered to the Shiloh, were continued in the true and good olive, and those who rejected him were broken off. The children of the visible kingdom were cast out, the rite of circumcision gave way to the rite of baptism, and the passover was superseded by the institution of the Lord's supper. See 1 Cor. v, 7. Our Baptist friends

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admit this, so far as adults are concerned. It is true, however, that Mr. B., in his Strictures, pages 4 and 5, intimates very strongly that circumcision has never been discontinued by an express command." His words are, "Why not both circumcise and baptize them? You have never had any express command' to discontinue the one, and practise the other." Now, candid reader, although Mr. B. may not be able to see in God's word any passage abrogating circumcision, yet you will see one in which it is set forth, if you will look at Acts xv, 1, 2, 5, 10, 28, 29. And we learn from Acts xvi, 4, that Paul, Silas, and Timotheus went through the churches, delivering the decrees to them on this subject; and the decree on the "discontinuing of circumcision" was the result of the judgment of a council of apostles and elders, confirmed by the Holy Ghost. See the passage above referred to.

And in confirmation of the fact that baptism came in the place of circumcision, the apostle calls baptism the "circumcision of Christ," Col. ii, 11, 12. And I am supported in this opinion by one of Mr. B.'s witnesses: "The great Whitby (as he calls him, and I suppose, if the testimony of the witness is good for Mr. B., his testimony will be as good for me against Mr. B.-Let us hear the witness) says, 'The apostle, speaking here of the circumcision made without hands, and of the circumcision made in baptism, and consisting in the putting off the sins of the flesh, cannot, by the circumcision

of Christ, mean his own personal circumcision, which was made with hands, but that which he hath instituted in the room of it, viz., baptism. That baptism, therefore, is a rite of initiation to the Christians, as circumcision was to the Jews." See Whitby on the place.

Who doubts that circumcision was the initiating rite among the Jews, and in the church, from the day when Abraham was ninety-nine, and Ishmael thirteen years old. For as our Lord said, "Circumcision was not of Moses, but of the fathers." And if baptism is not the initiating rite, the seal and sign of the covenant of mercy, the church, under the gospel, has no initiatory rite.

But Mr. B., p. 17, supposes that "the coming of the promised seed (the Messiah) put an end, however, to the Abrahamic covenant, and consequently to all its ordinances, for ever." Shocking! that men should be willing to disannul the only covenant of mercy and grace from God to man, a covenant that embraced the promise of Messiah, and the blessing of all nations through him, in order the more effectually to deprive unoffending infants of the rights which they had enjoyed unmolested for about two thousand years. Under what covenant, pray, do such conclude themselves? "Christ was made a curse for us, that the blessing of Abraham might come on us through faith." How, then, I ask, can the covenant be done away, and its blessings still enjoyed by Jews and Gentiles? I hope it will not be said that the blessing of Abraham is the

possession of the earthly Canaan. God made two covenants with Abraham, one before the birth of Ishmael. See Gen. xv, 7-21. In this was contained the grant of the earthly Canaan to his natural seed, through the line of Isaac and Jacob. This covenant was ratified by the passing of a burning lamp and a smoking furnace between the pieces of slain beasts which Abram had provided, while a "horror of thick darkness fell upon Abram," emblematical, or typical, of the hard bondage which his natural seed should endure in Egypt. The metes and bounds of their inheritance were distinctly marked out. This covenant received not its full accomplishment until the days of David. See Acts vii, 45; 2 Samuel viii, 3, &c.; and 2 Chron. ix, 26.

About fourteen years afterward God changed the name of Abram to that of Abraham; see Gen. xvii, 5-27; and having said in regard to the first covenant, chap. xii, 2, "I will make of thee a great nation," he now says, chap. xviii, 4, 5, "Thou shalt be a father of many NATIONS.' This last is called, by way of eminence, THE COVENANT." Of this covenant, circumcision was the sign and seal.

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I ask the candid reader to put the statements of Mr. B., on the subject of this covenant, in contact with the testimony of Zacharias, the father of John the Baptist. When John was eight days old, and they were about to perform upon the "unconscious infant" the rite of circumcision-about to put upon him the seal of

the Abrahamic covenant-the tongue of Zacharias was loosed, and being filled with the Holy Ghost, he uttered the following_language:"Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for he hath visited and redeemed his people. And hath raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David; as he spake by the mouth of his holy prophets, which have been since the world began: that we should be saved from our enemies, and from the hand of all that hate us; to perform the mercy promised to our fathers, and to remember his HOLY COVENANT; the oath which he sware to our father ABRAHAM, that he would grant unto us, that we being delivered out of the hand of our enemies, might serve him without fear, in holiness and righteousness before him, all the days of our life;" see Luke i, 67-80.

Do these words even intimate that the advent of the Messiah "would put an end to the Abrahamic covenant?" as Mr. B. says above. And does Zacharias celebrate the abolition of this covenant? Does he not rather bless God for the manifestation of the " mercy promised," and the bestowment of those important blessings included in the Abrahamic covenant? To remember his holy covenant, as a covenant-keeping God, is to give to those who have "taken hold of his covenant" those immunities vouchsafed in this contract or stipulation.

The intelligent reader will perceive that Zacharias never intimates that the possession of the earthly Canaan was any part of the bless