and the jailer's confidence in the apostles might have left him free to take them there. Lange says: "The rite was unquestionably administered in the court within the enclosure of the prison, at a well or tank." Such tanks or pools, often of large size, as already seen, were common in the courts of Oriental and Greek houses, and would be highly probable in a prison. Thus Conybeare and Howson, Meyer and De Wette.

In all the instances cited above the circumstances, so far as indicated, require us to understand baptism as an immersion; any other interpretation is inconsistent with the sacred record.

Sixth: The figurative usage of baptizo also requires immersion as the fundamental idea.

Luke xii. 50: "I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how am I straitened till it be accomplished!" Matt. xx. 22, 23: "Are ye able . . . to be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?" Baptism is here used to set forth the sufferings of Christ, but the image is wholly incongruous if the rite were sprinkling or pouring; it would belittle the whole subject. But the soul of Christ overwhelmed in sufferings, imaged by the body overwhelmed in water, is a figure striking and significant, and it is in strict analogy with Hebraistic usage. Thus, Ps. xlii. 7: "All thy waves and thy billows are gone over me." Lange comments: "A baptism to be baptized with: Over against the heavenly fire which he sends stands the earthly water of the sufferings which previously to that must roll over him. To be baptized: An image of the depth and intensity of this suffering, like a baptism performed by immersion." Olshausen says: "The figurative expression baptism involves at once the idea of a painful submersion (a dying to that which is old), and also a joyful rising (a resurrection in that which is new), as Rom.

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vi. 3 shows. Such a path of suffering, in order to his being made perfect, our Lord declared stood yet before him." Alford also: "The symbolic nature of baptism is here to be borne in mind. Baptism death. The figure in the sacrament is the drowning, the burial in the water, of the old man, and the resurrection of the new man. The Lord's baptism was his death, in which the body inherited from the first Adam was buried, and the new body raised again."

Acts i. 5: "John truly baptized with water, but ye shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost not many days hence." A common figure represents the Holy Spirit as poured out, and the same act, it is alleged, is here called baptism; it is, therefore, inferred that pouring is one form of baptism. Let us, however, test this principle of interpretation. When the apostles were baptized in the Holy Spirit at the Pentecost, it is said that they were "all filled with the Holy Ghost." The act of filling, then, according to this principle, must also be one form of baptism. Plainly, such a method of interpretation can only lead to the gravest absurdities. The true explanation is simple and obvious. The Greek pneuma literally signifies wind, or air in motion, and the figurative usage conformed to this radical idea. Hence, John is said to be "in the Spirit;" Christians are to "walk in the Spirit "-that is, the soul surrounded, pervaded, by the presence of the Holy Spirit, as the body is surrounded, pervaded, by the air. No figure could more perfectly set forth the fulness and richness of the Spirit's presence than the image of the soul immersed in it. Lange comments: "The gift of the Spirit is here termed a baptism, and is thus characterized as one of most abundant fulness, and as a submersion in a purifying and life-giving element." Meyer, on the parallel passage--Matt. iii. 11. "He shall baptize you with (en)

the Holy Ghost and with fire"-says: "En (in) is, in accordance with the meaning of baptizo (immerse), not to be understood instrumentally, but, on the contrary, inin the element wherein the immersion takes place."

Rom. vi. 3, 4: "Know ye not that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death? Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death; that like as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life." Paul is showing that a Christian, in the nature of things, cannot continue in sin, because he has died to sin and has risen to a new life in Christ. This death to sin and the new life in Christ, he says, are set forth in the very act by which we profess our faith to Christ. The points of comparison are: 1. Christ, in that nature on which sin was laid, died and was buried; believers, as also with him dead to sin, are in baptism. symbolically buried with him. 2. Christ was raised from the dead and entered upon a new and glorious life in heaven; believers, as risen with him, are also in baptism symbolically raised from the dead to enter into a new and endless life. This great spiritual fact in the believer's experience his death to sin and resurrection to new life is thus symbolized in the immersion and emersion of baptism. The apostle reasons, therefore, that the initial symbol of the Christian religion, in its very form, shows the impossibility that a Christian should live in sin, since such a return to a life of sin would be as if one who had died and entered into the new and glorious resurrection life should return to an earthly life of sin, and as if Christ himself, who once died here to put away sin, and then rose to his eternal glory in heaven, should return as the Sin-bearer and reassume his humiliation on earth. The argument of the passage is thus

based on the form of the rite as an immersion and emersion.

Here observe: 1. The allusion in this passage to immersion as the form of baptism has been almost universally recognized by the church in all ages, embracing all the ancient commentators and nearly all the modern. Dr. Schaff, in Lange, in loco, says: "All commentators of note (except Stuart and Hodge) expressly admit, or take it for granted, that in this verse . . the ancient, prevailing mode of baptism by immersion and emersion is implied, as giving additional force to the going down of the old and the rising up of the new man." Conybeare and Howson remark: "This passage cannot be -understood unless it be understood that the primitive baptism was by immersion." Canon Lightfoot, of St. Paul's, commenting on this passage, says: “The sacrament of baptism, as administered in the Apostolic age, involved a two-fold symbolism-a death or burial, and a resurrection; these were represented by two distinct acts-the disappearance beneath the water, and the emergence from the water." 2. If the allusion here is to immersion, it necessarily follows that there was but one primitive form of the rite, and all Christians were immersed. For "as many as were baptized" were baptized into Christ's death, and were "buried with him in baptism unto death." 3. Burial, in Paul's day, was commonly in the earth, as is plain from Luke xi. 44: "Graves which appear not, and the men that walk over them are not aware of them;" although sometimes, among the wealthy, it was in the rock-hewn sepulchre; but it was in all cases a complete covering of the body, so that immersion was then, as now, a proper symbol of burial.

1 Cor. x. 1, 2: "All our fathers were under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and were all baptized unto

Moses in the cloud and in the sea." Here the exact position of Israel, when the apostle contemplated them as baptized to Moses, was when they were under the cloud and passing through the sea. This was their position, in the writer's conception, when said to be baptized. No image of immersion could be more distinct. As Israel, covered by the cloud, entered the open sea, which "stood as a wall unto them on their right and on their left," and then emerged on the other side, it strikingly represented an immersion. Meyer comments: "En te nephale: en is local, as in baptizo en hudati (Matt. iii. 11, al), indicating the element in which, by immersion and emergence, the baptism was effected. Just as the convert was baptized in water with reference to Christ, so also that Old Testament analogue of baptism which presents itself in the people of Israel at the Red Sea, with reference to Moses, was effected in the cloud under which they were, and in the sea through which they passed." Alford says: They entered by the act of such immersion into a solemn covenant with God, and became his church under the law as given by Moses, God's servant-just as we Christians by our baptism are bound in a solemn covenant with God, and enter his church under the gospel as brought by Christ, God's eternal Son." He adds: "The allegory is obviously not to be pressed minutely, for neither did they enter the cloud nor were they wetted by the waters of the sea; but they passed under both, as the baptized passes under the water, and it was said of them (Ex. xiv. 31), 'Then the people feared the Lord, and believed the Lord and his servant Moses.'”

1 Pet. iii. 21: "The like figure whereunto even baptism doth also now save us (not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience toward God), by the resurrection of Jesus Christ." This passage