SOME BOOKS OF THE WEEK.
[Under this heading we notice such Books of the week as hays not We reserved for review in other forms.] Baptism and Christian Archaeology. By Clement F. Rogers, MA. (The Clarendon Press. 5s. net.)—Mr. Rogers was led to investigate the subject of this book by the action of a friend, who joined the Baptist community because he was convinced that the original method of administering the Sacrament was by immer- sion. We cannot help thinking that the friend's frame of mind was a strange one. When we realise .what baptism means, or should mean, how insignificant is the form of administration! The presumption certainly is that the Baptists are right. They have the word itself on their side. The original of it is Barrie, in all the meanings of which—tempering iron, dyeing, drawing water, and (in the intransitive use) sinking of a ship—immersion is implied. Then, again, St. Paul's expression, "We are buried with Him by baptism," and the analogy of the Passage of the Red Sea, tell strongly in the same direction. But as a matter of fact the evidence of archaeology goes to establish the use of effusion. There is a fresco in the Crypt of Lucius which is attri- buted to the sub-Apostolic age in which the baptism of Christ is pictured. Christ is represented as standing in water which does not go above His knees. Two frescoes (200 A.D.) in the cemetery of St. Callistus are of the same character. The catechumen in both cases is standing in water, and Cie rite appears to be administered by effusion. Mr. Rogers has collected, and reproduces for the in- struction of his readers, a number of these representations. The narrative evidence goes the same way. The three thousand con- verts of Acts ii. 41 could hardly have been immersed. In the Clementine Homilies Mattidia is baptised on the seashore between some rocks. Elsewhere in the same writing a spring is mentioned as a suitable place. In the Acta Lini St. Peter baptises his jailors in a spring which miraculously breaks out in the Tulliamun. Then there is a curious story of how a certain Jew, being in et- tremity in the Desert, was baptised with sand. The Synod pro- nounced the ceremony invalid because of the substitution of sand for water—a narrow view certainly—but not on account of the failure to immerse. The real strength of the Baptist argument lies elsewhere.
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