Article January 15, 1903 Issue

Religious Items

with contributions from Cornelius Woelfkin, Frederick Denison Maurice

Dr. R. P. Johnston, pastor of the Fifth Avenue Church, New York, a speaker at the recent Baptistconvention in Boston, is thus reported in The Standard:—

"To make baptism essential to Church membership is to emphasize ceremony rather than character, and is to exalt the letter above the spirit.

"The first statement is self-evident. For, following the principle, no degree of plety, no perfection of character, would enable one to enter the Church. Not even an angel from heaven without baptism could gain admittance. But experience amply and sadly teaches that some who have not evinced angels' dispositions have, by submitting to baptism, gained an entrance. This is inconsistent with the entire theory of Baptists. They have always insisted that character, vital plety, and not ceremony, is the essential thing in Christian life.

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