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the same excellent fortune, fly in infant innocence from the bosom of unconverted parents in heathen or Christian lands to the bosom of their Saviour in heaven.

The commands of Christ so far from abolishing, establish this law.* That it was the custom of the apostolic Church, is proved from the speech and the silence of the Scriptures; its frequent reference to the baptism of houses or families, a word never found in the Baptist vocabulary of revivals;† its silence before the prejudices of Jew, and Greek, and Roman, and to whomsoever the word of this salvation was then sent, a silence that is unac

There are two commands of Christ that are the two watchwords of the most hostile sects, the regenerationist and the immersionist; the one, "He that believes and is baptized shall be saved;" the other, "Except a man be born of water, and of the Holy Ghost he cannot see the kingdom of God." These can be set over against each other, and it is not unlikely, were so uttered by Christ, that he might destroy both the errors of baptismal regeneration and exclusive believer's baptism. If the Baptist says baptism follows faith always, because Christ said so, the baptismal regenerationist asks, Why did he not put it before faith or its substance, in his conversation with Nicodemus? If he, on the other hand, says baptism precedes and occasions regeneration, because Christ said so, the answer is, he puts it after that in his last command. So the balance is kept, and both infant and believer's baptism are both preserved to the Church.

Of what members did these olkoç or families consist? We have to draw on our judgment for the answer. This is probably affected by our faith and previous thought. To break through these as far as possible, let us suppose these statements were made in a journal of to-day, with whose views we had no acquaintance. Supposing that the Revival Tribune of last winter, about the length of the Acts of the Apostles, should have said, among other items, that in New York, "a Mrs. Lydia, whose heart the Lord had opened, was baptized and her family;" "that in a remarkable outpouring of grace at Sing Sing, the warden was convicted and converted the same night, and before morning, 'he and all his' were baptized." In Boston the mayor "believed on the Lord, with all his family, and were baptized." Supposing that a great preacher, whose views were not known, should send a letter to the Church that he had been instrumental in upbuilding, in which he should say, "I baptized the family of Stephanus" and again, "Salute the Church in Priscilla's family, and they who are of Herodian's and Narcissus's families," could any one, however rigid their own views might be, fail to believe that the author of this narrative and letter intended to say that children, even the smallest, were baptized? Could any fair criticism, if it should reject some of them, reject them all? Would not a Baptist brother who should read that Tribune say, that those who wrote that narrative and letter were Methodist or Presbyterian preachers? Would a Baptist preacher, could he give such an account of a revival in his Church to his journals? The difference between them and St. Luke and St. Paul is seen in a most striking form in the journals and letters of that great apostle to the Burmans, Dr. Judson. They abound in narratives of baptisms, but not once is the word house or family used in connection with them, so far had he departed from the usage of the first and chief of the apostles to the heathen.

countable if the new religion was to hold the children of its adherents in less vital relations to itself than any one of its contemporaries: the desires of idolators to have the arms of the Church thrown around their babes, so that the whole family may be as a lovely islet in the black and deadly ocean of paganism rolling around them; the inscriptions on the graves of Christian and and baptized babes in the catacombs; the statement of every father, from Tertulian and Origen to Augustine, and of every council, from the first attended by the converts of Timothy and Titus, if not of Paul and John, to the last held by an undivided and unapostatized Church. All these give an array of proof of the apostolic usage that it is impossible to gainsay or resist. We have seen that the doctrine of believers' baptism is complied with if the believer be an unconscious infant placed in the same state into which faith introduces the adult, as if he had passed years in sinful unbelief before his conversion. We have shown that their early admission to all their rights as Church members, though they be ignorant of their full meaning, will bless them and the Church, and be agreeable to the will and education of Him who was taken by his parents when a babe into the temple to do for him after the manner of this law.

We trust the Church will regulate her discipline according to her faith, and that her admission of her babes to her classes, her sacraments, and all other perquisites of membership. will lead her members to give their children their rights, and to train them up in the knowledge of their obligations and benefits. Then shall the reverent words of the holy Herbert be our prayer from childhood :

"Since, Lord, to thee

A narrow way and little gate
Is all the passage, on my infancy
Thou didst lay hold and antedate
My faith in me.

"O let me still

Write thee great God, and me a child;
Let me be soft and supple to thy will,
Small to myself, to others mild.

Be hither ill."

Then will the doctrine of infant salvation logically embodied in our creed, discipline, and practice, lead all other sects to believe its truthfulness and accept its necessary consequents of infant regeneration and infant baptism. The wall in all churches that is built up between the child and his Lord's table, will crumble under the same power. The little children shall again come to Jesus, surround his table, and partake of that flesh which is meat indeed, and

that blood which is drink indeed for every helpless human soul. The hearts of the fathers will be turned to the children, and out of the mouths of babes and sucklings will He ordain praise, while they, like Samuel, shall abide in the temple, and like Christ shall grow in wisdom, and stature, and in favor with God and man.

ART. II.-BRAZIL AND THE BRAZILIANS.

Brazil and the Brazilians, Portrayed in Historical and Descriptive Sketches. By Rev. D. P. KIDDER, D.D., and Rev. J. C. FLETCHER. Illustrated by one hundred and fifty engravings. Philadelphia: Childs, Peterson, & Co.; New York: Sheldon & Blakeman.

It was said long ago by the Great Master, "The field is the world." It is an expression worthy of deep thought by his ministry and his Church. If the world be the field for Christian exertion and enterprise; if the world's conversion should be the grand aim of every loyal worker, then the travels of each explorer, the diary of each adventurer, becomes instinct with thrilling interest. To another it may be but a record of marches, of bivouacs, of huts, of botanical or mineralogical observations. To us it is a new revelation of the world, the world we are to aid in renovating. The world is being made known. Much heretofore supposed to be desert is found to be fertile, and abounding in the materiale of wealth. There is yet to be a commerce of which the speculator scarcely dreams. There stand upon the shelves before our table, the volumes of Barth and Livingston, who have brought to Europe and America facts which have awakened inquiry, and suggested future national possibilities which may work a mighty change. The Zambesi is destined to be the world's great cotton canal, and from the broad plains which skirt it, shall be gathered the crop which shall tell with economic arguments, unanswerable facts, in the ears of monopolizing American slaveholders. The sprightly pages of the artist-traveler, Atkinson. have made known the deserts of Siberia, in such manner as we never anticipated. These men, with Captain Kane, in his hyperborean explorations, Wells in his adventures in Honduras, and Loftus in Chaldea and Susiana, have been, in the hands of God, surveyors for his Church. They are mapping the field. We begin to learn what remains to be done ere

"One song employs all nations."

Lying in South America, and stretching from 4° 28' north to 32° 45' south, and with a length of two thousand six hundred and thirty, and a breadth of two thousand five hundred and forty miles, is an empire of which we have known but little. We have heard of Brazil as a land of immense trees, tropical fruits, and flowers; a land of semi-civilization, "palm-trees and jaguars, anacondas and alligators, howling monkeys and screaming parrots, diamond-mining, revolutions, and earthquakes;" but, to continue from the preface of the work we propose to notice," how few seem to be aware that in the distant southern hemisphere is a stable constitutional monarchy, and a growing nation, occupying a territory of greater area than that of the United States, and that the descendants of the Portuguese hold the same relative position in South America as the descendants of the English in the northern half of the New World! How few Protestants are cognizant of the fact, that in the territory of Brazil the reformed religion was first proclaimed on the western continent?" Thanks to our authors, this ignorance is in part removed.

As to the book before us, its joint authorship is thus explained. Dr. Kidder spent some time in the mission work in Brazil, and after his return to the United States published a volume of "Sketches," embodying the result of his careful observations. This volume was favorably received, but has been several years out of print; but by his consent its substance is reproduced in the volume before us.

The junior author, Rev. J. C. Fletcher, is of a family celebrated for combining the intensely practical with a love of the beautiful. His early training increased his born love of travel, and he has wandered almost around the globe. In a special manner his attention was drawn to Brazil, and providentially his way was opened to visit and explore it. He has looked at it as an artist, a political economist, a statistician, and as a Christian and a Christian minister. It has been his province to weave into these pages his own and Dr. Kidder's observations.

Of different denominations, the first an Arminian, the second a Calvinist, the work cannot be accused of sectarian misstatements, but comes commended by a broad catholicity to all its readers. We speak advisedly when we say we consider this book one of the most valuable accessions to modern literature.

"Its authors have consulted every important work in French, German, English, and Portuguese, that could throw light on the history of Brazil, and likewise various published memoirs and discourses read before the flourishing Geographical and Historical Society' at Rio de Janeiro. For statistics they have either personally examined the imperial and provincial archives, or have quoted directly from the Brazilian state papers.”—Pp. 4, 5.

The publishers have performed their work in superior style. The engravings are very fine, especially the colored ones. Accompanying the volume is a well executed map, prepared by J. H. Colton & Co., which has the advantage of the corrections made by Mr. Fletcher, from personal observation, in 1855, during the summer of which year he traveled more than three thousand miles in Brazil.

It was on the 26th of January, A. D. 1500, that Vincent Yanez Pinzon, one of the companions of Columbus, and the first Spaniard who crossed the equator, discovered the continent of South America. A mysterious providence gave into the hands of Popery the fairest portion of America, and at a later day opened the bleak and unpromising north to Protestantism, and the result is now history. On the 21st of April of the same year, Pedro Alvarez Cabral, commander of the second Portuguese fleet that ever doubled Good Hope, discovered that portion of the Brazilian coast now known as Espirito Santo.

Passing over much of the early history, we come to 1530, when the unexplored territory of Brazil was divided into captaincies by the King of Portugal and the government of that most unprogressive power seemed firmly established in the New World, and over one of its fairest portions.

Twenty-five years later, a colony of French Protestants, under Villegagnon, sailed up the beautiful bay of Rio de Janeiro, and built a fort, which still bears his name, upon a small island in the harbor. God had cast the lot of Protestantism elsewhere. It was to grapple with difficulty, to be nursed amid tempests, and to show a wondering world how a free Bible, a free pulpit, and a free school, could transform a desert into an Eden. We have not space to write the history. In 1572 the government of "the colony of Brazil" was divided between two captains-general, one having his head-quarters at San Salvador, the other at Rio de Janeiro. From this circumstance came the name Brazils, somewhat current among the English, but not tolerated by the Brazilians themselves. These captaincies were, of course, rivals, but their separation was of short continuance, as they were united again in 1576, and placed under one captain general.

In 1580 both Portugal and Brazil came under the dominion of Spain. For eighty-one years Brazil had a checkered history. English, French, and Dutch, sailed into her bays and invaded her coasts. Lancaster and his band of London marauders captured Pernambuco in 1593. In 1594 the French established a colony at Maranham, which they held twenty-one years. Even grave Hollanders were seized with the spirit of conquest, and in 1624

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