embership; yet as a prudential means of
grace and a mode and means of Christian fellowship, I regard
class-meetings (as stated in my former letters above referred to), as
well as love-feasts and prayer-meetings, as of the greatest value and
importance. But when I think of class-meeting being converted into a
condition of membership in the Church of Christ, and thus made the
occasion of excluding from its pale the whole early generation of our
people and many other sincere Christians, I cannot view it as I would
wish, and as I could otherwise do, with the same feelings that I view
love-feasts and prayer-meetings.

In regard to the other aspect of the question, as it applies to the
baptized children of our people, and in which the nature and office of
Baptism are involved, I feel it to be of such vital importance that I
must beg to make some observations which I hope may not be considered
out of place, or prove altogether useless.

The circumstances which have caused me to feel so strongly on this point
were stated in my letter to you on the 2nd January, 1854, and afterwards
more fully justified in my letter of the 12th of June following; and it
is with no small degree of surprise that I have found my views
misapprehended and pronounced unsound. It has been alleged that they
involve baptismal regeneration. Nothing can be further from the fact.
What I maintain is simply what is stated in the 17th Article of Faith
professed by our Church, and by the catechism used in the Methodist
Church on both sides of the Atlantic, and what is set forth at large in
the writings of Mr. Wesley and Mr. Watson. Baptism, like the Lord's
Supper, is an outward sign; but, of course, neither can be that of which
it is the sign.

Baptism (as the 17th Article of our Faith expresses it), is not
only a sign of profession, and mark of difference whereby
Christians are distinguished from others that are unbaptized, but
it is also a sign of regeneration, or the new birth.

What I maintain is, that baptism is the outward and visible sign, while
regeneration, or the new birth, is the inward spiritual grace; that by
baptism we are born into the visible Church of Christ on earth, while by
the Holy Ghost we are born into the spiritual or invisible Church of
Christ in heaven, the same as in the Lord's Supper; there is the visible
act of the Church and of the body of communicants, and the invisible act
of the Saviour by the Holy Ghost a