y on scriptural grounds.

The mode of study which he followed was characteristically simple,
thorough, and business-like, and was always pursued afterward. He first
sought from God the Spirit's teaching that his eyes might be opened to
the Word's witness, and his mind illumined; then he set about a
systematic examination of the New Testament from beginning to end. So
far as possible he sought absolutely to rid himself of all bias of
previous opinion or practice, prepossession or prejudice; he prayed and
endeavoured to be free from the influence of human tradition, popular
custom, and churchly sanction, or that more subtle hindrance, _personal
pride in his own consistency._ He was humble enough to be willing to
retract any erroneous teaching and renounce any false position, and to
espouse that wise maxim: "Don't be _consistent,_ but simply be _true!"_
Whatever may have been the case with others who claim to have examined
the same question for themselves, the result in his case was that he
came to the conclusion, and, as he believed, from the word of God and
the Spirit of God, that none but believers are the proper subjects of
baptism, and that only immersion is its proper mode. Two passages of
Scripture were very marked in the prominence which they had in
compelling him to these conclusions, namely: Acts viii. 36-38, and
Romans vi. 3-5. The case of the Ethiopian eunuch strongly convinced him
that baptism is proper, only as the act of a believer confessing Christ;
and the passage in the Epistle to the Romans equally satisfied him that
only immersion in water can express the typical burial with Christ and
resurrection with Him, there and elsewhere made so prominent. He
intended no assault upon brethren who hold other views, when he thus
plainly stated in his journal the honest and unavoidable convictions to
which he came; but he was too loyal both to the word of God and to his
own conscience to withhold his views when so carefully and prayerfully
arrived at through the searching of the Scriptures.

Conviction compelled action, for in him there was no spirit of
compromise; and he was accordingly promptly baptized. Years after, in
reviewing his course, he records the solemn conviction that "of all
revealed truths, not one is more clearly revealed in the Scriptures--not
even the doctrine of justification by faith--and that the subject has
only become obscured by men not having been willing to take _the
Scriptures alone_ to d