moral fitness of the doctrine of the Atonement, that converts to
Christianity were chiefly made: so said the Moravians among the
Greenlanders, so Brainerd among the North American Indians, so English
missionaries among the negroes at Sierra Leone:--and I could not at
all renounce this idea. Indeed I seemed to myself to see this fitness
most emphatically; and as for the _forensic_ difficulties, I passed
them over with a certain conscious reverence. I was not as yet ripe
for deeper inquiry: yet I, about this time, decidedly modified my
boyish creed on the subject, on which more will be said below.

Of more immediate practical importance to me was the controversy
concerning Infant Baptism. For several years together I had been more
or less conversant with the arguments adduced for the practice; and
at this time I read Wall's defence of it, which was the book specially
recommended at Oxford. The perusal brought to a head the doubts which
had at an earlier period flitted over my mind. Wall's historical
attempt to trace Infant Baptism up to the apostles seemed to me a
clear failure:[1] and if he failed, then who was likely to succeed?
The arguments from Scripture had never recommended themselves to
me. Even allowing that they might confirm, they certainly could not
suggest and establish the practice. It now appeared that there was no
basis at all; indeed, several of the arguments struck me as cutting
the other way. "Suffer little children to come unto me," urged as
decisive: but it occurred to me that the disciples would not have
scolded the little children away, if they had ever been accustomed
to baptize them. Wall also, if I remember aright, declares that the
children of proselytes were baptized by the Jews; and deduces, that
unless the contrary were stated, we must assume that also Christ's
disciples baptized children: but I reflected that the baptism _of
John_ was one of "repentance," and therefore could not have been