The daily morning journal and courier., 1896-01-27
TIE GOOD AMONG BAPTISTS
RET. MR. DICKERMAN'S INTER EST
 ING DISCOURsB LAST NIGHT.

Among Its Members--History of the | Church in the United States.
 | At the Church of the Messiah last night Rev. w. F. Dickerman spoke on "The Good Things in the Baptist De- ] nomination" He took as his text, Matthew Hi, g. 6: ''There went out to Him Jerusalem and all Judea, and all the region round about Jordan, and were baptized of Him in Jordan, con fessing their sins" MT. Dickerman said; 'sThe Baptist denominations like the Methodist, is so extensive that shall be obliged to abridge the lecture to some extent, and shall refrain from mentioning many names. The denomt- nation was formerly everywhere spoken against, and many little think that these same people now so prosperous, in | other years were looked upon with con- l tempt by other denominations. By their own enterprise they have survived all prosecutions. As a sect the Baptists reach further back in history than is | at first evident from a superficial glance One of the early sects of the church, the Anabaptists, had it's origin in remote antiquity, they were called rebaptizers, designation repudiated by later Baptists.
 For hundreds of years the sect caused great disturbance in the early church. In the council of Trent it was said that if the truth of a religion was to bejudg- | ed of by the sufferings and persecu- l iOt,r snr, l tI,N pTNtt tgt should be that religion, and it was also said that for 1,200 years 1t had under gone great persecution in the church so that from this it is evident that the de- nomination is an old one. st
 "The word Baptist comes from the Greek word ABaptidzo meaning in its urinary sense to overwhelm. In order | to show how the sect was looked upon in England in early times it might be pertinent to say that Jeremy Taylor re- | ferred to it as a pest and nuisance Even Henry VIII would not allow it's members to run at large in the king dom, and issued a decree to the effect that they must leave the country and appointed a committee to hunt up them and their literature. The committee was ordered to burn all the Baptist lit erature and also to burn the people themselves if they refused to recant. John Rogers was one of their martyrs among hundreds of others. The denial of infant baptism and other ideas have caused many schisns in the church. Some of its greatest members have been Dr. Riley, Dr. Hall John Howard, John Milton, DeFoe Bunyan, Sturgeon l and many other eminent scholars. In 1792 the Baptists in England organized | the first Protestant missionary work, and next to the Catholics were the first in the mission field. The move was started by William King. a London shoemaker who undertook to carry 1t on He was a poor man, and the conn mon saying was that the Baptists eX- pected to convert the world with a cobbler and f13 2s.
 ''The history of the Baptist church in America particularly engages our at- tention and it's sects have been many, the two principal ones having been the general and particular, each of which have been sub divided. The first final | Iy became Unitarian and the latter Ar menian in principle. The first Baptist church in America was organized in Massachusetts in 1638, and the demoni- nation then began to spread rapidly. In Massachusetts they were vigorously persecuted, and it was tried by the gov \ erning officials to root out the perni- cious sect, but efforts in this direction i proved in vain. They were far in ad- vance of the Puritan fathers in their ideas of religious liberty. The church l was also persecuted in Connecticut, where Baptist ministers have been ar rested and imprisoned for their convic- tions, and even in New Haven extreme diligence was displayed to hinder the l growth of the, Sect. Even Yale college | tried strenuously to kep them out of | the town. In Virginia also the denomi- nation suffered the same opposition | Three Baptist ministers were arrested there at one time, and Patrick Henry rode sixty miles to defend therm They were charged with preaching 'The gos- pei of the Son of God" and owing to the strong defense of Henry were dis charged from the custody of the court. It was enacted in Virginia that whoever should baptise a baby should be fined 2,000 pounds of tobacco.
 l ''One thing to the credit of the Bap- | ltSlS IS lAtiI Spiltl Ol SOOu WILL S0OWn l in former years to the Jews when these latter people were unmercifully perse- cuted, and many of them fled to Prov idence, where they took refuge with l William Rogers and built there the first synagogue. The Baptist church in this country contains all the grades of in telligence, all grades of society and has ever been exceedingly aggressive. Among the colored people of the South it has a large representation, and covers in it's range perhaps as diversified peo- ole as does the Methodist church. con- taining not only the lower classes. but also those in the highest classes of so- ciety. In government the church is purely congregational, each church be- ing absolutely independent of all other churches. There is no body to enforce doctrine or discipline. It recognizes no ranks in its ministry. The polity of the church is exactly opposite to the Epis- copal government Of the Methodist church, the latter being highly central Ized, but while the Baptist government is not centralized the church has ac- complished many things which the Methodists could not
 "Of all the Protestant churches the Baptist has been the most rigid in its Calvanism, but this has in later years been subject to great change.
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