BAPTIST CHURCH.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 3155, 14 May 1883, Page 2

BAPTIST CHURCH.

SPECIAL SERVICES

Special services in connection with the new church in E street were held yesterday, the Eev. S. Dolomore officiating morning and evening. The text of the morning sermon was Nehemiab, viii, 5 6. The announcement that the ordinance of “ Believers’ Baptism ” would be administered, drew a good congregation in the evening. The new church is a very spacious, handsome, and welllighted buildipg. There is go pulpit, but a rostrum, with a suitable desk for the minister, and in front of that is a concrete baptistry, about four feet deep, which in the evening was nearly filled with water.

The Eev. Mr Dolomore is the senior Baptist minister of the colony. He has retired from the active work of the ministry, and lives in privacy near Christchurch, but his services are always available for churches in need of them. He is a spare, thoughful-looking, cultivated man ? and his preaphipg is very pleasing, for he is earnest, logical, and sustained, and speaks with remarkable distinctness and deliberation. The text, at the evening service was Mark xvi, 15 16, and the subject of discourse “ Christian Baptism.” The preacher addressed himself to justifying baptism immersion, contending that the word baptise signified "immerse." The descent of the dove upon Jesus Christ when he arose from bis immersion in the river Jordan by John Baptist, was a proof of divine approval of the ordinance, and the idea of sprinkling was quite incompatible with the performance of the ceremony in a river. AH figurative uses of the term “ baptism ” in the Bible, implied immersion, and it was on record that baptism by immersion was practised by the early Church. The Church of England rubric comtnanded immersion, the outward visible sign being water, wherein the child is baptised. Regarding infant baptism, the preacher remarked that children were always received by Christ with kindness,

but there is nothing to show they were baptised. “ For of such is tbe kingdom of heaven” remarked the Saviour looking on the children ; bat snch meant likeness, not identity. Tbe rite signified the death onto sin, and the new birth unto glory.

The discourse was listened to with marked pleasure by everyone. Shortly after the conclusion of the sermon, three believers, two female and one male, went down into the water, where the minister stood ready to receive them. They were then immersed one after the other, the choir signing meanwhile. The ceremony over, the general public dispersed, bat members remained to meet the minister and partake of the Holy Eucharist. There will be a teameeting in the Oddfellows’ Hall tomorrow evening, when Mr Dolomore will lecture on “ Home, Sweet Home.”