Having quoted Acts 8:35-38, Sager sets out to make two points about baptism. The first is a follow-up to her discussion about the necessity of the ordinance. She observes that the author of the Book of Acts does not quote Philip's sermon to the eunuch. Chapter 8, verse 35 merely says "he preached unto him Jesus." As Disciples were wont to do, Sager focused on that phrase in order to make her point: "something must have been said about baptism since the eunuch asked to be baptized."[1] According to the inference, because baptism is inherent to preaching Jesus, it is therefore an essential part of the faithful response to the gospel. In his commentary on the Book of Acts, first published in 1863, J. W. McGarvey had emphasized this point. McGarvey, an 1850 honor graduate of Alexander Campbell's Bethany College, was the leading biblical scholar in the second generation of the Stone-Campbell Movement. Disciples widely read and often cited his work on Acts. Commenting on the eunuch's question to Philip, "what doth hinder me to be baptized?" (Acts 8:36), McGarvey wrote:
The appearance of the water to which they had come suggested this question, but it could not have been done so unless the eunuch had been taught something concerning immersion as a religious ordinance. But he had enjoyed no opportunity for instruction on this subject, except through the teaching of Philip. Had Philip, then, preached him a sermon on immersion? No. Luke says Philip "preached to him Jesus." How, then, had he, while hearing Jesus preached, obtained instruction in reference to immersion? There is only one answer to this question. It is, that to preach Jesus, after the apostolic method, involves full instruction upon the subject of immersion. The prejudice, therefore, which exists at the present day against frequent introduction of this subject in discourses addressed to sinners, is altogether unscriptural; and those only preach Jesus correctly who give to it the same prominence which belongs to it in apostolic discourses. It was a part of Peter's sermon on Pentecost, of Philip's preaching to the Samaritans, and of his present discourse to the Ethiopian; and we will yet see, in the course of this commentary, that it always occupied a place in the preaching of inspired men on such occasions. Indeed, it would be impossible to preach Jesus fully without it.[2]
Sager's second point is related, but takes up a separate question: the scriptural mode of baptism. As noted earlier, the Methodist tradition to which Eva Heiliger belonged asserts that baptism may be administered by sprinkling, pouring, or immersion, and that infants as well as adults my be baptized. In practice, sprinkling has been common among Methodists. It seems clear that the pamphlet Heiliger had sent defended the position of her church. For, having quoted the passage in which "they went down both into the water, both Philip and the eunuch; and he baptized him," Sager comments, "And surely he was neither sprinkled nor water poured upon his head."[3]
Notes
[1] Meta Chestnutt Sager to Eva Heiliger, February 11, 1945.
[2] J. W. McGarvey, A Commentary on Acts of Apostles, 7th ed. (Lexington, KY: Transylvania Printing and Publishing Company, 1872), 98. See also McGarvey's, New Commentary on Acts of Apostles (Cincinnati, OH: Standard Publishing Company, 1892), 1:157-58, which presents similar remarks. For the place of McGarvey in the history of Disciples biblical scholarship, see M. Eugene Boring, Disciples and the Bible: A History of Disciples Biblical Interpretation in North America (St. Louis, MO: Chalice Press, 1997), 221-23. For McGarvey's impact on all subsequent interpretation of the Book of Acts within the Stone-Campbell Movement, see Ibid., 248-49. For excellent brief biographies, see Henry Warner Bowden, Dictionary of American Religious Biography, 2nd ed. (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1993), 325-26; and M. Eugene Boring, "McGarvey, John W. (1829-1911)," in Encyclopedia of the Stone-Campbell Movement, (Grand Rapids, MI: William. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2004), 506-07.
[3] Meta Chestnutt Sager to Eva Heiliger, February 11, 1945. A standard reference work of the time noted that in Methodist churches in America, baptism was administered "usually by sprinkling." Frank S. Mead, Handbook of Denominations in the United States (New York: Abingdon-Cokesbury Press, 1951), 132).
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