Parable of the City Park

Thomas Witherow

About 500 years ago there was a rich and princely nobleman, whose castle stood in the neighborhood of a great city. The mayor of the city and this nobleman were on such intimate terms, that even in those days of feudal power the baron was not ashamed to acknowledge the honest burgher as his friend.

The nobleman, having determined to remove his family to a foreign country, was sad at the prospect of parting with the mayor, and he generously promised to bestow on him, and the city which he represented, some generous gift that would prove to other ages a lasting memorial of their friendship.

There was a beautiful garden in the precincts of the city, planted with all manner of rare plants, and flowers, and fruit trees, which had for generations been the property of the baron's ancestors; and it occurred to him that to allow the mayor and aldermen of the city the use of this garden, in the absence of his own family, would be counted by the corporation a strong expression of personal goodwill.

Accordingly, he gave directions that the mayor and aldermen, together with their children, should have a right of entrance to the garden, and that the same privilege should be enjoyed by their successors.

After the baron's departure, the aldermen entered on possession of the garden, and enjoyed it very much. They were grateful for the honor, and took advantage of the privilege it brought within their reach. It was a pleasant sight-one that their less fortunate fellow-citizens often envied—to see those portly burghers, after a hard day's business in the city, enjoying themselves in that delicious retreat. The parents might be seen sitting in the shade, the children romping on the grass— one climbing the fruit tree to rob it of its clusters, another sailing his paper boat upon the lake, another culling flowers for a nosegay, another-the youngest of all-crowing in the nurse's arms. In this way the aldermen of the city and their children enjoyed that princely pleasure-ground for 250 years.

About the end of that time, the lord of the soil, the lineal descendant of the original donor, himself the scion of a race of nobles, visited the inheritance of his fathers. He found that the state of affairs was very different from what he knew it had been 250 years before. The good mayor and all that generation were many years dead; the city had grown more populous and wealthy. The garden, indeed, was as beautiful as ever, but the aldermen who enjoyed the privilege of entering it, had become degenerate. They had grown insolent and proud; they looked down upon the other citizens as the very dregs of the earth; they had lost that love and attachment to the lord of the soil by which their predecessors had been distinguished 250 years before, and they could no longer be counted among the nobleman's friends. Indeed, they wore the mask of friendship, but they were enemies at heart.

The young baron, having made many fruitless efforts to reform these wicked men, resolved to deprive them of their privilege, and bestow it on others who would prove themselves more worthy. He enlarged the garden, by throwing into it a neighboring common, and spared no expense in making it more beautiful than ever. It was made so large as to be a park rather than a garden. The gate, that in old times was so narrow that it scarcely would admit a rotund alderman, was now so much widened that a coach and six could drive through it with ease. A new staff of servants was appointed to keep the grounds in order, and to watch the gate, each in his turn; and instructions were given to the gatekeepers in these words: every friend of mine may enter here, but no admission for my enemies. This new regulation made a great change. It abolished the invidious distinction that had hitherto existed between the aldermen and other citizens; it opened the park gate to any citizen whatever, who cherished friendly feelings for the absent peer.

The very first day that the new regulation came in force, there were 3000 citizens who claimed admission as the friends of the noble owner, and who were admitted accordingly. Henceforth that beautiful park was every day crowded with visitors. The citizens, in former times, had always seen the aldermen take their children with them into these grounds, and knew that this was done by the express directions of the original donor; and, as the young baron, on his late visit, left no directions to the contrary, they always took their children with them to the park, no one forbidding them. Two hundred years more passed by, and, during all that time, it is not on record that any gatekeeper refused the right of entrance to the child of any citizen who was known to be a friend of his master.

Some fifty years ago, however, there was a gatekeeper stationed at the park gate who took a very peculiar view of his duty. He thought that the original directions to admit children were not in force now; that the arrangements made by the young baron, when he visited the city two hundred years before, had set the ancient directions aside; that all the gatekeepers who had preceded him for two centuries were acting in the face of their instructions when admitting children. For these reasons, he expressed his determination to admit them no more. This whim called forth considerable remark at the time. But as the man in the main was a good body, and professed nice scruples of conscience in the matter, few citizens gave themselves any concern about him or his crotchet; more particularly, as all the other gatekeepers, knowing that they served a good master, put a generous interpretation on the baron's orders, and opened their gates freely to the children of his friends. But, for the last fifty years, it has so happened that there is always one of these park-rangers who thinks it his duty to exclude children; and, although the men are often changed, there is always one of them who strives to put the narrowest constructions possible on the master's order, and when he sees a child coming, runs and locks the gate.

Not long ago, it came to pass that a citizen, distinguished for his ardent attachment to the absent nobleman, obtained a day's leisure, and agreed with his family that he and they would spend the holiday amid the fresh air and leafy bowers of the city park. The youngsters of the house were in great glee, and soon made themselves ready for the day's enjoyment, while nurse, to her great delight, got leave to come along, carrying baby in her arms. At an early hour in the forenoon, the whole household sallied forth, and that day the sunshine seemed more glorious, and everything looked more lovely than was wont, as the whole party gaily tripped along. But, to their dismay, when they reached the park, it was the surly porter who was in charge that day; and when the official saw the whole household approach, his conscience became doubly tender, and he grasped the key of office with a firmer grasp, and a storm gathered on his brow. A shadow fell on the faces of the children at the sight of him, for, although they could not fathom his motives, yet they knew, by instinct, that that dark man was not their friend. The citizen was no stranger to human nature; he knew that the mind of the gatekeeper was too deeply steeped in prejudice to be open to conviction, that it furnished him with an exquisite pleasure to represent himself as much more conscientious and faithful than the other gatekeepers, and that custom had now so wedded him to his oddities and whims, that life would, for him, lose half its pleasures, if he should have to renounce them. Nevertheless, he determined to try the effect of a little reasoning upon him, whereupon the following dialogue ensued between them:

Citizen: Hello! Gatekeeper, open the gate.

Gatekeeper: With pleasure, sir, to you and your good lady, for you are both known to be my master's friends; but these children cannot be admitted.

Citizen: How is that? Have orders reached you lately to exclude the children?

Gatekeeper: No, sir: but the present lord is known to be of the same mind with the baron who visited us 250 years ago, and who left us the orders by which we are now guided.

Citizen: Well, I have often read the instructions. They are printed in large letters over this gate, but I never could see anything in them that necessarily shuts out the children.

Gatekeeper: But you certainly must see that the words contain no command to admit them.

Citizen: Granting that the order contains no command either to admit or to exclude them, that only proves that the baron did not mean to disturb the established practice in regard to children; and you know that, for 250 years before his visit, it was the practice to admit them.

Gatekeeper: I admit that the children of the aldermen were admitted, with the baron's approval, during the time you name.

Citizen: So far well. I ask you now, can you show me anything that annuls the law, changes the practice, and commands you to deny to children the right of entrance?

Gatekeeper: I cannot show you a direct command; but I can show you what is as good.

Citizen: Then, by all means, let us have it.

Gatekeeper: Look to that writing on the wall, and see the command there given to the porters-"Every friend of mine may enter here, but no admission for my enemies." Now, sir, you know infants are too young to be capable of friendship, and that being the case, they have no right to be here. Does not this very commission exclude children?

Citizen: I do not see that is does. The order under which you act confers the privilege that once was enjoyed by the aldermen on every citizen who is the baron's friend; and, as the aldermen had a right to enter and take their children with them, so any friend of your master has the right now to enter and take his children with him. And as your orders do not name children, that shows that it was not the design of the baron to strip them of a privilege which they enjoyed already. So, open the gate, and let the children pass.

Gatekeeper: Indeed I will not. Infants are not capable of friendship, and, of course, cannot be admitted as friends.

Citizen: True, they cannot be admitted as friends, but that only shows that the qualification necessary for their parents is not necessary for them. And when the parents are known to be the master's friends, it is only fair to regard the whole family on the same side, until its members are guilty of some act that proves their want of friendship, and then I have no objection that you deal with them accordingly.

Gatekeeper: Say as you please, I will not admit them until they prove their friendship by acts.

Citizen: Take into account that the baron enlarged this park, widened this gate, and made provision for a large accession of visitors, showing himself to be kind and generous. But you interpret his instructions in such a way as to restrict his generosity; you, in opposition to the spirit of his actions, represent him as repulsive and austere, and, without express authority, you take away from a large and important class in the community a privilege that you admit yourself belonged to them for 250 years.

The baron would not be guilty of doing anything so harsh without good reasons. But he has assigned no reasons, and given no orders to that effect which I am able to discover.

Gatekeeper: Sir, it is presumptuous in you to be thus guided by carnal reason. You may be sure I am right, there is no mistake about it. But permit me to ask: How am I to know that it is the will of the present baron to admit children?

Citizen: From the simple fact that he has never countermanded the original orders in regard to children. Those orders hold good until they are revoked by the same authority as enacted them at first.

Gatekeeper: You need not think to change me. I will never admit children at this gate.

Citizen: True. But you must have patience to hear an argument on the subject. Is it not known that the present lord has inherited the sentiments of his ancestor who enlarged these grounds? And is it not on record that he was fond of children, that he sometimes took them up in his arms, and blessed them; and that, on one occasion when his ignorant servants tried to keep children away from him, he administered to his followers a sharp rebuke. Now, when you shut children out of the park, whether is your conduct more in accordance with the spirit of the baron, or with that of his narrow minded followers?

Gatekeeper: Do you suppose that it is my business to answer questions? I have other duties to mind.

Citizen: Do you not know that the baron once said that children must be allowed to come to him, for this park was intended for such as they?

Gatekeeper: Friend, you quite mistake that saying: the true meaning is, that children should be allowed to approach him, because men, in some respects like children, have the right of entrance to his park.

Citizen: Well, if that exposition can satisfy you, you yourself are one of those of whom you speak:

"Men, in some respects like children."

Gatekeeper: Sir, I perceive you sit in the chair of the scorner.

Citizen: Pardon me, I can scarcely help it. However, did not the baron once say, "He that receives one of these children in my name receives me?” If so, when you reject the children, what are you doing to the master?

Gatekeeper: Very true, he did say these words. But he did not bid me to open the park gate to them.

Citizen: Did not the master go so far as to make a distinction between the children of his friends and those of his enemies, calling the one class holy, and the other unclean. But you treat both as unclean when you shut all together out of the park.

Gatekeeper: Will you not understand language, notwithstanding all I can say to you? When he said that the children of his friends were holy, he only meant that they were not bastards.

Citizen: Well, you are a strange interpreter! You stop at nothing to turn aside an argument.

Gatekeeper: If you do not like it, I cannot help it. I am not bound to please you with interpretations.

Citizen: The gatekeepers, whom the baron appointed at his last visit to the city, must have known his lordship's pleasure better than you, who never saw his face, and they admitted whole families into these grounds. History tells us how a citizen called Lydia, and one called Stephanas, and another—I forget his name-the governor of the city jail, had their whole households admitted. Now, I only ask you to do for my family what these primitive porters did for theirs.

Gatekeeper: But you must prove to me that there was a child in those households you have named.

Citizen: Your notions of logic seem as strange as your expositions. When you assert that a privilege which belonged to children for 250 years is taken from them, it is your place to prove your statement.

If you fail to do this, the privilege continues as a matter of course. A privilege never lost is still ours in possession. Meanwhile, take notice how different your conduct is from that of the first gatekeepers: they admitted whole families, and you do not.

Gatekeeper: But my grandfather was a gatekeeper here, and I know it was his opinion that no children were in these households.

Citizen: It would be as well for you to go by the baron's orders, and never heed your grandfather.

Gatekeeper: Now, that is where you show your ignorance, and malice, and impudence. The opinions of my grandfather and the baron's orders were always in harmony. My grandfather was a great man; he was always right on every subject; and it is only pure spite and malice in you that tempts you to think otherwise.

Citizen: Keep your temper, my good friend. Your grandfather was, no doubt, a worthy gentleman, and I have no objection that you think him infallible, if you please. But have we not good authority for saying that children were in this park in the time of the first gatekeepers; and, as they were in, I presume they must have passed through this gate.

Gatekeeper: I have given you sufficient reason for my conduct. It is not necessary that I explain every difficulty that you, and troublesome fellows like you, may suggest.

Citizen: Pardon me, good sir, for saying anything that might imply that any relative of yours ever could be wrong in his opinion. But you know we have a true history that gives an account of transactions that took place here for seventy years after the arrangements came into force; and I ask you honestly to say, is it on record that the child of any friend of the baron's was ever refused admission at the gate?

Gatekeeper: There is no such record.

Citizen: Then why do you keep them out?

Gatekeeper: Ask me no more of your questions.

Citizen: Was there any gatekeeper, for the first 200 years after the first appointment at the time of the baron's visit, who shut out the children?

Gatekeeper: No. But I do not see what that proves. They were all wrong, of course.

Citizen: Of all the gatekeepers now in office, is there one who excludes the children from the park, or understands his instructions as you do?

Gatekeeper: None. But what does that prove? Do you think I care anything for human authority?

Citizen: I am sure you do not. You set no value on any human authority except your own, and, if you do not be angry, I will add your grandfather's. But I will follow you no further at present. Argument is lost on any one with whom his own opinion stands above all argument. I will take home my children at present, and come back some other day, when I am sure to find another at the gate who knows the baron's will better than you. Were it possible for me to cherish hard thoughts of the nobleman you serve, it is the harsh, narrowminded, bigoted conduct of the servant that would lower the master in my esteem. But far be it from me to measure that large and generous heart of his by the petty representation you give of him.

There is a day coming when you will know whether your treatment of the children of his best friends meets with his approbation. Meanwhile, I leave with you a sentence from an old book that you can think of at your leisure:

"Temptations to sin are sure to come, but woe to the one through whom they come! It would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck and he were cast into the sea than that he should cause one of these little ones to sin" [Luke 17:1-2].

The gatekeeper shrunk into his lodge as a snail into its shell, and the citizen, with his children, returned to their home. Now, the gatekeeper was an Anabaptist.

Conclusion

The reader is now in a position to judge of the claims that Anabaptism has on the reception of Christians. It is occupied only with an ordinance, and that ordinance bearing no greater relation to the Christian system than a penny piece does to a pound sterling. Not only so, but it busies itself mainly about the mode and subjects of that ordinance. The only thing positive which it teaches is that baptism is to be administered by putting the person into the water, instead of putting water upon the person.

The other part of it is a mere negation-namely, that baptism is not to be administered to the infant children of believers. It is on husks like these that its followers are fed. Even if these principles were true, men that love the Lord should pause, and think whether such things are sufficient to justify them in putting one rent more in the church of the living God, and in maintaining one sect more in a world that has good reason to be sick of sects. The Word of God refuses to sustain the claims of dipping. For, when Christ baptized with the Holy Spirit, He did so by making the Spirit come, fall, and rest upon the person baptized; and when we make the water of the ordinance come, fall, and rest upon the person, we baptize after Christ's example. When Anabaptism refuses to recognize, by baptism, the church membership of infants, it sets itself in opposition to an unrepealed principle of God's Word, to the established practice of two thousand years, to clear statements of the New Testament Scriptures, and to the practice of eighteen Christian centuries; while, at the same time, it can produce no case from the Scripture where the child of Christian parents was treated as they say all children should be treated. Thus it is that Anabaptism comes, with two errors in its hand, to tempt us from the way of truth.

The unpleasant effect that the sight of deformity produces on the mind is very well known. If a painter were to put upon his canvas the figure of a man, and exhibit some feature of his face in enormous disproportion to any of the others, this one defect would mar the beauty of the painting. And no matter how true it might be to nature in other respects, this alone would destroy the harmony of all. The eye of the spectator would rest upon the deformed feature, and pass over all the other parts of the picture. If the spectator were a mere boor, he might be disposed to admire the genius of the man who produced the caricature. But if he were a man of taste and judgment, a glimpse of that unsightly feature would fill him with disgust. Now, Christianity, as it is in the Old and New Testaments, is the figure that sits to have its likeness taken. Every sect undertakes to give a more correct representation of it to the world than any sister sect. But if, instead of exhibiting the Christian religion in all its relative proportions, and thus leading people to see every doctrine, and practice, and principle of the system in its proper place, whether primary or subordinate, any sect shall adopt some subordinate principle, and put it into the foreground, and make it so important that it overshadows truths vastly more important than itself, it presents to the world a distorted and deformed Christianity. Now this is what Anabaptism does. It takes up baptism and talks about it, until at last people busy themselves about the ordinance more than they do about the great truths which baptism is hiding from their view. It enlarges on the sin of infant baptism, until people at last bring themselves to believe that falsehood, and drunkenness, and dishonesty are small as compared with it. It talks about dipping, until people come at last to think that dipping is religion. Meet an Anabaptist in society, and among the first things you notice in his Christianity are his notions about dipping, and his prejudices against infants, just as in the picture the first thing that takes your attention is the one feature out of all proportion with the others. Deformity can never hide itself; and in a deformed system it is the uncomely part that always shows.

The injurious effects that connection with a narrowminded sect tends to produce upon the individual, find, unfortunately, too many illustrations in the world. A mind that, perhaps, originally was susceptible of cultivation and development allows itself to be occupied so much about rites, and forms, and petty little things, that, at last, it becomes like the thoughts which harbor in it, little and petty. The better feelings of his heart, that should rise upwards to things above, and that should flow forth to all on earth who bear the image of the heavenly, become narrowed in their flow, and gradually center around and fix upon them, only, who cherish a crotchet similar to his own. The conduct that we expect to find in one who lays claim to a purer religion than his fellow turns out to be no better than what is exemplified by many others who make smaller professions. And after being subject to such an influence for a series of years, a man, who once gave promise of becoming a genial and generous Christian, sinks down into a mere fault-finder— a theological cynic, whose mind is soured against every sect except his own— snarling at everything, and pleased with nothing. Such must be the effects produced on the individual, by connection, for any length of time, with a denomination which presents any feature of Christianity in an exaggerated form to the world. It is a more serious misfortune than most people know, to belong to a sect which ever wrangles about rites and forms, and delights to split theological hairs. To be in its membership is to imbibe its spirit, and to breathe its unwholesome air. Union with some grand old church, true to the doctrines of salvation, aiming to present the world with the truth in due proportion, and frowning upon follies off every kind, is far more favorable to the growth and development of the spiritual life. The giddy and deluded may leave it to seek elsewhere a religion more congenial to their tastes, but good men will rest in its shadow, and there gather food for their souls, until the world has an end.