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VirginiaHuguenot · #18 (**permalink**) 10-12-2006, 11:22 PM

I got my copy too. It's good for historical reference purposes. I'm glad to finally have it in my library. I agree very much with J.W. Alexander's remark, however. The goal of Baird's book is the promotion not of reformation but of liturgical innovation in worship under the guise of Reformed 'tradition.'

There is a helpful historical analysis of this book by Julius Melton in Presbyterian Worship in America.

On a lighter note, I found this anecdote (pp. 83-84) by Baird amusing:

Quote:

We may be allowed to vary these souvenirs by adducing one of the more lively cast. It is connected with the baptismal service. When the famous Claude was pastor of the church at Charenton, near Paris (about the middle of the seventeenth century), he was called on one occasion to perform the marriage ceremony between two Huguenots in high life; of whom the bridegroom was a decrepit septuagenerian, leading to the altar a young girl of some sixteen summers. As the minister saw this ill-matched couple advancing up the aisle to meet him, whether by accident or design we cannot say, he opened his book to the baptismal form, and addressed the disconcerted bridegroom with the interrogation: "Dost thou here present this child to be baptized?"