Milo Jewett was born in 1808 into the family of a successful physician, and as a result, Milo received an excellent education. He graduated from Dartmouth after which he began a career as a lawyer, but it didn’t suit him so attended Andover Seminary, at which time he trusted Christ as his Saviour. After graduation he became a teacher. In 1834 he accepted a professorship in Marietta College, Marietta, Ohio. Then a few years later he was asked to become the pastor of a Presbyterian church.
On this day in 1838 he wrote a letter which described a life-changing event in his life. One of the leaders of his church became a Baptist, and several other members attended the baptism. They then turned to Jewett to defend their denomination’s practice of paedo-baptism – the sprinkling of babies. Jewett confessed that he had never studied the subject and never read anything for or against. He wrote “I entered upon an investigation of the original Scriptures relative to the language used respecting the ordinance…. I was compelled to admit, as a philologist and interpreter of the Bible, that immersion, and that only, is the baptism which Christ enjoins. Afterwards I took up infant baptism, and here I found myself in clouds and darkness… I was obliged, in the fear or God, to conclude that none but believers in Jesus have a right to the ordinance of Jesus.”
In January 1839 Milo Jewett was baptized and united with the Baptist church in Marietta. Resigning the college he moved to Alabama where he started a girls school before become the first president of Vassar College. In 1840 he authored a little book entitled “Jewett on Baptism.” He died in 1882.
