which include every infant, whether he lives or dies, otherwise death would be an illicit gain to the one who obtained it.

Our philosophy of redemption admirably answers these ends. Christ died for the race. By virtue of that death the curse entailed on it by Adam was removed from each soul, until the soul voluntarily adopted it as its own; consequently, those who leave this world before they commit any actual sin, are received into the heaven of redeemed souls by and through the atoning Saviour. If they remain here, the Holy Spirit is continually and freely poured upon them, so that they are under no necessity of sinning, but may grow up under its constant influence, new born when first born, new creatures in Christ Jesus when first created. Though the fullness of this truth and light does not fall upon those that are born in heathen lands or of ungodly parents, still, with the children of most pious parentage, they are redeemed and cleansed by the blood of Christ, and when they enter into voluntary sin, are judged according to the light they have, which is sufficient to save them if properly used. "For when the Gentiles which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these having not the law are a law unto themselves; which show the work of the law written in their hearts, while their inward thoughts, answering the one to the other, either justify or else condemn them, as will be seen in that day when God shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ according to my Gospel."* While thus every adult shall receive according to that he hath done, from the hand of infinite love and justice, the soul that escapes the pollutions that are in the world by death, shall, through the power of Jesus, Saviour and Judge, receive eternal life, as the gift purchased for him by His incarnation and death, freely offered and freely received. For as in Adam all have spiritually died, even so in Christ have all been spiritually made alive, and they who leave the world before they slay themselves again by voluntary co-operation with the tempter, shall live forever in the heavens.

This view removes the whole cloud of horrors that from the heights of other creeds overhangs the fate of children. It is equally removed from that blasphemous self-confidence and self-righteousness that ignores the whole work of the atonement, denies Christ the headship of the race, and attempts to send its babes to heaven without putting them in his arms. He takes them though their parents refuse to give them to him. He accepts theirs though they reject him. Hence arises the doctrine of infant baptism. This ordinance is the passport to the visible Church for those who have previously Conybeare and Howson in loc.

Q

entered the invisible. Every babe has an inward state that fits it for heaven. This must then place him in the invisible Church. He therefore has a right to be a member of the visible Church. The greater includes the less. The heir of the throne is the first citizen of the state. These children of God are heirs of his eternal kingdom, and ought to be in its shadowy and temporary representative, the Church on earth. We have the keys of the visible Church. Its Author and Master presents these candidates fitted by himself, and demands that we allow them to enter. The only way of entrance is by the administration of the ordinance of baptism. Can any man forbid water that these should not be baptized which have received the Holy Ghost as well as we." "Take heed how ye" refuse his request or "despise one of these little ones. It were better for that man that a millstone were hanged about his neck and he cast into the sea than that he should offend one of these little ones."

Thus it stands in the light of a true and blessed theology. It is hampered by no such absurdities as baptismal regeneration; for the candidates are in a regenerated state before and independent of the application of water. It it no humane graft on an inhuman system, the conscience compelling the confession of this truth, though it be like a piece of new cloth in an old garment, making the rent worse, and ultimately requiring the reluctant patcher to make all his garment of the new material. It does not make us (as the Baptist faith requires) leave our little ones as a prey to the destroyer. The massacre of the innocents would then be ceaseless, and the Rachels always weeping comfortless tears for their living babes. The Spanish saying would then be too true, that the first cry of the child is because the devil clutches him; clutches and keeps, according to these theologies, save in the few cases where they are snatched from his grasp by Him whom they esteem greater than antichrist, by uncreated Omnipotence, yet weaker in his manifestation of himself in the work of redemption. But ye have not so learned Christ if so be that ye have found him, and have been taught the truth as it is in Jesus. Infant baptism is the water of sealing applied to those whose inherited stains His blood had washed away. It is the opening of the door of the Church by the hand Divine, to place within its protective walls the souls new created in him. It makes her the nursing mother of his babes, which he travailed with alone in the greatness of his strength. It possesses, as his gift, a philosophy, faith, and practice that develop, in a natural and harmonious manner, the truth as it is in him, as it is through him, in the human soul, from its feeble beginnings in the helpless babe to its unmeasured growth in the unmeasured ages.

Two important corollaries, one referring to the Church, the other to parents, demand consideration.

First. If this argument be true the Church must extend two favors to their baptized children, which they have thus far steadily refused. One is a recognition of their Church membership, and the other admission to the Lord's supper.

As the Calvinistic Baptist has the advantage of his Calvinistic Pædobaptist in the argument, so he has of all his opponents in their practice. None but avowed believers are usually considered as Church members or admitted to the sacrament. Between these Predestinarian sections there is not a shadow of difference as to the necessity of regeneration and baptism before Church membership, and that the first, which is a pre-requisite of the second, cannot happen till after infancy; hence they both say the last cannot be conferred upon an infant, but he must have a quasi-membership, if any -be "a child of the Church." But if the first and last of these are above that age and class, how can baptism, the intermediate on which both depend, be capable of application to them? It cannot, and the Baptist again wins the day. They go together in the order laid down. If we grant the baptism because of regeneration, we must the membership because of baptism. If we shrink from this, if we dare not call our babes Christians and Church members, let us abandon infant baptism, calling it christening, or what you will, but not the Divine ordinance and sole passport to the Church on earth. We must recognize him as a member; he must be taught that he is one, that after due season, and on the expression of proper feelings on his part, he may assume his vows for himself, and enjoy all the privileges of the Church; but before that hour his connection is as close, his liberty as large as a child in a family before his maturity. If he sins he sins as a Church member. If he persist in his sin he is to be treated as a backslider. Thus alone shall we be consistent with ourselves and the truth.

The second necessity is to admit our children, as soon as they can go to Church, to the great privilege and duty of Church members -the Lord's supper. This may seem to some the very extreme of folly and profanity. How will this service be desecrated by such an admission! Better fall back on the very doctrine that excludes infants from heaven than to admit one that drags us to such irreverent conclusions. But we ask, where is the ground for the especial sanctity which is thrown around this ordinance, a sanctity so sacred that those in the congregation who are nearest the heart and the likeness of the Redeemer are to be excluded from its delights? The hospitality which that supper was intended to commemorate and

symbolize is turned into crabbed discourtesy by these close-hearted servitors of the Master of the feast. What objection can arise to the participation of children in its duties and influences? Is it because they cannot understand its meaning? They are taught to pray long before they are sensible of its nature or benefits. Is that greatest of human privileges, speaking to God, turned into a blasphemous pantomime by the broken prattle of a child's prayer? But if this is obligatory on every parental conscience, why shall not the Eucharist, the other mode of approach unto God, be granted them? They will understand it much earlier and easier than they can prayer. The child knows the meaning of food before he does of conversation; and no way of impressing the great central truth of the Gospel on his sensitive nature can compare with this one appointed by Christ. It seems as if he had this object especially in view, so potent would its influence be. The little ones would have every sense brought in contact with the great truth, and as knowledge thus first enters the soul, they would, from this frequent and solemn duty, have the Lamb of God in his sufferings and death as vividly active in their hearts as they now have their daily meals.

It cannot be refused them from their unfitness, for many others, less worthy, go in their adult depravities, having the wedding garment upon a soul, alive, indeed, but not all glorious within, while those babes in Christ have upon them the perfect robe of Christ's righteousness. The one that is nearest a little child is the most heartily welcomed and rewarded by the Lord of the feast, and the child himself will be taken up in his arms there, and blessed as it nowhere else can be. How pleasant the spectacle of parents and children gathering as one family about this great family table of the Father of mercies and God of all comforts! The pictures of a family prayer and family baptism would then have a fitting consummation in the family communion. The very sight of it would remove every objection. As the posture of kneeling in prayer needs no argument save the convictions the beholding eye gives the heart, so the propriety and beauty of this act would convince every beholder.

These two privileges are absolutely essential to the Church relation and the Church life. Without them baptism is impotent and in a measure harmful; with them it is un fait accompli, a finished and perfect work. Without them, the advocates of believer's baptism can pick flaws in our practice that our argument can never close up. With them it stands forth clear as the sun and fair as the moon, lovely and of good report.

Let baptism then have its perfect work. Do not admit the new-born Christian to the font but shut him off from the class, the covenant, and the supper, until he comes back to his Father's house, from which his elder brethren have driven him, and, too often, with jealousies and surmises contribute to the festival of his return. Keep not this seed-wheat in the wilderness, refusing to plant it in the garden of the Lord, until it has grown up among universal rocks and tares. It is not the best way to keep weeds out of that garden by letting nothing grow from the seed, but all from translated exotics. The tares will be bedded in those roots, will be in the sap of those trees to spring up and defile many after their transplanting. Let us the rather carefully raise the godly seed in the sacred inclosure of the Church; and then shall the glories of her future shine upon our eyes when, not by tributary streams like the Sabbath school, but through the central channel, shall flow in upon her a never-failing stream of holy youth, greatly enriching this paradise of God.

As the Church is yet restrained by an imperfect theology from its full duty, so many Christian parents deprive their children of this privilege under convictions originating in like error. Two reasons prompt them to deny their babes this symbol of and passport to the sacramental grace, the first arising from convictions of the invalidity of the ordinance, the last from an unwillingness to impose a yoke on the child which shall afterward burden his conscience. The first we have already examined; let us consider the latter. They dislike to impose a burden on their children, and that this is one proved by the dissatisfaction of many with it when they enter the Church on profession of their faith. The general objection is easily disposed of. In multitudes of cases the parent imposes burdens on the child without his consent, often irksome, painful, and irremediable, and sometimes deadly, which it is sinful for them to murmur at, and from which they can. not escape but by the door of death, made lustrous to their sad eyes by these parental impositions. Do they object to imposing their blood and lineage on an immortal soul? Do they shrink from compelling him to carry their name, or speak their language, or abide in their social condition, be these what they may? Besides these burdens, which substantially make up the whole life of the child, they receive others from their hands for which they are responsible, and which may be equally intolerable. They bear a name at which they may be justly aggrieved and ashamed, an incurable deformity laid upon them by the poor taste of their parents. Is this not interfering with their rights and privileges?

But it may be said this is mere trifling. These are the necessary FOURTH SERIES, VOL. XI.-2