ho gave thee me! Ere yet thine eye
Rested with conscious love upon thy mother,
Long ere thy lips could gently sound her name,
She gave thee up to God; she sought for thee
One boon alone, that thou mightest he His child;
His child sojourning on this distant land,
His child above the blue and radiant sky,
'Tis all I ask of thee, beloved one, still!"

Here is a dedication worthy of a Christian mother. Natural affection and
human pride might lead the fond mother to dedicate her child at the altar
of Mammon, to gold, to fame, to magnificence, to the world. But no, every
wish of the pious mother's heart is merged in one great wish and prayer,
"that thou may'st be His child."

The dedication of our children to the Lord is one of the first acts of the
religious ministry of home. All the means of grace will be of no avail
without it. What will the acts of the gospel minister avail if they are not
preceded by an offering of himself to the Lord who has called him? His holy
vocation demands such an offering. It is his voluntary response to and
acceptance of his calling of God. Thus with Christian parents. What will
baptism avail, so far as the parents are concerned, without this dedication
of their children to Him in whose name they are baptised? No more than the
form apart from the spirit. It would be but a mockery of God.

We have a beautiful example and illustration of this dedication, in the
family of the faithful Abraham. "By faith Abraham, when he was tried,
offered up Isaac: and he that had received the promises offered up his only
begotten son." We might at first view regard this act of his as an
evidence of his want of parental sympathy and tenderness. But not so; it is
rather an evidence of these. What he did was the prompting of a true faith,
yielding implicit obedience to the Lord, and offering as an obligation to
Him, what he loved most upon earth. Had he not loved him so dearly, God
would not have chosen him as a means of testing his father's religious
fidelity. Hence this oblation of his son was the best evidence of his
supreme love to God, and that all he had was consecrated to his service.
This act called for the subordination of natural affection to Christian
faith and love. "Take now thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get
thee into the land of Moriah, and offer him there for a burnt offering!"

What a startling command was this! How it must have stirred up the soul of
that parent, and f