for this life,
choose their occupation, labor to leave them a large inheritance, and
rejoice when they rise to eminence in the world.

But in all this, God, religion and eternity are cast into the shade; you
act towards them as if God had no claim upon them, and you were under no
obligations to meet that claim. Think of this, ye who have been recreant to
your duty,--ye who have not followed Abraham to the mount of oblation, nor
brought up your sons as an offered Samuel. Oh think, that God will demand
of you these children, and that if they are not now devoted to the Lord,
you will not have them to return to Him in the great day of final
reckoning. May the momentous interests and responsibilities of that coming
day bring you with your children around the altar of consecration, and
constrain you there to say--

"I give thee to thy God--the God that gave thee,
A well-spring of deep gladness to my heart!
And precious as thou art,
And pure as dew of Hermon, He shall have thee,
My own, my beautiful, my undefiled!
And thou shalt be His child!"

CHAPTER XI.

CHRISTIAN BAPTISM.

"Water--of blest purity
Emblem--do we pour on thee;
Little one! regenerate be--
Only by the crimson flood
Of the Spotless, in the blood
Of the very Son of God!
Father, Son and Holy Ghost!
Take the feeble, take the lost,
Purchased once at Calvary's cost!"

What delightful associations cluster around the baptismal altar! How
tenderly does the pious mother fold her babe to her yearning heart, as she
devoutly approaches that consecrated spot, and there dedicates in and
through this holy sacrament, the child of her love and hope, to Him who
gave it! What a holy charge she there assumes; what a sacred vow she there
makes; what a solemn promise she there gives; what a momentous interest is
entrusted to her there; what a weight of responsibility is there laid upon
her!

Her charge is an infant soul; her vow is to be faithful to it; her promise
is to train it up for God; and her's will be the lasting glory or the
lasting shame! These very engagements and trusts elevate the pious parents;
diffuse a tenderness and sympathy over all the domestic relations, and make
better husbands, better wives, better parents, and better children, by the
deep insight which is given to their faith in those mysterious relations
and mutual obligations which bind them together. As the consecrated water
falls upon the