face of the devoted child, the parents feel the solemn vow
sink deep into the soul, and realize the weight of that responsibility
which God lays upon them.

God commands us not only to dedicate our children to Him, but to do so in
the way He has appointed, viz., in and through Christian baptism. In this
way we bring our children into the church, and train them up in a churchly
way. We bring them to God through the church. In their baptism we have, as
it were, a confirmation of their dedication by "the mighty Master's seal."
It is the link which binds our children to the church, the rite of their
initiation into the kingdom of Christ, the sign and seal of their saving
relation to the covenant of grace. By it they are solemnly set apart to the
service of God, enrolled among the members of His kingdom, entitled to its
privileges and guardian care, and placed in the appointed way of salvation
and eternal life, receiving the seal and superscription of the Son of God.
This is indispensable to the demands of the Christian faith. To deny that
infants are thus included in the covenant of grace, destroys the purity and
spiritual unity of the Christian compact, and subverts the foundations and
harmony of the Christian home.

It is revolting to the parent's faith to forbid his little ones the
privilege of the church, and to treat them as aliens from the covenant of
promise. Does the gospel place them under such a ban of proscription?
Surely not! He who instituted the family relation had special regard to the
family in all the appointments of his grace. His command is like that of
Noah, "Come thou and all thy house into the ark." "The promise is unto you
and your children." This is the comfort of the parent, that his children
are planted by the ordinance of God into the soil of grace, where they may
grow up as a tender plant in the likeness of His death, and be "like a tree
planted by the rivers of water, that shall bring forth his fruit in his
season; his leaf shall not wither, and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper."

Baptism in the Christian home is eminently infant baptism. Take this away,
and you sever the strongest cord that binds church and home. As the Jew was
commanded to circumcise his child, and thus bring it into proper relations
to the theocratical covenant, so the Christian has a similar command from
Christ to bring his children, through the holy sacrament of baptism, to
Him. It is not our purpose to discuss the baptis