parents will pore over filthy novels, or catch at some foreign accent, to
get a name which may have a fashionable sound, and a claim upon the
prevailing taste of the times, and which may remind one of the battles of
some ambitious general, or of the adventures of some love-sick swain, or of
the tragic deeds of some fashionable libertine!

And when such a name is found to suit the ear of fashion and of folly, it
is applied to the child, and reiterated by the minister before the
baptismal font; and as often as it is afterwards repeated it reminds one
perhaps of deeds which put modesty to blush, and startle the ear of justice
and humanity. What a burning shame is this to the Christian home! The
child who is cursed with such a name has ever before him the memorandum of
his parent's folly, and as a recognized example, the character of him after
whom he has been named. As often as he is hailed by it, he blushes to think
that he has been called by pious parents after one who, perhaps, has turned
many a home into desolation, and disgraced and blighted forever the fond
hopes and joys of the young and old.

Have thoughts and associations like these no demoralizing influence? How
can parents admonish their children against novel reading after they have
taken their names from novels? The giving of Christian names at the present
time is indeed a ridiculous farce, an insult to christianity, and a
representation of stoical infidelity before the baptismal altar. It is
there an act of the Babylonish king to heathenize the child. We might
almost say that the folly has become a rage. The rage for new names
especially,--names which do not adorn the sacred page, nor carry us back to
the times and faith of our fathers, but which have gained notoriety in the
world of fiction, and associate us with the lover's affrays and with the
desperado's feats,--these are the names which Christian parents too often
seek with avidity for their children. If you were to judge their homes by
these names, you would think yourself in a Turkish seraglio, or amid the
voluptuous scenes of a Parisian court, or in the bosom of a heathen
family. What, for instance, is there about such names as Nero, Caesar,
Pompey, Punch, that would remind you that you were in a Christian home?

It is often disgusting, too, to see how some Christian parents, who live in
humble life, seek to ape, in their children, the empty sounding titles of
the world. They only show their vanity a