child has been
registered in one name, and is afterwards baptized {74} in another, the
Baptismal, and not the registered, name is its legal name, even if the
registered name was given first.

It is strange that, in view of all this, peers should drop their
Christian names, i.e. their real names, their Baptismal names. The
custom, apparently, dates only from the Stuart period, and is not easy
to account for. It would seem to suggest a distinct loss. The same
loss, if it be a loss, is incurred by the Town Clerk of London, who
omits his Christian name in signing official documents.[16] The King,
more happily, retains his Baptismal or Christian name, and has no
surname.[17] Bishops sign themselves by both their {75} Christian and
official name, as "Randall Cantuar; Cosmo Ebor.; A. F. London; H. E.
Winton; F. Oxon.".

We may consider three words, both helps and puzzles, used in connexion
with Holy Baptism: _Regeneration, Adoption, Election_. Each has its
own separate teaching, though there are points at which their meanings
run into each other.

_Regeneration_.

"We yield Thee hearty thanks that it hath pleased Thee to regenerate
this infant." So runs the Prayer-Book thanksgiving after baptism.
What does it mean? The word regeneration comes from two Latin words,
_re_, again, _generare_, to generate, and means exactly what it says.
In Prayer-Book language, it means being "_born again_". And, notice,
it refers to infants as well {76} as to adults. The new birth is as
independent of the child's choice as the natural birth.

And this is just what we should expect from a God of love. The child
is not consulted about his first birth, neither is he consulted about
his second birth. He does not wait (as the Baptists teach) until he is
old enough to make a free choice of second birth, but as soon as he is
born into the world ("within seven or fourteen days," the Prayer Book
orders) he is reborn into the Church. Grace does not let nature get
ten to twenty years' start, but gives the soul a fair chance from the
very first: and so, and only so, is a God of love "justified in His
saying, and clear when He is judged".

_Adoption_.

But there is a second word. The Baptismal Thanksgiving calls the
Baptized "God's own child by Adoption". A simple illustration will
best explain the word. When a man is "naturalized," he speaks of his
new country as the land of his _adoption_. If a Frenchman becomes a
naturali