dry
about it, as I view the subject. It is one of the most beautiful things
in religion.

_Mrs. Benson._ It is next to the Lord's Supper, I always thought, if
people take the right view of it.

_Pastor._ It makes you love God the Father in some such way as the
Lord's Supper makes you love the Saviour. I think, sometimes, that the
baptism of children is our heavenly Father's Sacrament.

_Mr. B._ I like that; but there is so much to study and learn about the
"Abrahamic covenant," that I feel a little discouraged. I have had books
lent me on the Abrahamic covenant, and I began to read them; but they
looked hard; so I told my wife that perhaps you would make the thing
more clear, and bring it home to our feelings, and that we would come
and get your ideas about it.

_Pastor._ How glad I am that you came! But tell me what you take the
Abrahamic covenant to mean.

_Mr. B._ I suppose it means that God told Abraham to circumcise his
children, and infant baptism comes in the place of it, and we must do it
if we are Abraham's spiritual children. But I wish to see the use of it.
I am willing to do it, but I should like to feel it more; and I want to
know how baptism comes in the place of circumcision, and a great many
other things.

_Pastor._ I think that you may possibly have what may be called some
Jewish notions about the Abrahamic covenant, though I trust you are
right in the main. That phrase sounds foreign and mysterious, and I
never use it except in talking with people who I know have the thing
itself already in their hearts.

I called Helen to me, and told her to say the hymn which she had
repeated to me the last Sabbath evening.

She cleared her voice, leaned against me, and twisted her fingers in my
hair behind, and, with her eyes fixed there, she said this hymn:

"Begin, my tongue, some heavenly theme,
And speak some boundless thing;
The mightier works or mightier name
Of our eternal King.

"Tell of his wondrous faithfulness,
And sound his power abroad;
Sing the sweet promise of his grace,
And the performing God.

"Proclaim salvation from the Lord
For wretched, dying men;
His hand has writ the sacred word
With an immortal pen.

"Engraved as in eternal brass
The mighty promise shines;
Nor can the powers of darkness rase
Those everlasting lines.

"He who can dash whole worlds to deat