use of the ordinance of infant baptism,
demanded by the pious feelings of parents, as pious feeling in the
regenerate craves the ordinance which commemorates the love and
sufferings of the Redeemer. The feelings of pious parents will require
the ordinance of infant baptism, as an expression of their earnest
desire to have fellowship with God as the God of the believer and his
offspring, the covenant-keeping God. It is to the increase and
prevalence of this feeling that I look now for an increasing observance
of infant baptism; for, without such feeling, the ordinance is an empty
name. Where that feeling exists, it soon modifies the speculative views
of a parent. As our conscious need of an atoning Saviour soon dispels
the former difficulties about the doctrine of the Trinity, so a longing
desire to have special covenanting with God for a dear child, makes the
subject of God's everlasting covenant with Abraham, as the great
believer, and the father of believers, plain.

Now, before I forget it, please let me tell you of an objection to
infant baptism, which I lately met with, drawn from the effect of the
prevalent practice of it in a community.

The objection is, it prevents us, in a measure, from fulfilling Christ's
command, "Go, teach all nations, baptizing them." For, going into the
Roman Catholic or Greek churches, or an Armenian country, and making
converts, the missionaries cannot baptize them, for, alas! they were
baptized in infancy, and to re-baptize is against the law of the
countries.

Now, this seems to me no great calamity; for if the converts themselves
recognize their baptism, and adopt it as profession of their faith, it
is like a man's acknowledging the hand and seal on an instrument, made
irregularly at first, but now, under competent circumstances, declared
to be equivalent to his own act and deed at the date of this
declaration. He would not need to re-write the document, nor to use wax
or wafers again, except in witness of his acknowledging the original
act. "Though it be but a man's covenant, yet, if it be confirmed, no man
disannulleth or addeth thereto."

But, however it may be in such countries and communions as I have named,
certainly it cannot be a calamity if the practice of infant baptism
becomes such a spiritual and practical thing, that young persons are
generally converted, so that adult baptisms disappear. I love to notice,
when several persons join our church, how few of them receiv