he little boy who had been
the occasion of all this pleasant conversation, and prayed that his
consecration might be accepted, and the sign and seal of it be owned and
blessed to him and his parents. As I walked down to the gate with my
friends, I said to them, that, when God was covenanting with Abraham, he
bade him look up into the heavens, and count the stars, and told him
that his seed, like them, should be innumerable. So I told them
frequently to look up to those old heavens, and remember that the
covenant-keeping God is there, the same who, in blessing Abraham,
included his seed; and that, because Abraham was so good a man, God
calls his posterity "the seed of Abraham my friend." And so we said
good-night.

In reading over what I have written, there are a few things more which I
feel disposed to add, because I know that Percival will make good use of
them in talking with others in your congregation.

I feel, more than I can express, that the state of mind in parents which
will make them prize and use the ordinance of baptism for their children
is the great want of our day. Bringing children to church, and
baptizing them, unless the parents are themselves in covenant with God,
is as wrong as it was for those earthly-minded Corinthians, whom Paul
rebukes, to eat the Lord's Supper. They made a feast, or a meal, of the
supper; and some use baptism just to give a child a name,--to "christen"
it, as they say,--in mere compliance with a custom. But the abuse of a
thing is no valid argument against it. The last supper is the subject of
far more perversion; it gives occasion to a vast amount of superstition
and folly. The procession of the host, the elevation of the host, the
laying of the wafer on the tongue, the solemn injunctions against
spitting for a certain time after receiving it, are no valid arguments
against the Lord's Supper, and no Christian is led by them to disregard
the words of the Lord Jesus, "This do in remembrance of me." Much of the
practical benefit of the Supper comes through the feelings which it
awakens, the conduct which it promotes. So with infant baptism. The
child must be truly consecrated to God, beforehand, and afterwards; and
the ordinance must be used as a sign and seal on our part, as it is on
the part of God,--an act and testimony, a memorial, a vow. Hannah lent
her child to the Lord from the beginning, and then brought him to the
temple, with her offerings. We must take the child from b