ich were chanted, and your
feelings as you took the child into your arms to be presented to God,
and as you heard those adorable names pronounced upon her and then
received her back into your arms, as it were, from the hands of God."

"What do you think," said I, "of the practice of having children
baptized in the church on a week-day? It enables the parents to attend
meeting on the Sabbath with more composure than when they bring their
children on the Sabbath."

"But O," said she, "what is that, compared with the privilege of
bringing the child before the whole church of God, in his house, on the
Lord's day, and so identifying its baptism with the most solemn acts of
public worship? I do not like those week-day baptisms. Where they have
the communion lecture in the afternoon of a week-day, there may be
reasons of convenience for bringing the children for baptism then,
rather than on the Sabbath; but there is a great loss of enjoyment, and
also of impressiveness, in the ordinance, in doing so, I think. I was at
a place, several years ago, when fourteen children were baptized on a
Wednesday afternoon, in the church. I went to see it, but it was not
solemn at all. I could not help thinking what an impressive and useful
sight that would have been on the Sabbath, before all the people, and
how much more good, probably, it would have done the parents, even if
they had given up half the Sabbath in going and returning with the
children."

"If people," said I, "thought more of the spiritual meaning and
privileges of baptism, and viewed it as they do in times of sickness and
death, they would think less of inconveniences and discomforts, and see
that the ordinance is something more than giving a child a name."

* * * * *

Some time after this, I called upon a cousin of ours, a young married
lady of our congregation, who, within a year, had come to us from
another place, she having been married to an educated, intelligent
member of another congregation, and who, from his great love for her,
had come with her to our place of worship from another denomination,
this having been made a condition of their marriage. For she felt that
she could not be debarred the privilege of sitting at the Lord's table
with her mother, three sisters, and brother, as she would be if she
united herself with her friend's church. The idea of going to any table
of Christ on earth where they could not come, thus seeming t