fireside or in the chamber, invokes his presence and blessing.

Here is a family bound together by ties the most interesting of any on earth. Perhaps the parents are poor, and are compelled to labour hard for a living.

How sad to think that after working like slaves to live a few years, they may go where the wicked never cease from troubling, and the weary are not at rest! How desirable that they should have God for their portion, and Heaven for their home, so that years of toil and hardship here may be followed by rest and joy, made doubly sweet by earthly trials. But now, there is reason to fear that the family, parents and children, will struggle through a hard life, only to meet a worse condition together beyond the grave.

God now appeals to your hearts through your infant child, or older children. Labour not for the meat that perisheth to sustain the life of your child, as though this were your whole duty. Remember that God has committed the forming period of an immortal spirit's history and condition to you, and that your relation to this child is forever to be to you a source of joy or sorrow. You must dedicate this child to God, and bring it up for Heaven.

Then, first, give your own selves to the Lord; it will be cruelty which that child will understand

THE FAMILY OF THE RICH.

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and feel, if it should be lost, and will utter imprecations upon you for it, if you shall neglect its early religious instruction. It may hereafter cry, "O that I had been born a heathen, and my parents had thrown me upon the shore. Then my soul might have been taken to Heaven, and now I should have been a saint in light, but my Christian parents were the cause of my eternal pain!" If you would not occasion such weeping and wailing from that child, who now smiles at you as its protectors, give yourselves with your offspring to God in the bonds of his covenant.

Perhaps in your dwelling God has poured out a profusion of goodness, and with children, He has given you much to charm the eye and delight the heart, and you may be highly susceptible to the refined pleasures of life. All this you may now have, without religion, or a prospect of happiness beyond the grave. Your hopes are bounded by the narrow term of life; you and your children have no provision for another world. What must it be for you, so sensitive to pleasure and pain, to be shut out of Heaven with your family, and to spend eternity with them in the world of sin and suffering! What exquisite pleasure will be yours, if all your present sources of happiness and susceptibilities to enjoyment, are refined and perpetuated in Heaven;-and if home and the relations of

life, are so delightful to you here, can you bear the thought of being stripped, like a tree by the blast of winter, of those attachments that now constitute your chief, perhaps your only, happiness? Consider what distress and ruin you are bringing upon this beloved household, by neglecting to consecrate yourself and them to God. You are preparing the way for their final separation, or for their united banishment from God. Your kindness to them here, your affectionate endeavours to make them happy in this world, will only make their doom and their future portion more dreadful, by its contrast with their happiness in this life. But who can paint their bliss, if, by your pious and faithful conduct, the whole meet in Heaven! What way of effecting this is more suitable than to dedicate your children, and yourself with them, to God! What motive can more properly lead you to begin a religious life, than a seasonable concern for the souls whose destiny God has in a measure entrusted to your care?

CHAPTER IX.

RESTRICTION OF INFANT BAPTISM to the children of believers. I. The ancient privilege of believers. The sign of the covenant with them. Illustration. The rainbow. No reason why either should cease. II. Inconsistency of one who is not a Christian offering a child to God. Principle of divine government. Importance of a visible distinction between the church and the world. Answers to objections.

ON BEING RE-BAPTIZED. Its impropriety shown, from the meaning of Baptism. Cases of adult Baptism by the apostles, and the Baptism of Christ not in point. Baptism not a profession of religion. Right view of this matter, and an argument from it. To be re-baptized is to renounce the previous Baptism. Solemn and responsible act.

On what grounds is Infant Baptism restricted to the offspring of believers?

When God revived his church in Abraham, who was the father of all them that believe, He made the consecration of children, and their admission with their parents into covenant, the privilege and duty of his peculiar people. It was to them a precious privilege, it gratified the parental affection, and was a bond between the pious Israelite and God. If believers now do not enjoy this privilege,

if their offspring do not bear a peculiar relation to God, and God to them, we are deprived of a great blessing, and that too, under a dispensation which professes to be superiour to that which is past in the richness of its blessings.

This privilege does not seem by its nature to be restricted to one age or dispensation; it grows out of the natural relation of parents and children. When God would mark by a peculiar token, the covenant made by Him with believers, He selected the natural affection of parents for their children, and, as it were, sanctified or set apart this instinct, to be a sign between Him and them. Many years before, He had, in the same manner, set apart the natural effect of the sunlight upon the retiring cloud, as a sign of His covenant that the waters should no more deluge the earth, and this was an appropriate and beautiful emblem of his covenant. And now, as the bow in the cloud is as fresh and fair to us as when eight souls hailed it as the sign of God's covenant with them and with the world, as the principle in nature by which it is produced is everlasting, and as the significancy of it is as cheering to us as to those who saw it spanning the Heavens after the flood, so God's recognition of parental affection in believers, and the bestowment of his blessing upon it, is as desirable and precious now, and the principle and reason of it is the same now, and its significancy as a sign of his covenant is as great now, as in the days of the early church.