the same influence, he would not have obeyed the edict of God.  It is because of the dominant spirit of worldliness in the Christian home, that the laborers upon the walls of Zion are inadequate to the great work to be done, that they are insufficient for the great harvest of souls.  And this will ever continue so long as Christian parents refuse to make an offering of their sons to God, and turn their homes into a den of thieves.

Such parental reservation of children for filthy lucre and the pleasures of sin for a season, involves a guilt which no redeeming attribute can mitigate.  If God gave his only Son to suffer and die upon the accursed tree, shall we, his professed followers, not give in turn our sons to Him, to proclaim the glad news of a purchased and offered redemption?  Think of this, oh ye who profess to be the parents of a Christian home, and have with the lip had your children dedicated to God in baptism!  Think that the gift of God has bought them with a price, and that as they belong to Him, you rob God when you withhold them, and deal with them as your own property, leaving out of view the great law of stewardship.  Mistaken parents! methinks you would give your children to all save to God; you would devote them to any thing but religion.  You fit them for this life, choose their occupation, labor to leave them a large inheritance, and rejoice when they rise to eminence in the world.

But in all this, God, religion and eternity are cast into the shade; you act towards them as if God had no claim upon them, and you were under no obligations to meet that claim.  Think of this, ye who have been recreant to your duty,—­ye who have not followed Abraham to the mount of oblation, nor brought up your sons as an offered Samuel.  Oh think, that God will demand of you these children, and that if they are not now devoted to the Lord, you will not have them to return to Him in the great day of final reckoning.  May the momentous interests and responsibilities of that coming day bring you with your children around the altar of consecration, and constrain you there to say—­

  “I give thee to thy God—­the God that gave thee,
  A well-spring of deep gladness to my heart! 
          And precious as thou art,
  And pure as dew of Hermon, He shall have thee,
  My own, my beautiful, my undefiled! 
          And thou shalt be His child!”

CHAPTER XI.

Christian baptism.

  “Water—­of blest purity
  Emblem—­do we pour on thee;
  Little one! regenerate be—­
  Only by the crimson flood
  Of the Spotless, in the blood
  Of the very Son of God! 
  Father, Son and Holy Ghost! 
  Take the feeble, take the lost,
  Purchased once at Calvary’s cost!”

What delightful associations cluster around the baptismal altar!  How tenderly does the pious mother fold her babe to her yearning heart, as she devoutly approaches that consecrated spot, and there dedicates in and through this holy sacrament, the child of her love and hope, to Him who gave it!  What a holy charge she there assumes; what a sacred vow she there makes; what a solemn promise she there gives; what a momentous interest is entrusted to her there; what a weight of responsibility is there laid upon her!